David Singlespeed Unrau

The ‘bike’ of the day today is in fact just a stem - a one-off hand painted custom lugged stem! This is one of the prettiest piece of bike art to pass through the shop in a while. The lucky owner of this stem already has the bike to match. I don’t have any pictures of the bike at hand, but it features the same lug set, matching paint and is dressed up with polished stainless cable stops on the downtube.

If I could only have one bike, it would look something like this:

Road ride? No problem. Cyclocross race? Sure. Racks, fenders and head out for a tour? Absolutely. Take it apart and fly with it as regular checked baggage? Well, it can handle that as well. This custom cyclocross bicycle with S&S couplings is pretty close to my concept of the perfect bike.

Polished S&S Machine Works coupling break down the frame so you can pack the whole bike in a regulation size suitcase and fly with it for free. The bike is set up with Paul’s cantilever brakes and clearances that will let you run road tires, touring tires with fenders or cyclocross tires.

Stainless steel angled dropouts let you run gears, singlespeed or fixed gear. A full complement of eyelets on the frame and on the carbon fork will support front and rear racks and fenders without any hassle. Old school 7700 series Dura-Ace components and a TTT Morpheus touring handlebar complete the package.

Cold sunlight and snow squalls over a frozen Lake Ontario shoreline.

Today’s bike is another take apart custom touring frame using S&S couplings.

This bike is similar to the touring bicycle from a couple of days ago, but with disc brakes rather than v-brakes. Details include:

• Custom steel take apart frame with stainless steel S&S couplings
• hand built XT/Keba wheels with Schwalbe Marathon Plus tires
• Avid BB-7 ‘road’ disc brakes
• Shimano R600 Ultegra level reach adjustable STI levers
• MTB gearing (Triple crank, 11-34T cassette) for loaded touring in serious mountains
• Selle Italia ‘Lady’ saddle and short travel Thud-Buster seatpost
• Women specific TTT ‘Eva’ touring bar

The custom frame features touring optimized disc specific dropout that provide clearance for rack, fender and disc caliper mounting.