If you enjoy lusting over custom titanium bikes, you’ve probably checked out some of our coverage of France’s Curve Bike Engineering. Previously we looked at Curve’s MKII softtail mountain bike and their 714 road bike when it was updated last fall. The company has recently created a new iteration of the 714 which they’ve dubbed the 714-C2.
The 714-C2 features some big changes, most notably the addition of a 14 speed Rohloff rear hub and Gates belt drive system. However, the shifters might be the most interesting innovation – with a bit of custom work Curve is now able to use Sram’s Rival 22 drop bar shifters to control the Rohloff hub.
This bike was originally built for a customer who’s now quietly cruising through the French and Swiss Alps, but Curve is offering two different ‘stock’ builds to anyone with the brand’s usual options for frame or component customization…
Inspired by the original 714 Ti Sport frame, the new ‘C2’ part of the name comes from the French words for belt (Courroie) and race (Course). The bike is intended for road riding, but Curve says it could easily convert to a gravel grinder with a hardier set of wheels.
As Curve is a custom operation, all frame geometry is specifically tailored to each buyer’s measurements and key fittings like dropout spacing, bottom bracket shells, head tube size, etc. are all an open book. Frame graphics and finishing details are also up to you – we can see in the photos that this customer opted for two water bottle mounts and internal cable routing.
To accommodate the internal rear hub, the C2’s rear triangle is quite different from the original 714. In addition to the CNC machined sliding dropout and frame coupling required for the belt drive setup, Curve also used different tubing for the chainstays and added reinforcements behind the BB shell.
The unique ability to shift the Rohloff’s gears with Sram’s Rival 22 drop-bar shifters was accomplished by modifying both the hub and the shifters. Because the indexing doesn’t line up on those components in stock form, Curve added a gear box made by German manufacturer GEBLA to the rear hub. The indexing and free-wheeling of the shifters was also reconfigured, and by routing the Rohloff’s push and pull cables to either side of the handlebars the rider shifts up by tapping the right lever and down with a tap of the left.
Since they wanted a high-performance wheelset built around the internal hub, Curve sought out 32 hole carbon clincher rims from France’s Corima. The clichers were then hand-laced with Sapim X-Ray spokes to an Aivee Edition One front hub and the Rohloff rear by the wheel builders at Asterion.
Other components on this build include an Enve CX Tapered Disc fork, Rotor Rex crankset driving a Gates CDX belt, Sram Rival hydraulic disc brakes grabbing Magura 160mm rotors, Fizik Cyrano aluminum cockpit components, an ENVE carbon seatpost, and Continental’s GP4000 700x28c tires. This custom build weighs in at 21.4lbs complete, and cost $7239 USD to put together.
Curve is also offering a lower-spec build of the 714-C2 with a Kinesis Tripster carbon fork, DT Swiss R460 DM rims, Sram mechanical disc brakes and Ritchey WCS aluminum components. This build will sell for $5275, give or take your custom finishing touches.
As of posting, the 714C2 is not shown online but Curve’s website is slated for an update soon, so keep an eye on it for forthcoming info and images.
