English Cycles build *FINISHED* 6040g!

[BMANX]

I have been wanting to do a custom build for a very long time and after looking around for a while I decided that I really liked what Rob English was doing and I really missed riding a steel bike. So with everything settled I contacted Rob and here we go.

I asked Rob if it was alright to share the pictures which he was more than willing to do. He is doing some cool things on the build that I have not seen yet and you can see one of the custom parts in the first post.

First one shows the raw tubing - from left to right: Unmodified dropouts, BB shell, headtube stock, straight gauge seattube, 3/8" tubing for seatstays, 1-3/8" downtube, 1-1/8" toptube, S3 chainstays.


Next picture is lightning the BB shell; similar process for externally butting the headtube and seattube.


Third picture shows a modified Thomson Elite seatpost with the Masterpiece that will have the same treatment for my bike.
Needs to be installed first then saddle after. I think the first time will be a bit of work but after it is set to my height, should be alright. Internal bolt will be 4mm Ti and I will use my carbon cradle and top matched up with Ti bolts. Gives 20mm of height adjustment.



More pictures to follow once I have others. I do not want to bug Rob for more pictures of the build as I would rather have it in hand that bug him.

The original thought was to build up the English as an all around bike for very long hours in the saddle and keeping the SLC as my WW build.

I am torn a bit right now in the direction of the build. I picked up some 2010 Force Shifters and a RD and have everything else to go on the build with the exception of some 26.0 drop bars. The direction that I want to go in might change depending on the weight of the finished frame. My thinking is to take all of the WW build parts off of the SLC and put them on this frame and then make the SLC a more aero build but still using drops and adding on some HED Clip-Lites.

Making the English build as light as possible and then making the SLC more aero. If I do go this direction I believe that both bikes would then be around 14 lbs and have more purpose. Still up in the air.

[über-goober]

Thanks for showing us this build.

Will it get a steel or carbon fork?
Custom stem/ brakes/ front hub/ etc???

[BMANX]

The frame will be a carbon fork and I was heading down the road to custom brakes but changed my mind to allow for standard brakes.

The cable routing will be custom and as shown the seat post will be a custom design.

Not sure what direction the build will go but it will be fairly light with comfort in mind.

[FAQinc]

Is the seatpost going to be something simmilar to the BMC Streampost(i.e. a quil seatpost design that locks out with an allenkey) I think it's a very clever design but you will need some kind of rubber seal around the area where it meets the frame.

Otherwise it's looking very nice, how much more custom than internal can a routing get?

[Matteo]

Wow, this is going to be awesome. I really like the English bikes shown here in the gallery. The seatpost idea is nice - should result in some very clean lines. And I really like the idea of a weenie steel bike, and an aero Cervelo would correspond well with the character of that frame (that sounds more esoteric than intended...).

Although, if you don't go all weight-weenie on this bike I could imagine a custom one-piece (steel) stem-bar combo. I once saw one by Vanilla or one of the other Oregon builders, and it looked great. You could go with custom internal cable routing on the bars as well and have the cables exit at the bottome of the stem or the like.

Congratulations, and keep us updated!

[BMANX]

We are going to have the cables entering in a position that is not shown on any of his builds and the cables will exit at the last possible location. Rob is an excellent builder and I am sure that any of the little suggestions that you have are thinking about he is either on or has thought about.

I did a fair bit of research on Rob (google is awesome) before going with him and some of the things he has been involved with are pretty amazing. If you have time, you should check out what he has done on the bike and designing bikes. Englist Cycles is just a small part of what he has done.

[FAQinc]

A bit cheesy but what's the colour going to be, leopard print with purple??

As Matteo said you should try and run it completely internal but that would involve a custom bar stem combo, now that would be really slick.

[BMANX]

There will be a little bit of exposed cables running from the bars to the entry point on the frame but it will be minimal and match up with I-Link Mini's it will be very little weight.

The color will be my normal all black with some white to match up with with components I have. It will be very close to the SLC. The fork will be pretty light on the frame and then I just have to sort out bars and maybe stem. If I can keep my Syntace F99 stem and get a very light carbon bar with no weight limit, then I will be going that route. My 105mm F99 stem with ti bolts is 96g so that is pretty hard to beat.

[BMANX]

New pictures today.

Custom butted and machined headtube (cutouts for the tube joints and the cable 'shroud')


extensively machined BB shell with stainless cable guide tubes brazed in


Thomson seatpost head (currently at 130g, I have a ti bolt coming for the wedge, then you have the carbon craddle for it - interestingly my external caps are lighter, even though made of steel, coming in just over 100g generally)


the front triangle jigged up ready for brazing


It is interesting about the internal seat post being heavier than the external however, I can see it. With that being said, I think with the modification that I will be doing, I should be able to get it below 100g I hope. I will weigh the parts in the garage later tonight to see what I can expect.

[j0m]

Cool stuff! When can we expect the bike to be finished (in the first iteration)?

[dunlinii]

So thats awesome. It annoys me a bit how some people think that Carbon is the be all and end all. I really think you can do a lot more interesting things in metal.

[BMANX]

I agree with you. I had steel back in the day and now that I have carbon and light weight aluminum frame, I want to complete the builds with a kick ass steel bike.

[pritchet74]

Agreed.

My project for 2011 is building my own steel frameset. It will be fun! It certainly won't be the quality of en English, but I have to start somewhere, right?

I am very excited to see the progress of this build!

[synchronicity]

Several questions enter the mind, which I daren't ask on ww:

How does the cable housing shroud work?
Can we see the cover plate / head badge?
How do the cables feed down from the HT to the BB? Do you intend on using a permanent guide?
Why the different coloured tubesets? Are they just finished differently, or is the material spec different?

[BMANX]

Here are some more pictures from the build.

I think that Thomson posts just don't have a very light head (which you will adjust with your upgrade pieces).The weight breakdown is this:

Upper and lower craddles and bolts = 70g
Post and wedge = 38g
Stainless wedge bolt = 10g (so guess titanium will be about 6g)
Aluminium insert pieces for wedge bolt = 14g

So I only added 24g (less the weight of the holes!)

Bit more progress (pics attached) - the mainframe is now brazed up, with the cable guide inside the headtube and the holes drilled for the eAntry points. Nice clean run, the cable threaded through quite easily. Onto the rear end next.

I guess the cats out of the bag in how the cables will be run now. I am trying to keep this as clean as possible and Rob and I thought that behind the stem would be the cleanest possible location for the entry. Keeping in mind that the cable runs will be totally internal even for the rear derailleur as it will run in the chainstay and exit at the last possible location.


Side shot of the head tube with the additional gusset to hide the cable run into the down tube. Not sure where the rear brake is entering but I think it is on the side of the top tube but exiting directly behind the seat tube. EDIT: the rear cable will enter behind the shifter cable entry point.


The cable in the picture is for the FD as the RD will run inside the chainstay. Funny looking at the BB this way with no chainstays yet.


Man do I love this!