Shortly after writing Sunday’s post about the new Independent Fabrication Titanium Factory Lightweight, I stumbled upon the above image over on the Mega Bottle Ride blog. (Georges at MBR has a nose for aesthetic brilliance in the realm of bicycles.) And although it might seem we’re bombarding you with If-related news here at Bike Rumor, I couldn’t help but follow up with some additional intel about one of the most exciting features of the bike: the Iftop integrated seat mast clamp. The item was designed in collaboration with Aaron Panone of aarn_wrks-dsn. You may recall a highly produced promo video for the Union Foundry T-0001 Roto-Fix Tool making the rounds a few months back — that was aarn_wrks-dsn’s work as well.
Apparently the striking orange and black “Hemi-Orange” bike pictured in my previous post is referred to as the “V2.” And apparently I wasn’t quick enough to figure out that, where there’s a V2, there’s almost always a V1. The raw Ti and carbon V1, a bike described both as a “super-secret race bike” and a “space age muscle car” was actually unveiled at the Boston Handbuilt Bicycle Show in September, but I was all the way across the river in Somerville, so I didn’t hear anything about it.
Pics of the clamp, the design process, and the V1 after the break…
Unlike many seat-mast clamps, especially those involving carbon fiber, the Iftop clamp bolts are meant to be torqued to 10NM; not the paltry 4 or 5 NM of a normal post.
Some of Aaron Panone’s inspired design doodlings. For more information on the design process, check out his blog post about this project.
The raw, unfinished clamp pieces, pre-crown…waiting to get all sexy.
Hi. That’s right, I saw you checkin’ me out.
And this would be the only photo I could scrounge up of the aforementioned V1.
Above: The finished product.
Below: videos of this majestic part being machined on the 8-axis Nakmura-Tome MMY turning center
