As a young boy, I had posters of Lamborghinis and Ferraris on my bedroom walls. I loved the flawless aesthetics and meticulous no-expenses-spared approach to creating the ultimate machines, and these days I get the same feeling looking at titanium bikes like Wittson’s. My admiring eyes can appreciate the care and craftsmanship involved, even though I’ve never been able to experience the ride.
Wittson Custom Ti Cycles’ Vidmantas ‘Vitas’ Zukauskas has been making titanium frames since the mid 1990’s for road giants Colnago. When the company moved production to Asia, Zukauskas introduced his son into frame building and started Wittson Ti Cycles as a family operation. With a wealth of knowledge from his years of road racing and coaching, Zukauskas builds Wittson bicycles for customers worldwide.
Wittson spent the last days of winter building this mouth-watering machine for cross-country riders, simply called the Custom XC 27.5er. Check out the details of Wittson’s latest XC creation after the jump…
The Custom XC 27.5er’s frame is built from cold-worked, stress relieved grade 9 titanium tubing, which is sourced from the same Swedish supplier used by aircraft manufacturers Boeing and Airbus. Wittson uses various types of tubing suited to each frame’s purpose, and the Custom XC features a 1.5” head tube, double butted seat tube, bi-ovalized top tube, hydroformed down tube, chain- and seat stays, and dropouts (with replaceable aluminum hangers) made by Paragon in the USA. This frame is designed around Wittson’s XC race geometry, and built specifically for 1×11 gearing.
Component wise, the Custom XC comes equipped with Wittson’s full carbon 27.5” fork, an XX1 drivetrain set up with Grip Shift, Formula Rx brakes, Chris King headset, DEDA handlebars, stem and seatpost, Thompson seatpost clamp, and a Stan’s NoTubes ZTR Crest wheelset rolling on Schwalbe Thunder Burt tires.
The Custom XC also comes with some nice finishing touches like clean internal cable routing for your shifters and brakes, an Elite Custom Race bottle cage, carbon spacers, and anodized bolts. The complete bike weighs just 19.4lbs, and the frame carries a lifetime warranty. The frame comes in a brushed finish only, and the complete bike sells for approx. $5,767.00 USD.
