At first glance, Ti Cycles’ booth was an amalgam of random. Each time I walked by, there was something else front and center, none of which could be confused for traditional.
Turns out, the bikes were as much a showcase of what they could build as what they could offer other builders. Ti Cycles supplies other custom builders with tubes and parts to make frames in addition to making full custom frames themselves. And some of those parts should be awfully handy, providing desired options where there’s currently very little to choose from…
This disc brake road racing trike lured us in. It’s built for speed. Scary speed if you have to turn quickly.
The front disc brakes are operated by a single lever thanks to this splitter. High end parts like Cane Creek’s carbon fiber headset, Di2 and carbon wheels live up to the titanium frame.
A simple Bell Crank steering mechanism turns the wheels, with adjustable tie rods to align them.
This touring bike had a gorgeous front and rear rack system and, despite titanium’s beauty typically being left uncovered, a very nice paint scheme.
This fast commuter used an fully enclosed, self contained e-bike motor/battery unit to speed up daily trips. As an add-on option, it’s hard to beat if you want to convert an existing bike to an e-bike.
And as standards change and your otherwise perfectly fine bike (especially if it’s a sweet custom titanium bike like this) starts to feel outdated, putting an electric assist system on it and making it your commuter breathes new life into it.
Or you could just get a sweet new ti urban cruiser. Check the handlebars, they make those, too.
OK, on to the new stuff. This looks like any other titanium cyclocross bike right?
Except it’s hiding these prototype 3D printed titanium dropouts from Reynolds (the tubing supplier, not the wheel company). That’s a big deal because unlike the small batch proprietary 3D printed dropouts from that Moots showed off, these will be available to any builder that wants a sleek option for flat mount/thru axle bikes.
Presumably, you could polish them to match the tubes, or blast the tubes to match them to the dropouts. The brakes are the upcoming TRP Spyre flat mount calipers, which join the new HyRD flat mount calipers we saw.
Up front they had a new carbon fork that marries two fresh specs – disc brakes and 12mm thru axles.
Like the dropouts, this’ll be available to anyone, and it’s one of very few full carbon forks that combine disc brake mounts, 12mm thru axle compatibility and fender mounts.
Price, weight and other specs TBD, but it’s coming.
Lastly, they had this little bit. Designed to ease rear wheel installation on belt driven bikes, here’s how it works:
Assuming your bike has Paragon Machine Works sliding dropouts (which many Gates Belt Drive bikes do), you simply put this over the bolt holes and use the extended bolts to connect them. One of the tricks with using belts is that you must have proper tension in the system for them to operate smoothly. Before, you had to pull on the wheel to get tension and then try to tighten the bolts with the other hand. With this part, you can either insert a large hex wrench or use a cone wrench on the big end, employing them as a sissy bar to tension the belt while the other hand tightens the bolts. Simple, and cheap, with expected retail under $20.
