If you’re gonna build from scratch a bike that can “do it all”, you may as well design it so the geometry is right for “all” as well. And that was the concept behind Liebo Bicycle’s Kitchunsync road bike, a project that was four years in the making. Blending capabilities for road, cyclocross and gravel into a single bike is a concept that’s gaining ground, but this one allows you to adjust the head angle and wheelbase depending on what sort of ride you’re after. With clever (and perhaps the first) use of a Cane Creek Angleset headset on a road bike, builder Dave Lieberman found other clever ways to get what he wanted…
The Angleset allows for angle adjustments of +/- 0.5, 1.0 and 1.5 degrees, plus the center 0º setting, which totals a massive 6º swing. Lieberman suggests only a couple of angles for most uses, but the freedom to experiment is there. On the ground, that equates to a 3.5cm range of wheel movement.
At the other end of the bike are sliding dropouts, which provide another 2.2cm of wheelbase adjustment. Chainstay length floats from roughly 410mm to 430mm. The most impressive part of it all? You can fit a 700×35 tire in there in all of the positions and angles, or a 32mm tire with fenders. Rack and fender mounts are in place for light touring as well.
Helping make all this possible are FSA’s BB386 EVO cranksets. Because they have a wider spindle, they keep the chainline correct with the wider rear end that disc brake hubs use. And since they use a wider BB shell, the chainstays can be pushed farther apart to allow for better tire clearance without running into the chainrings. Perhaps it wasn’t such a silly idea after all.
Click the image to enlarge their flyer for more details on the build. LieboBicycles.com
