At this point, Fair Wheel Bikes’ custom builds should need no introduction. The small outfit out of Tuscon, Arizona is one of the go-to local bike shops for service and high end bikes, but they also put together some incredible custom builds. Builds that often challenge for the title of “world’s lightest”. For their latest build, Jason Woznick of Fair Wheel Bikes says that they didn’t set out with the goal of building the world’s lightest disc brake road bike, rather they simply wanted to build a race worthy bike that also happened to be light. Very light.
Starting with the Factor O2 Disc fuselage in a 52cm Stealth Black finish, the frameset includes a number of parts – which were mostly swapped out in favor of even lighter pieces. Actual weight on the frame came out to be 853.2g. Not bad for a disc brake bike.
In typical Fairwheel fashion, the build includes exotic speed parts from Thm, Schmolke, Carbon-Ti, Tune, Extralite, Pillar, and more. But key to the build is that none of the parts are so light that they can’t be trusted for race use. In fact, Fairwheel says that they could drop another 340g from the build with parts they have on hand, but instead opted for trusted parts.
For the shifters and derailleurs, the bike uses a mostly stock SRAM Red eTap set up. The only modification is the addition of Extralite derailleur pulleys to the back. The crank definitely not stock, and a THM Clavicula SE with Carbon-Ti chainrings and KCNC SL chainring bolts.
The brake calipers are standard SRAM Red, though Ashima Ai2 160mm rotors were used with Rainbow ti bolts.
Add in a custom set of wheels made from FSE tubular 25mm rims, Extralite SPD road disc hubs, Pillar Xtra Titanium spokes, alloy nipples, and Vittoria Corsa Speed Graphene tires in 23mm, and you have the complete build – just 5.092kg (11.2 lbs). As mentioned, Fairwheel has done the math with parts available and they could get it down to 4.76kg if they really wanted to. So while they may not have been intentionally going after the world’s lightest disc brake road bike build, that may be what they just built.
For the play by play of the build process, check out the Fair Wheel Bikes blog at the link below.
