Seven Cycles – Page 57 – U.S. Built Custom Bicycles in Titanium and Titanium-Carbon Mix

Going Fast

In the last few weeks, we’ve talked about Going Up, the process of designing a climbing bike, and Going Far, the things that go into a long distance bike, which might be a century bike, a touring bike or might be a full-blown randonneuring machine. This week we turn our attention to race bikes.

The bike industry has traditionally worked backwards from race bikes to fill shop floors with race look-alikes for everyday riders who will never turn a crank in anger. What is good for the pros, so the logic goes, must be good for you, too, and for some very small number of non-pro riders, that could be true.

As with all our bikes, we start with the purpose of the bike and work forward. Going fast requires being able to sit in a comfortable, aerodynamic position, to be able to handle your bike in tight spaces, and to get good power transfer through the rear triangle.

As custom builders, getting to that perfect position is a given. We can replicate exact saddle and grip positions from a bike fitting. We can dial in handling by adjusting headtube angle and fork rake to produce the exact characteristics the rider wants. We can adjust the stiffness of the rear triangle by selecting specific diameter chainstays, up to and including the 1″ stays we call “race stays.”

Our 622 SLX rivals all of today’s carbon race machines for weight and stiffness, but it incorporates more road feel and better comfort than those bike through its unique combination of laser-cut titanium lugs and filament-wound carbon tubing. Our all-Ti Axioms make great criterium bikes for their ability to absorb the heavy impacts of racing on imperfect pavement and the way they come through the occasional crash.

The technology of race bikes evolves quickly, and adapting to new component standards can be a challenge, but with a custom bike these things can be considered during the design phase to leave you with as many upgrade options as possible.

The thing is, bikes aren’t fast. Riders are fast. The best way for the rider to Go Fast is to design a bike around them that fits them perfectly, handles the way they want it to and transfers as much of their power as possible.

The Ames’ Tandem

Every bike build is a challenge, a good one, and a tandem build is more than double the challenge. Add in custom front and rear racks, generator front and rear hubs, and clearance for fenders, and you have the sort of project we dream about. We built this very special Axiom SL 007 SL with our friends at Spin City Cycles in Decatur, IL. We had a nice note from the Ames’ after they picked it up:

Seven,

I thought I would write and let you know we picked up the bike yesterday, and it looks great! I’m looking forward to it. I’m including a few built up pictures for fun.

Thanks for everything,

Kevin

Pat McCann – From 0 to 20,000 in SEVEN

We are very fortunate to get a lot of email from happy Seven riders. Each one is humbling in its way. Each one is appreciated. But we got this photo and note from Pat McCann last week, and it left us all a little speechless:

In December of 2006 I took delivery of my custom built Seven Aerios. I was very proud and excited to own such a bike. At the age of 58 I had ridden over 6000 miles the summer before and was a decent enough rider to enter some races. I felt my new bike would be a real asset.

Living in upstate N.Y. and not wanting to wait until spring to ride, we went to visit my wife’s family in S.C.. We arrived Jan.16^th ’07 and on Jan. 17^th at 7 am I suffered a massive heart attack. It was the worst of the worst. Every inch of my body was racked with pain. My chest felt as if I had cinder blocks being pressed on me. Even the tips of my ears hurt, and I was suddenly sweating. My wife is a nurse and, although unable to believe what appeared to be happening, rushed me to the hospital 1 mile away.

How could I be having heart attack? Never smoked, never gets drunk, eats low fat, exercises like crazy…my cholesterol was 150. This just can’t be happening.

As I lay on the bed in the emergency room surrounded by nurses and technicians the heart monitor was faced away from me at the foot of my bed. Their eyes were bugging out as they looked at the monitor, but worst of all I looked across them all and I saw Brenda (my wife) standing back reading the monitor, tears running down her face. I knew it was bad. Later she would tell me that from across the room she could see my heart throwing PVCs off the chart.

I was then rushed to Carolinas Hospital’s cardiac unit in Florence SC. As they wheeled me in from the ambulance to the hospital I was in horrible pain and freezing cold (temp out side about 70 degrees). Suddenly, as I lay flat on my back, I looked past my feet and everything appeared to be backlit by a bright light. The noise of the hospital and noise from my gurney disappeared, the pain was gone, I was warm, and was looking down at my feet from a 45 degree angle. I knew I was dying and remember thinking, “oh this is going to be nice”.

Just then my wife put her hand on my arm as we were rushing through the hospital to the OR and said “don’t worry honey you’re going to be alright.” I must have looked at her face streaming with tears and said “no, I can’t go yet!” It was as if I was slammed back down on the gurney. The pain was back; the cold was back; the noise was back.

As they wheeled me into the OR I noticed on the beam holding the tv monitor (you can watch them catheterize you) the word MAVIC. It was actually MAVIG, but you know where I’m going. I said MAVIC? That’s the type of wheel I have on my brand new Seven that I came down here to ride. One of the cardiologists said “you have a Seven? I always wanted one.” My sarcastic wife who felt I spent too much money on the bike said, “Make us an offer. He’s not going to need it.”

Little did she know.

The doctor came out and told Brenda that I had a 100% blockage of the L.A.D.. She said, “That’s the Widow Maker. Why is he still alive?” The doctor said “Does he exercise a lot?”

“All the time” she said. The doctor said, “Because of that he has built up so much collateral circulation, that’s what saved him. However he was over 2.5 hours without blood to the apex of the heart, so he has lost about 1/3 of his heart.”

I remember trying to swing my leg over my new bike when I got out of the hospital and couldn’t do it. I remember looking at the computer mileage set at 0. I would lay on the couch and cry. I put the Seven on a trainer and watch old TdF videos. I could only ride 8 minutes, and I’d have to lay back on that couch.

The bike was always there. It was my therapy, both physical and mental. I eventually got outside and rode a little more each week. There are lots more stories since 2007 until now, but I’ll spare you. I rode my Seven every day that I could. I love that bike. To say we’ve been through a lot together would be an understatement.

But this part I want to tell you. Last summer, 2014, I was riding up a very steep and long hill in upstate NY. I looked down at my computer to watch it turn over to 20,000 miles. This time they were tears of joy.

Ricardo’s Sola S

This is our friend Ricardo’s Sola S, delivered through Bikestage in Madrid. Ricardo opted for a 142×12 thru axle rear end for his bike, and the final build came out very clean and spare. The bead-blasted logo gives it that touch of class, too.

Going Far

Last week we talked about Going Up, the process of designing a climbing bike. This week we look at what goes into a long distance bike, which might be a century bike, a touring bike or might be a full-blown randonneuring machine. We build these on our Axiom platform or our Expat platform typically, but as with everything we do, it’s custom, so the features are more important than the model name.

These sorts of bikes usually have comfort as their primary design goal. Performance remains important, so drivetrain stiffness is still desirable, but one of the keys to performing over long distances and after many, many hours in the saddle is comfort.

Comfort in this regard isn’t just about how the rider feels in the moment, but how fresh he or she can remain. Muscles that have not been pummeled by an overly stiff frame for eight hours are better able to sustain effort in the 9th and 10th hours of pedaling. There is the next day to consider as well. On multi-day tours, the need to wake up in the morning rested and recovered can be the difference between fun and misery.

Titanium is a particularly good material for long distance bikes, and our ability to refine this tubing for the individual rider means we can keep those riders fresh and comfortable according to their own preferences. The tube butting process consists of removing material along the length of the tube to make it strategically compliant. The more aggressively the tubes are butted, the more compliant the frame becomes, the better it soaks up chatter and impacts from the road. Steel also shares these properties, just at a slightly greater weight.

As with the climbing bike we discussed last week, there are a number of factors to balance, comfort and performance being the most obvious. Stability and handling are also critical to a good long distance bike, a more relaxed geometry, a longer wheelbase. You want to be able to ride hands free to rest hands and shoulders. You want good handling at low speed, even carrying a load, which brings us to features and options.

Touring bikes used to have cantilever brakes as a default, because they let you run a wider tire with a fender, but the advent of better medium reach fork/brake combinations and disc brakes have radically improved braking performance and given riders more options for bike set up. The touring triple has given way to the compact double crank, with wide range cassette to achieve the same gearing ratios. Rack and fender mounts are very popular on long distance bikes too, as are our custom racks, which can be built to fit the specific bags, panniers and lighting systems you want to run. Dyno hubs and front facing light mounts keep riders going into the night.

It is well-nigh impossible to get a great long-distance bike off the shelf. The unique attributes that keep a rider comfortable over long periods of time with the features and options and component choices that suit them make each of Seven’s “Go Far” bikes special.