Someone (Hi Alex!) reminded me that a) Some of you are still reading this blog and that b) I’ve not put much content up recently.
OK, I can take a hint! I’ve been busy crafting up frames for customers as my alter ego ‘Spanner Bike’, more of which later. But for now let’s see if I can find some more stories of people who’ve trodden their own path in the search of cycling perfection…
Hey Kevin, where did you get the inspiration for your design from?
Its all based on an XXL Surly Ice Cream Truck, which is, by a huge margin, my most ridden bike with either full fat or 29+ wheels. However, there were a few niggles with the ICT, that after 4 years and a lot of riding, I wanted to sort out:
1) Why such a crazy short head tube on a XXL bike? I hated the huge stack of spacers on the steerer to get a reasonable bar height.
2) Press fit bottom bracket – I’m not a fan and wanted a standard threaded BSA one after two warranty replacements of the crappy press fit effort from Surly!
3) I wanted a little more reach, a little more effective top tube, little slacker head angle.
4) A little less seat tube height so I can fit a 200mm dropper if I want to (currently running a 170mm dropper).
5) More bottle bosses (I hate backpacks, use a frame bag if I have to, but I am a huge fan of fabric cageless bottles).
6) Stealth routing for a dropper (rather than the solution of a large hole I drilled in the seat tube of the ICT!).
6) Most important: Sort the seat angle and head angle when using a longer 120mm travel fork.
I’m have pretty much always run the ICT with a 120mm Rock Shox Bluto, with a 531mm axle to crown, which is a heck of a lot higher than the 483mm A-C the frame was designed around!
When ridden out of the saddle, it feels great though – about a 66 degree head angle. However this pushes an already slack seat angle out to about 70 degrees, maybe even slacker which creates some problems going uphill! Compared to my other bikes it feels like my feet are pedalling forwards, not down, and on steep techy ups I have to have my weight so far forward on the saddle I am worried it’ll end up disappearing where the sun doesn’t shine – ouch!
OK, I’m going to go there, how was Porter to work with?
Porter from XACD has been exactly as expected – super responsive, helpful, and just a little aggressive. I think this was maybe the 30th version of the drawing, so he’s also pretty patient!
Anything unusual about the design at all?
Based on me being tall and heavy (197cm, 115kg), they recommended 1.3mm wall thickness on the seatstay, 1.2mm on the chain stay and down tube and 0.9mm for seat and top tubes. The head tube is a reassuring 4mm thick!
Which in itself is interesting. It’s common for thicker tubing to be reccomended on the chainstays and down tube as they see a hard life, 1.3mm on the seat stays is unusual though. The seat stays don’t see that much load, I’d have expected the diameter to go up first rather than the wall thickness as you get a stronger tube for a similar weight.
It sounds like the design process was pretty positive though so…
Don’t keep us in suspense, what about the ride?
Having taken it out for a good thrashing I can confirm that it is epically good! Yes, it is stiffer than the Surly, but I now realise that even though I loved the give of the Surly when landing a small jump, I did spend a lot of time thinking ‘has the frame snapped?’ or ‘have I got a flat rear?’. It was laterally very flexy, for a big fella like me, which made it wander when tracking over rough ground.
And it is not too stiff as I feared, I hate to use cliches but ‘laterally stiff, vertically compliant’ does seem to be the case, as is the presence of that titanium ‘zing’.
Techy uphill is a complete hoot – with the 120mm Bluto fork the Surly ICT felt great at the front, but it pushed the seat angle waaaay back to sub 69 degrees! It made climbing horrible as the front end constantly wanted to lift and wander, and your weight was hanging way off the back of the bike. Now it’s a joy!
And on the way down?
Wow. Just, wow! So good, so controlled, so much more stable and confidence inspiring over baby head rocky trails, steep downs, off camber corners etc. Everything!
Only issue is, again something of a cliche, I am going through stuff a heck of a lot faster then before, and thus arriving at the next set of problems at a speed that requires significantly faster thinking. What a machine!
This was all on my 29+ wheels. Fat bike duties can wait for a little while.
I like having multiple Fabric cageless bottle mounts as it’s easy to throw on a frame bag without having to remove the cages!
So there you go, its generally pretty damn good, and it addressed the main issues I had with the Surly, as well as not being dented, crushed, drilled and generally on its last legs!
Sounds like a solid success! Is there anything you would change for next time?
Yes, 2 small things:
1) I would have added a second set of bottle bosses on the underside of the downtube.
2) Move the entry hole for stealth dropper further round to the left. At the moment the line to the last cable stop is a bit tight, it works but could be better!
Apart form that, no, but I am sure I will find other things over time! After 2 years of thinking about it, and a huge amount of back and forth over the design (angles, lengths, cable stop locations etc.) I’m just enjoying gettting out and riding on a bike that I created!
And at the end of the day isn’t that what we’re all about?
At over 6’4″, in old money, Kevin has demonstrated the benefit of a steep, 76 degree, seat angle. Often taller chaps are hung out over the back of the bike when they get the saddle high enough for their leg length. This screws up the weight distribution, ideally you want to keep your weight central between the wheels for sweet handling.
Good work, Sir! I’m looking forward to seeing what you might come up with next as I’m sure there’s another bike in you yet 😉
Stay tuned for more Spanner Bike news – but in the meantime do let me know if you’ve had you’re own frame made and you’d like it featured on the blog – cheers!
