While they built their brand on simple fixed gear and single speed bikes for cruising around the city, Berlin-based 8bar has been spreading out on the roads and trails with a their alloy Kronprinz road race bike that came to market in 2015 and now with a new affordable geared alloy bike that can take on any road surface depending on how you set it up, from asphalt to dirt, and loaded touring in between…
8bar is calling the bike the first truly convertible All-Road-Bike. And to test it out they spent some time over the winter touring the dirt roads and mountain passes of Morocco to make sure it was up to the challenge.
Its goal is to serve as a frame for any type of adventure, covering road, cyclocross and adventure touring. It gets its flexibility by changing geometry with the seasons. 8bar sees the complete bike being able to make the complete transformation in a quick reconfiguration at home.
The bike comes with two forks, and together with sliding dropouts, it is maybe just 30 minutes to jump back and forth from one mode to the other, including swapping out tires and racks as needed.
The new Mitte heads to a Kickstarter campaign now as it transitions towards production, through til March 16. Two complete disc brake builds are available: the Comp for 1800€, and the Pro for 2400€ with delivery expected in September 2016. Plus if you jump on it quick, both builds are available in very limited numbers for more than a 25% discount.
It is really worth the hassle of swapping the fork? I haven’t owned a road bike for years after I started riding cross bikes. Cross/gravel/adventure bikes handle just fine on the road with slick tires.
Totally agree!
Owning a Marin Gestallt, all i need, not really a gravel, or roadbike, but something in between, always ready, not having to swap forks, still having mounts for fenders, racks, and a lot of tire clearance
One upon a time, there was companies who told that the fixie was the best bike in the world… But now trends and hype
are moving, so fixies companies are going to propose…. road bicycles…. Hilarious!!
Since aging hipster blogger (you know the one) started riding gears all these brands that put 100% into urban fixed are now scrambling to save face.
Discs with radial lacing?
Yeah, that was the first thing I noticed too. Didn’t bother reading the rest of it…
Industry Nine makes some pretty legit disc wheels with radial lacing…
Another clueless kickstarter bike with basic errors. Inb4 prototype.
They say convertible like they know what that means.. Changing your front end out isn’t convertible anyone can do that on any bike.
Matt poloshid raw. This is the attention to detail you will get
+1
I understand that you think you’re making a joke but polished raw is one of the hardest finishes to achieve in aluminum. If you take the paint on most aluminum frames you will find some dents that were filled in with bondo and all kinds of craziness. The tubes (especially hydroformed tubes) get moved around a lot because most welding shops do not have tube forming capabilities and that causes minor non safety related damage to occur that can later be covered up with paint.
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Not a joke, just highlighting the lack of detail.
This seems like a solution looking for a problem.
How did I know this would have a Kickstarter campaign…
As they have shown the angles change, when putting in the shorter fork the rider is now titled forward probably enough that the seat angle will need readjusting, as might possibly the seat setback and handlebar height. I’d rather just have one bike with 2 sets of wheels and not get all hung up on geometry. Why bother making a frame that changes geometry if it still does not change geometry properly.