Sunday, December 13, 2009

more on the titanium single speed cross rig



Warning:  likely only of interest to cyclocross geeks and weight weenies.
Here are the details of the build.  The frame was made in Russia from a cad file that Scott Mares of Sibex Sports came up with from my geometry.  With Sibex I was able to get a custom frame at less then the cost of a typical stock titanium frame.  The goal was pure cyclocross and single-speed from the beginning.  So, for example, horizontal fork ends were used and there is no extraneous cable routing hardware.  The crankset and BB are Campy Record.  I used road cranks with a 42 chainring on the outer position to get the proper chainline for the 135 mm spaced rear fork.  Record headset, with Deda Newton stem and handlebars.





I've tried two different style single speed hubs.  The first is a Phil Wood track hub spaced to 135 (the kiss-off should work nicely too).  With this I can use the White Industry freehub which has a cog nearly as wide as a track cog.  The other is a DT240S splined hub but with Surly cogs which are also nearly as stout as track cogs.  My experience is that road cogs are too light and 3/32 chains brake too easily.  So I only use 1/8 track chains.  You might think this wouldn't work with Record road chainrings, but it does.  Perfectly as far as I can tell.  I've never had trouble dropping chains on the Phil hub, but  I have on the DT, so to be safe, I use extra road cogs as chainguards around the cog.  You can see these in the picture.


Record brake levers work fine with the TRP Mag brakes.  The levers came without the shifters, so nothing to do but install them.  You can see the stout titanium fork from Sibex.  What you can't see from this angle is the huge mud clearance.  Even with these 34 mm Tufo flexus primus tubulars.  The front wheel here is a standard road 303.   The rear wheel is a cross version of the 303 custom drilled by Zipp for 32 hole hubs.  This wheel was built by Excel Sports in Boulder.



Looking down the San Marco Concour saddle.   Titanium is certainly not as light as carbon, and apart from the Zipps, I didn't bother too much with lightweight components.  Further, it's a fairly large frame.  I'm 1.90 m, and seat tube is 60 cm (C-T).  Still the whole thing, even with the big tufos is only slightly over 7.5 kg.  If you used lightweight components (saddle, pedals, etc) you could easily shave a few hundred grams off.  These pedals are Time atac (not the carbon ones).


FInally, here is the Phil Wood hub laced to a Mavic Reflex.  You can see the White Industries freewheel here.  The spare front wheel is an ancient Mavic SSC hub (still smooth as silk) laced to another Reflex.  This hub is the oldest component I have still in daily use.  It will likely outlast the uranium at Yucca Mountain should it ever be stored there.