Fuchs bike.....

[Fuchs]

never said "Hello" in the real way...

my name is Philipp but have the nick "Fuchs" everywhere.
I was born in Germany but emigrate to Sweden for a couple of years.
cycling has been important the most part of my live, started with duathlon, made in the middle of the ninties some years in XC, worked many years as an messenger and since some years back i´m really intresstet in ultracycling.
since i was a kid i always build my own stuff and are really intressted in the technical stuff. the bikes have to bee as light as possible and does not have some parts i do not need.
my latest ongoing project is to build a bike wich is at least 4500g or under and will work for 24h races, all my training (just have the one bike) and off course me who ways over 80kg
i started with that projekt last year.
the frame i´ve choosen is an Stevens SLC Team frame with some custom things on it.

with 886g in 56 it is quite okej but not light.
i started to strip the painting and made some changes on that frame so right now it weighs in about 791g
in progress

'
the original fork was long over 300g so a new one had to come. most of the light forks are not okej for my weight but the ritchey wcs pro is okej. and with some work it weighs 251g

i never liked to just take some normal stuff so all the parts had to be something special.
with help of many good friend like sebastian from carbonschmiede.de norbert from nlb i got the bike together and came to around 4680g in the spring.

got an 64g stem from sebastian wich he build just for me and i just love this one!

norbert build me this nice seat/seatpostcombination with just 106g

some record brakelevers wich i tuned with own hodz, stripped the paint, left shifter at the frame and so on and came in at 210g

build some own brakes with old campa parts, some own stuff in aluminium and titanium and got 158g brakes wich work fine!

on the deralieur i started with an tiso and had new extralite pulleys and some small stuff.
all the other parts were quite normal like schmolke, stronglight cranks and stuff like that.

more to come soon.....

[Fuchs]

after around 8000km in the middle of spring, my stupid nano rims broke down (stupidest rims ever made!).
so i could borrow a frontwheel from norbert wich he build completly by himself. it weighs 430g and i loved it so much so i bought this one. its not as stiff as my old lightweights for example but it feels faster and in the real (sorry just got an stupid camera) it looks absolutly cool

for the back i bought an hed 3c wich i striped from the paint. will make an carbonaxel for it in the winter, right now it is really heavy with 843g
but i like the hed. and the other problem was that norbert can not make backwheels wich will work for heavy people, so i had to have something wich will work okej for me.
with the new wheels and some other parts wich broke down the weight was going up to 5060g wich was terrible and i had to do something soon!

over sommer i started more an more with making my own parts in carbon. this is such an intressting material wich you can make light, stiff and fantastic parts of.
one of my first once for example were new bottlecages. i copied the btp style. i´m still not good at this but made some wich work right now, do not look that bad and the weight is okej i guess. in the winter i will make some with 4g

now with the faster wheels and me who is more an more going in to that long distance cycling, i wanted to have a bar to lay on and had an idea for new brakelevers and an other way to shift. because my old bar was just an sl and really used i toke it as an "try and arror" bar. in winter i will make a completly new bar wich will be at least 30g less than this one. since the pic is been made i shortend the brakelevers and had some pads at the armrest.
the hole cockpit with brakelevers and one shifter for the rear deralieur and almost 200g lighter then the old cockpit

then i started to build my own front deralieur but actually i never liked to shift at the front i as i do not have big hills for the most of the time i just build an chainguard in carbon and just use my 10gears like i allways do
the bike looked now like this and was loosing many "g" s0 47xx was the fact.

47xx was cool again but not really okej. so i had to do more.
just bought an zipp 300 crank wich i will tune and at this way loose almost 100g
the headset expander was to heavy so i just made this one, was glueing it directly in the fork. wih glue it weight around 4-5g

then i´m working on an own carbon rear deralieur. some parts i am allready usind in my tiso but the new one will go down to around 65g
some of the new parts i allready build
pulleys with 3,8g

backplate with 2g (6g was the original tiso part)

at the list, this is the bike today. since spring i´ve done around 18000-20000km on that bike and wthout the stupid nano wheels, everything is working really fine!
because i allways do some work at some part it is never looking the same some time later. everything is in progress. my dream is to get it under 4kg but i think that the limit with this wheels would be 4,2kg. i maybe will get some new wheels.
if somebody has some thoughts about the style, i just love that prototype style! nothing will get some paint, nothing is polished and so on...just like i like it! hope you do so too...

[dunlinii]

That is a crazily odd looking bike, but I love it. It looks so unique with the huge drop, crazy bars and he'd rear. It almost looks like a messenger bike!

It's also really cool how you have done so much of the work from scratch instead of just buying a load of stuff. You also seem to have the right friends it gives the bike so much personality the way you did it.

[Fuchs]

just build an new 20 sprocket for my cassett.
it´s an direct copie of the titanium sprocket i used in the last time.
i did not test it on the road yet but the chain goes nicely over it and if i put some power at the pedal and pull the brake it holds nicely!
it will save 8,2g to the 15g titanium sprocket and take the hole cassett down to 88g .
the cassett is an Nino 11-23 titanium SL wich i made new carbon spacer for and changed the last sprocket and got an 11-20 10gear cassett.
you could use an aluminium cassett to go lighter but i do not wanna buy new one´s all the time. i´ve got already over 20000km on the titanium and it still looks almost new.

[Boonen]

Great bike Fuchs! Right up my alley with all the custom modifications Really like what you did to the frame, I never thought they were particularly good looking but like this I have to say it's real nice.
To bad you can't get a rear wheel to match the front, would look good and save you a lot of weight over the Hed. Surely there must be some way to make that work?
I'm looking forward seeing more of that derailleur you're building

[Fuchs]

yes it would be really nice if i had an backwheel in the same way like the front one. An actually, norbert do built backwheels as well. He had done some with normal spokes and some with carbon spokes and disc wheels as well. But just the disc wheels are strong enough for my weight and "power" the other wheels work fine for persons like norbert who weighs around 60kg and isn't the strongest rider. He use them quite a lot.
And off course, i could buy a wheel like lightweight or so but that dosn't feels right on this bike. And so, i always loved the hed. Maybe, i can tune it down to 780g or so.

Otherwise i got my nano hubs (the ine from the selling thread) and as nobody buys them, i could built some sub1000g with them. With the nano rims they were down to 993g wich was 250g less then my wheels now wich was really cool to drive trough the hills

[j0m]

I can only agree with Christian, Very cool bike! It's always much more fun seeing custom made things. I'm pretty sure I'd be able to identify you should we ever meet on the road.

[Fuchs]

thanks a lot, guy´s!

maybe we will meet one day. jOm i live in the south of stockholm, outside of södertälje and are mostly training down to nyköping,katerineholm and so on.....

[pritchet74]

Wow, I can't believe I hadn't looked at this thread yet. Awesome bike! I love it! I love that you can build your own parts too - I wish I had the balls to do that.

And the fact that you are running a rear Hed 3c is juts GREAT! i thought I was the only non-triathlete that rode those.

[j0m]

maybe we will meet one day. jOm i live in the south of stockholm, outside of södertälje and are mostly training down to nyköping,katerineholm and so on.....

Maybe we will. I live in Stockholm as in Stockholm. But I do live on the south side so it's not that uncommon that I ride to Södertälje but usually not farther in that direction (the old Stockholm road and/or 225). Depending on my work schedule and the weather I might be seen as far as Gnesta though.

[Fibre-Lyte]

Cool bike. Like the others I really like the way that most of your parts have been customised in some way. I do prefer it with the shallow rims though.

I also find it quite funny that you refer to a 5kg bike as a terrible weight. That's still over a kilo lighter than mine!

[Fuchs]

thanks guys, always nice to hear kind words about my bike. many people do not really like it because of the hed wheel, the bar and that i just have the 10gears on it....they say that it is not an real road bike come on, just this year it will have seen around 30000km from the road if nothing special happens.

of couse so is 5kilo really light and as i started with the lightbuilding stuff i was just dreaming about sub5. but as i already was down to 4,6xx and had to go up with almost 400g, that was terrible

today i tried that new sprocket but it dosen´t worked that well. as soon i had som power at the pedal, the chain jumped over the sprocked. i will put it on my singelspeedtown bike to work that chainjumpingthing out. on that bike it is more easy to make some changes without taking apart everything.

jOm....i work in "midsommarkransen" and drive that road by car quite often when i´m going home. we should meet some time
if there is no snow or ice on the road, i always train outside. just like today in that funny rain.

[Fuchs]

had to work a lot so there was just time for training and no "buildingtime"
but i got new bottles from tacx. just the same like the tune bottles but without anything on them. just transparent. thats nice,because i do not have any tuneparts any longer and especially not the bottlecages

then in all my training i got to that point of thinking that the roadframe is not really perfekt for that type of bar. i am just to far back on that bike. would like to gat a frame with an 78degree seatangle. but right now i do not have the money for that
i´m thinking to build this bike back to wheels with low profile rims an an tlo road bar with own brake/shift-levers but still no front deraileur...in this way the bike will getting lighter as well.

so if any body is intrested in these wheels, i will sell them.....selling thread will come sone, or just PM me

[Fuchs]

just got these today
will take off the paint to save around 7g i think. with the xx-light buttom braked and an fiberlyte chainring it will be around 480g i think. that would be ca 80g off the bike

[pritchet74]

Nice. Those Zipp cranks have always been one of my favorites.