- MOE’S 650b DISC BRAKE ROAD BIKE -

The last bike of the decade; and quite possibly my favourite, was Moe’s 650b, disc brake, Di2 road bike. This bike is the epitome of custom road bicycles. Moe is well under 5ft, but she’s also very flexibile and when it came to the frame design this made things a little tricky and made me have to think outside the box.

Naturally, the design started with 700c wheels, but once I got to the point of the head tube length to achieve the optimal handlebar drop, the issues became apparent. Basically, with 700c, we just about ran out of head tube. However, finding a carbon flat mount disc fork for a 650b wheel size was impossible and with a 700c fork would have still meant we wouldn’t get the desired handlebar drop without a hideously small head tube. In the end, I designed a 650b steel disc fork and built it myself. As far as I know, it’s the very first flat mount steel road fork, and certainly the first 650b specific one. It has thru-axle dropouts and custom machined brake mounts and is built with specific disc brake blades using traditional frame building methods.

Another thing I came up against with the short head tube was the headset bearings. I would normally use a Chris King headset, but I didn’t like the way the bike looked with a compound mitre between the top and down tube, so I decided to scrap the idea of a traditional headset and build the frame with built in internal headset cups.

The paint was designed based on an image of a room by interior design firm, 2LG Studio. Because of the light soft colours, it meant thinking outside of the box for the paint too and figuring out a way to make the letters show up without using a garish colour or anything too dark. Jack used silver leaf to keep it subtle, but due to the reflective nature of the metal, it really catches the light and has a really nice contrast against the paint, without being obnoxious.

Moe and her husband came up to collect the bike the first weekend of 2020, so we headed out for an hour or so’s ride and it’s safe to say she is over the moon with the result. It was so nice to see her looking at one with her bike after a life time of bikes feeling and looking much too big for her, or having to be built up in ways that look very out of proportion. Hopefully this bike will give her a completely new cycling potential and I can’t wait to hear where it takes her.