How’s this for a nice twist…someone’s actually outsourcing manufacturing TO the United States. Ragley, a UK brand by frame designer Brant Richards, is having the titanium, rigid-fork-specific 29er bike built by Lynskey Performance in Tennessee, U.S. of A.
Designed to work with a 440mm fork, which is standard sizing for 26″ wheels, the bike will put the rider in a lower, racier position. The geometry pretty much rules out putting a suspension fork on there, and standard rigid 29er forks with 470 to 490mm heights would kill the handling, too.
The frame features Lynskey’s sliding dropouts, a bent seat tube and horizontally ovalized top tube. Look for it to come through Hotlines in the UK for about £1,200 (which, as Ragley puts it so eloquently on their blog, could vary depending on when they order and when Hotlines orders, thanks to the exchange rate…which, BTW, sucks for the $$).
