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Current Lead Times: Simple-Custom Framesets: 1 week. Full Custom Bikes: 7 weeks.

U.S. Built Custom Bicycles in Titanium and Titanium-Carbon Mix

Author: Seven

Mike Broderick and Mary McConneloug’s Proto IMX 29ers, Part One of Two

Mary McConneloug

When we sat down to design new bikes for Mike Broderick and Mary McConneloug to race in the upcoming World Cup mountain bike season and possibly the Olympics, the big question was how to improve on the bikes they’d been riding for the two previous seasons.

Their all Ti Sola SLXs have been race winners. When most other riders on the circuit were trying to pack more carbon onto their bikes, Mike and Mary persisted, quite successfully, with titanium. We went to the absolute limit of our building experience to make those bikes light for them. We shaved down their cable guides. We drilled holes in their bottom brackets. But they were all metal bikes. And they were fast.

So, the biggest change they made from past seasons was to go to a Ti/carbon mix frame, our IMX SLX, but without the integrated seat post (ISP) that distinguishes that model. Instead Mike and Mary opted for an adjustable 30.9mm post that is fatter, stiffer and has a thinner-walled carbon than standard seat posts. The weight savings and added stiffness were big bonuses, and we ultra-butted all the frame tubing to save every last gram for them.

Mike knew he wanted to experiment with shorter chain stays to optimize front end maneuverability. A shorter overall wheelbase lets you make tighter turns on technical courses, and the agility he hoped to gain suits both Mike’s and Mary’s aggressive riding style.

To dial in the chain stay length we built multiple rear end modules to test the interaction and spacing of wheels, tires and components. It’s a game of millimeters, but over time we settled on the right set up for them, and then built their bikes based around that rear triangle.

Mike and Mary also knew they wanted to add over-sized head tubes and tapered forks for extra front end stiffness, and they wanted an opportunity to experiment with Cane Creek’s new angled headset. As an inveterate tinkerer, Mike thought he and Mary could both dial in the handling response they liked for each course. Being able to adjust that responsiveness might be a huge advantage in the variable weather conditions they see while racing in Europe, Africa and South America.

The final act was getting the bikes in their hands. We shipped them out to coincide with a short stopover in California, between their pre-season training in Chile, where they won the Mixed Open category of the Trans-Andes Challenge, and the first World Cup race of the year in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa.

Craft v. Production: Who Built Your Bike?

Working on a 622

What is so special about a Seven? We get asked this question all the time. A custom bike is an investment, and people want to know the money they’re spending is being put to good use. They want to understand the real value of working with Seven.

First of all, what is the value of a custom bike? An apple is not an orange. They’re both fruit, but they’re just not the same thing. In much the same way, a production bike is not the same thing as a custom bike. They’re both bikes, and all bikes are good, but there are some big differences.

The first question you want to ask is: Who is building your bike?

More and more, production bike companies have become design offices. Significant R&D and design time is put in on the front end before a detailed design is sent off to an Asian factory where the actual bikes are built in batches, by size.

Make no mistake. The bikes being built in Asia can be quite sophisticated. Carbon fiber construction techniques in particular can be complex, nuanced and vary wildly depending on the company the factory is building for. The workers in those factories are not inexperienced bike builders, nor, in most cases, are they simply stamping bike frames out of molds.

They are also not, by and large, avid cyclists. True road and mountain biking, have limited appeal in the manufacturing region of China. So, while the workers who build production bikes may be highly skilled, they seldom, if ever, bring an experience of or passion for cycling to their everyday work.

Our craftspeople are also riders. They use the products they make. In many cases they race on our bikes, train on them and commute on them. They know what makes the bikes good and learn what can make them better. It informs their craft and ties them more closely to our customers, who are living and riding the same experience.

There is also a positive feedback loop we get from pairing the designer with the craftspeople. Any new design that comes into the factory gets evaluated by the people who will build it. They bring up tooling or materials challenges the designer might not have considered. The design gets refined. It gets prototyped and ridden by the builders.

Is it important for the people building your bike to be knowledgeable, passionate cyclists? Is it important that the craftspeople cutting your bike’s tubes can talk directly to the people who designed it? We think so. This is what you get when you invest in a custom bike. This is what you get when you buy a Seven.

Limited Edition: Leap Year Axiom S

Axiom SLimited Edition: Leap Year Axiom S

With the excitement of Winter’s demise in our heads and nearly in our sights, we set out to create a bike that embodied the energy of Spring but was prepared for Winter’s last stand. The result? The Leap Year Axiom S, a bike decked out for all weather conditions:

  • 28mm Tires: Beefy Schwalbe Durano tires for traction and flat protection.
  • Painted Full Coverage Fenders: To keep the salt and slush at bay, while looking exceptional.
  • Long Reach Brakes: For heaps of tire and fender clearance.
  • Pump Peg and Chain Hanger: Roadside maintenance without any added drama.
  • Brooks Saddle: Just waiting to be your perch.
  • Seasonal Color: Leather tape, honey saddle, a painted fork, and painted fenders will help your bike look clean, even when it isn’t.
  • Yours, Truly: Each bike is built to order with all the customizable elements that Seven Cycles offers.

The remaining parts pick is a dependable kit including:

  • a Shimano Ultegra drive train
  • Cane Creek 40 headset
  • Fulcrum Racing 7 wheels
  • Seven 5E Long Reach fork
  • Seven aluminum bar and stem
  • Shimano’s R-451 long reach brakes

When paired with the seasonal paint scheme of the fork and fenders, the complete bike becomes a true stunner.

As shown, the Leap Year Axiom S retails for $6,195. For a limited time, each order will include our three year protection plan, but to honor the Leap Year, we will extend coverage an additional year, protecting your bike until the next Leap Year in 2016!

Peloton Magazine Celebrates the Bike Studio Concept

Peleton cover

Issue 10 of peloton magazine is on newstands now, and in it you will find an article about the bicycle studio movement, a new wave of smaller, more fit and service focussed shops. Bicycle studios tend to have less clutter, less commodity and things you can get just anywhere. Instead they feature custom brands and high end accessories for riders who live their whole lives by bike. Think of the classic “pro” shop, then pare it down to an elegant austerity, and you have the modern bicycle studio.

The forebear of this new breed of shops was City Cycle of San Francisco under the stewardship of bike industry legend Clay Mankin. Mankin proved that you could build great bikes and make good money out of a very small space, if only you sold the right products. That shop, which continues on after Mankin’s early passing, began selling Seven when we were just a start up in 1997. Mankin’s loyalty to the brands he carried was off the charts. Though no longer, strictly speaking, a studio, City Cycle’s new owner Cory Farrer has kept Seven on the floor, even as other bike brands have come and gone.

Peleton Studio image

In fact, here at Seven we were deeply gratified to see that, of the ten studios mentioned, seven of them are Seven dealers (ooooh, symmetry). In addition to City Cycle, those include Cascade Bicycle Studio in Seattle, owned by former Seveneer Zac Daab; Velosmith Bicycle Studio just outside Chicago, owned by another Seven alum, Tony Bustamante; Paul Levine’s Signature Cyles of Manhattan, Greenwich, CT and Central Valley, NY; Bespoke Cycles of San Francisco, Bike Effect in Los Angeles and the Ride Studio Cafe in Lexington, MA.

In our experience, the studios are our most demanding customers. They’re the ones pushing us toward perfection. When you take the kind of time with each customer that they take, every detail has to be correct. Cascade Bicycle Studio and Velosmith in particular, because they’re run by former Seven employees, can be counted on for unfiltered, candid feedback on every bike we build for them.

Obviously, we are deeply committed to all the shops that sell our bikes. The studio concept, which has only proven viable in large urban markets up to this point, simply represents a new approach to bicycle retailing, the cutting edge of high end bike sales. To be represented by so many of these forward-thinking shops is a great validation of the work we do and an inspiration for us to keep pushing forward.