Reportage

A Look at the Polish Framebuilders True Love Cycles and the Heart Breaker 29er Adventure Bike

Today we’re pleased to feature Warsaw, Poland-based framebuilders True Love Cycles and their Heart Breaker 29er drop-bar adventure bike. Read on below as Jan from True Love Cycles gives us all the details in both words and some lovely desert photos!

About True Love Cycles

This is Jan Lutyk from True Love Cycles. I’m a frame builder brand based in Warsaw, Poland.

It’s been a few years now since I’ve started visiting The Radavist regularly. There were many important and emotional moments and bikes that I saw here for the first time. Having mostly an Enduro racing background, some of the bikes and articles here on The Radavist have changed my understanding of the most basic and important facts about bikes.

Today is a special day for me for I am sharing the photos of the first bike we have created as True Love Cycles. One year ago, my friend Konrad Ippohorski and I started preparations to run a framebuilder bicycle company. We are both product designers.

Konrad has some engineering, framebuilding, and even a little bit of blacksmith experience! I worked as a photographer besides the design jobs so we thought we have almost all of the skills needed to make our own bike brand. One year later, the first bike is here and the other models are on the way. The base of our work is the models/geometries that we have designed to match certain riding characteristics.

There are four models: a drop-bar MTB/Adventure bike/monstercross, a gravel bike, an all-road, and a road bike. All of them have generous amounts of tire clearance as that’s the thing we care about ;)

About the Heart Breaker

The Heart Breaker is our drop-bar MTB/adventure bike. The frame has clearance for 29 x 2.4″ tires, boost axles, internal routing for a dropper post, and a suspension fork-corrected geometry. Long reach numbers and high trail make for a stable descending. The nimble steering is provided by a short 50-60mm stem. This is a bike for long days in the saddle, bikepacking journeys, or just an all-around off-road shredder.

In this build, we have used a second-hand Rock Shox RS1 fork which has been tuned to 85mm of travel and custom painted together with the frame. The sloping on the frame was a compromise between using a 100mm travel dropper post (50mm unit pictured here) and maximizing space for the frame bag. The build features carbon xc wheels with 30mm rim inner-width.

These are lightweight wheels at 1450g per set and are made by our friends from Dandy Horse Wheels, a wheel-building brand that we share our workspace with. We have a little cycle-works commune here.

I hope you enjoy the Heart Breaker!

Thank you!


Heart Breaker frames start at €1700 and have an 8-12 week lead time. See more at True Love Cycles.