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The GR2 is the latest bike from Bend, Oregon’s Argonaut Cycles. After years of design, development, and testing, Ben and his team are finally rolling these capable models out the door. With a racing geometry, lightweight layup, and in-house paint, the GR2 is a veritable dream bike.
For Grinduro this year, Argonaut displayed this beautiful build with SRAM Red eTap, Zipp, and WTB 38mm tires.
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Follow Argonaut Cycles on Instagram and Grinduro on Instagram.
Don’t let that old saying “jack of all trades and a master of none” keep you from designing the ultimate ‘cross racing and all-road bike. Jonny from Snēk Cycling teamed up with Salt Air Cycles, his local frame builder out of Salt Lake City to do just that, a bike that can be a racehorse and an all-day dirt road bike. Check out more details at Snēk Cycling.
Whether you’re a gravel-racing lycra fiend, or a soul-rider flannel tourer, the Wilier Jena offers up frameset details and a build kit that can take what you’re willing to give it.
Second hand, custom, and larger sizes are hard to come by when it comes to a bike like this. You’ve really gotta be there at the right time, which is how John scored this sweet Moth Attack Rockin’ Road. Someone was selling it in Southern California, barely used and John jumped on it.
The beauty of a capable all-road bike is it can transport you from the inner city to more rural areas with ease and depending on the bike’s capabilities, you can ride everything from dirt roads to rugged Forest Service roads and even singletrack. In a city like Los Angeles, we’ve got a good mix of everything, and it wasn’t until I moved here that I realized this importance in a bike. For me and the kind of riding I enjoy, I prefer to be able to pedal out to the dirt from my front door.
Over the years, bikes that had only previously been available as a special order from a custom frame builder are slowly making their way into mainstream bike company’s catalogs. In that time, I’ve noticed a rather acute phenomenon, and most companies aren’t listening.
They’re not listening to what real, everyday cyclists are asking for. Who are they designing for? Who do they expect to buy their bikes? I’m not sure because I’ve seen a number of well-designed frames leave out crucial details that would make the bike from Brand X be the ultimate all-road bike, turned bikepacking bike, turned quiver killer.
Then there’s the Trek Checkpoint, which checks all the boxes, and I must say I was surprised when I saw it. After riding it on and off over the past few months, I’m finally ready to talk about this unique bike.
The Rose Bikes Backroad is a response to the consumer demands of a lightweight all-road bike. The European brand offers the Backroad in four build kits, ranging from €2,249.00 for a 105 group, to €3,199.00 for Di2.
See more at Rose Bikes. To see details and frame geometry, select a build kit on the right and scroll through.
The all new Cannondale Topstone is the most ambitious all-road, all-day, all-over the damn place bike they’ve designed to date. Discover it for yourself at Cannondale.
Kinesis’ new GTD is a titanium all-road bike designed to Go the Distance. Check out more specs and information at Kinesis.
The bike industry moves in cycles, what’s old is oftentimes presented as new. These throwbacks are maddening for old timers, but can be exciting for newer cyclists. It wasn’t long ago that Tomac made waves in mountain bike races with his unique style: drop bars on an mountain bike. Over the past few years, we’ve seen a number of drop bar bikes with front suspension forks and now, it’s Bombtrack’s turn to throw their cap in the ring. The Hook ADV utilizes 40mm of front suspension from MRP, paired with a dropper post from KS to liven up your dirt road or singletrack rides.
The Hook ADV will land between end of September and end of October 2018. Contact your local Bombtrack dealer or distributor for more information and see more photos below.
Last Sunday brought about the LA Handmade Bike Show and in attendance was LA’s newest frame builder, Carlos from Dark Moon Fab. Along with a hardtail similar to Jimmy’s, and a few road bikes was this all-road featuring the Fox AX “all road” fork. The aluminum frame’s geometry is tuned to run the AX fork, which will offer more compliance when the going gets rough and eat up some of the stiffness aluminum tubesets provide. Stiffness that might be desirable on a road or track racing machine, but might beat you up a bit on rough and rugged roads.
The paint is in actuality cerakote, a ceramic coating that goes on much like paint, but offers a more durable finish than a matte, flat, or semi-gloss wetpaint. Carlos masked off a desert landscape as well as Dark Moon’s branding in the material, making for one slick bike.
Have you ridden the AX fork? What are your thoughts? Share them in the comments!
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Follow Dark Moon Fab on Instagram.
With two models, the Libre DL and Libre, Kona has released their most accomplished all-road bike to date. Both models feature carbon frames with adjusted build kits and are priced at $3,999 and $2,999 respectively. Head to Kona for more, your local dealer to check one out in person, and see the tech details in the above video.
If you look for information on Blue Collar Bikes on the internet, ya won’t find much. Robert Ives likes it that way. He builds bikes, enough to pay his mortgage, and lives a fine life in Sacramento, where he’s been building Blue Collars since 1998. Robert came from Ventana before branching out on his own, where he builds steel bikes, made to take a beating, with the flashiest thing on them being that fancy head badge. I look forward to the Sierra Buttes Trail Stewardship events because I know someone will have a Blue Collar.
This trip, it was Darren, a good friend of Robert and Paul from Paul Components. Darren began building this frame in Robert’s shop one day and left it incomplete. As he got busy with life, little did he know, Robert was slowly completing this frame. At last year’s Grinduro, Robert handed it over to Darren, who’s been riding it ever since.
After we took on the Classic Downhill shuttle, I grabbed this bike, a Nigel XL, to shoot it behind the Downieville Hardware store. Ya don’t get more Blue Collar than that! If you’d like to read more about Robert Ives’ career and life for that matter, head to Dirt Rag, for a damn interesting read! Check out Blue Collar on Facebook too.
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Follow Blue Collar on Instagram and follow Darren on Instagram.
Well, that’s one way to break in your new Orange all-road bike!
This build, like many that arrive as a box of parts and roll out the door of Golden Saddle a beautiful, functional completes, is just filled with great details and components but the thing that ties it all together is the fork. The fork was made by our friend Carlos, aka Weld Street Loco / Dark Moon Fab Works. Carlos lives in Los Angeles, where ha has worked for numerous fabrication companies over the years, before switching to work full-time on frames for Aaron Stinner, and finally, setting up his own shop. Andrew wanted a steel fork for his steel Fairdale Rockitship and Carlos built one to the same spec as the stock fork, but with a few added bits of functionality. He was planning on building it up as a chubby road bike but equipped for light touring and bikepacking. Hence for the need to have bosses on the fork to carry a rack or cargo cages.
The rest of the component selection is on-par with a lot of builds rolling out of GSC’s doors. Not because of the trend but because these are made by people like you and me, who really love bicycles. They love them so much that they want to make the best parts to their abilities, right here in the USA. … and Japan!
Andrew plans on taking on the Oregon Outback route this fall, so wish him luck!
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If you want a custom build like this and live in Los Angeles, hit up Golden Saddle Cyclery.
With the popularity of all-road, light tourers, and other drop bar bikes, it seems the design features once only found on bikes like Salsa and Surly, has trickled to the larger brands. The latest to throw their cap in the ring is BMC, with their Roadmachine X all-road. BMC’s distinguishable profile is applied to a do-it-all drop bar bike, with extra braze-ons for racks and fenders. See more at BMC!
What the Thunderhawk is proving is not necessarily a new concept; the idea that one frame can be mated with various wheel and tire combinations, depending on its intended use, but what it offers is a big bang for your buck ratio with a well-executed and planned titanium chassis.
The Thunderhawk is made from 3AL-2.5V double-butted titanium, with a 6AL-4V billet head tube, bb, dropouts, derailleur hanger, and chainstay yoke. It utilizes a 142x12mm thru-axle, fits up to a 700x46c (29×1.8) or 650x60c (27.5×2.4) tire, with 3 bottle cage mounts, rack and fender mounts, post mount 160mm brakes, with a hassle-free, full-external cable routing. With the plate yoke design, it will fit a maximum 53t 1x ring or a double with a 36/52t setup.
Call it a quiver killer, or whatever you’d like, the Thunderhawk checks a lot of boxes and comes complete with a Rival One kit for $3750 or a Force One kit for $5500.
See more at Bearclaw Bicycle Co.
At the Chris King Swarm event in Bend, the brand compiled a short list of builders who would display various kinds of bikes, built up with components fabricated in their Portland facilities. We’ll start off the showcase with this beautiful Doppo All Road.
Nagoya, Japan’s Sim Works has been making moves to open a base in the USA. Located in Portland – actually in the Chris King factory – Rie Sawada has been working on increasing the stock and inventory for this brand that sells products exclusively made in Japan by Nitto, Panaracer, and Honjo, the powerhouses of Japanese component manufacturing. When it came to bikes, however, Sim Works has been sampling builders to make their Doppo model. Initially, we saw a Made in Japan Doppo touring bike a few years back, so I was surprised to see a Doppo at the event this weekend. Especially one made from aluminum and in the USA!
Oscar from Simple Bicycle Co has been building frames for over a decade and in that time, he’s moonlighted as a behind the scenes fabricator for many brands featured on this site. His talents lie in anything metallic, ranging from titanium to aluminum, and dirt jumpers to all-roads. When Cielo closed their doors last year – where he built full-time for the brand – Oscar pursued more of his own projects, including two bikes we’ll be looking at in detail here at the site.
The resulting bike features clearance for a massive tire, while maintaining a road q-factor and chain line, allowing for the rider to choose a 700c or 650b wheel. For the Swarm, Sim Works built this bike to spec with many of their own parts, resulting in a largely made in Japan kit, on a MUSA frame.
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Follow Chris King on Instagram, follow Sim Works USA on Insgram, follow Simple Bicycle Co on Instagram, and follow Crow’s Feet Commons on Instagram.
The 2017 NAHBS coincided with the 25th anniversary of Sycip Designs. Jeremy knew he had to do something special for the showcase, so in the spirit of Sycip number one, which we saw in detail yesterday, he pinged his brother Jay Sycip, who works at Chris King, to come down to Santa Rosa and do something special…
