Here at Iron Cycles we're nuts about CX. We love riding until we bleed from our eyeballs turning ourselves inside out on grass and in mud. We love a good hand-up and live for the next great heckle.
But in the end, CX has as much to do with the event as it does the gear. We love gear. Especially CX gear. Handmade tires, carbon wheels, race frames, it all gets us jazzed.
We put Ben on assignment this time when he hit the studio, not to get some killer shots of one particular build that we just completed, rather some of the really cool CX gear we have around the shop. There's more to come in the CX world of goodies from us, but here's a sample of what's kicking around right now.
First up comes a custom CX frame from Boo. Nick Frey, the founder of Boo, hand delivered this frame to the shop for us to test out. It's got plenty of road miles, a good number of miles in the grass, and some ugly winter rides under it's belt. It was originally built with some heavy training wheels and SRAM Rival, and weighed a respectable 19lbs. Once loaded with SRAM Red and some Zipp 303's with Dugast Rhino tires it came down to 16.5lbs.
Pictured here with a Ridley Python fork and Chris King headset:
The bike is made tube-to-tube with bamboo grown under the control of Nick. The tubes are cut and mitered to fit just for you, then the joints are wrapped with carbon.
The rear end is also made of bamboo, which provides an amazing feel. Very steel-like in it's comfort, the frame is very stiff and always willing to sprint.
Up next comes a frame that brings a lot of emotion with it. Not necessarily because of the paint or design, but more because it's limited in production and gears. Raleigh has now done a few limited edition runs of SSCX frames, this being one of them.
Team Iron Cycles will have a handful of guys tearing up the SSCX scene in the Midwest this year, and this frame will be the most popular.
Aluminum frame, Easton EC90x fork, horizontal dropouts. If you want no-frills, this is it. Pedal hard to go fast. Pedal harder to go faster.
Mix in a link to some beer and you have a real winner in a group of CX racers.
Last, and certainly not least, is a project that we're very proud of. A little work with Francois from FMB and we were able to land some custom FMB Grippo XL, SSC, and SSC Sprint tires with IRON CYCLES stamped on the side. No, we didn't add these aftermarket, these were made special for Iron Cycles by Francois.
Mounted up to a set of Zipp 202's, you're looking at a soft and supple, yet super-light and stiff race wheelset. Mounted to a carbon CX bike with SRAM Red and we were looking at 15lbs even.
So sick. Thank you Francois for your help on this project. Maybe some road tires for next year as well?
Again, this is just a sample of what we do. And a sample of what we can do for you. Cyclocross exists entirely for racing, but doesn't mean you have to be a pro to participate.
Want to try out some nice tubulars but don't want to spend $3k on some wheels, how about some hand-built alloy-tubular wheels in the $500 range. 90% of the benefit at about 15% of the price of the carbon wheels.
Get in touch with us to build you dream CX bike or your first CX bike, they both excite us the same!
