John Caletti had a few new models on display, but the real showstopper was his Road Race Special steel road bike custom painted by Jeremiah Kille.
The painstakingly detailed design covers everything and even extends to the helmet, shoes and another fun accessory. It’s a customer’s bike, like many of the frames at the show, so it’s not just an art piece. But it did send Caletti home with the Best Finish award. Check out all the angles, plus his new 29er, adventure and city bikes, below…
The shoes and helmet are from Giro, but the slingshot is all Caletti. After seeing some made by Hunter Cycles, he used spare titanium tubes to put a couple together. This one’s the last of them, and it’s yours for $250. He machined the ends to hold the sling, and the handle is a hollow chamber for storing ammo with a wine cork as a plug.
Road Race Special, shown here with more traditional custom paint, is his version of a crit racer. It’s stiff thanks to oversized steel tubes that are a mix of Columbus Life and True Temper S3 top and down tubes.
New Scrambler is a moto inspired town bike that’ll come in stock sizes and be more affordable than his custom bikes.
It’s set up to run single speed, internally geared or a normal 1x drivetrain. Caletti said, where possible, there’s an emphasis on US made components with stem and post from Thomson, Chris King headset and Jones Precision Wheels. The complete bikes will sell for $5,150.
His new adventure road bike in titanium fills in for a gravel bike, something almost every builder had in one incarnation or another.
It gets flat mount brakes and the ENVE GRD fork. Kille did the graphics here, too.
He’s also got a new 29er, also in ti. It’s got modern geometry with long top tube for a short stem to get proper cockpit length and a slacker head angle for 120mm fork 69°.
There’s an offset seat tube so the rear wheel can be tucked up closer, and new Paragon cable guides that mount to standard water bottle bosses placed along the downtube.
Adjustable dropouts with low mount brake so you can switch it up between geared and singlespeed. It has a 430mm actual chainstay length, effective would be a bit shorter.
Campbell Steers is the artist on this one, who created these designs with anodization. We featured Caletti’s workshop in a tour a couple years ago, but he’s just moved into a larger spot that we’ll be visiting soon for an update.
