It’s hard to stay on top of all the innovations the bike industry serves up. We are under constant pressure to integrate new developments, such as tapered steerer forks, or disc brakes for cross and road bikes. Not every idea that makes it to market really serves the rider though, and as a custom builder we have to pick and choose the trends we think have legs, the ones really worth pursuing.

Staying current, for us, isn’t always about offering the flavor of the month, even though some of those flavors are good. It’s about finding the sweet spot between classic and modern, identifying the trends that really enhance the riding experience. We have never wanted to be a retro bike builder, applying old techniques to old materials as a sort of homage to what bikes once were. Neither do we want to chase every new idea and try to convince people we’re reinventing two wheels.

To us, being current means using the best materials and techniques to build bikes that people love to ride.

We wrote about steel the other day, and how the accepted wisdom regarding steel tube sets simply doesn’t match the reality. Today, we want to address titanium. Interestingly, while riders have believed for years that the type of steel a frame is made from is supremely important (we agree), they have simultaneously assumed that titanium is just titanium, that it’s all the same.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

Seven uses mainly US-milled, Cold Worked – Stress Relieved (CWSR) titanium in our custom frames. We do that because no other titanium available today has a longer fatigue life or higher tensile strength. We know that’s true because we have a fatigue tester here in our shop and regularly submit tubes to rigorous testing. Pushing materials to their breaking point is a great way of finding out how good they are, and our research indicates that the titanium we source is the strongest available and maintains that strength over significantly longer periods than the titanium available from mills in Asia.

We always want to use the best materials, because we want to build the best bikes, but we also have a commitment to lifetime warranties that prevents us from cutting corners with lower quality products. When  you buy a custom Seven, you put your faith in us to produce a bike that will fit like a glove, corner on rails and last forever. American CWSR titanium allows us to repay your faith with a frame of uncompromising quality.

A few weeks ago, Mo Bruno Roy returned her original Mudhoney PRO prototype. Affectionately called the Mo Honey PRO, that bike was the test case for the bike that became the production Mudhoney PRO, the bike that customers all over the world have ridden over the last season. Mo’s original was put together with hand cut and filed lugs, and she raced it hard this season so we could know more about our basic design assumptions, and to gather experiential data for the second iteration, Mo Pro 2.0, of this race-specific machine.

During our debrief with her, and with her mechanic/husband Matt Roy, we noted a few big, necessary changes. First, Mo wanted to change her riding position. She wanted to come forward, and up a little. To do that, she needed to make some component changes, and to maintain the handling she prefers after those changes, we needed to adjust the geometry. Easy enough.

Next, she wanted more tire clearance at the chain and seat stays. The original prototype was built with tight tolerances for racing, but we learned that just a little more mud clearance would be better. That presented a unique challenge, because Mo’s frame is small. In order to get the clearance she wanted, we experimented with a single-bend, butted seat stay designed specifically for carbon bonding. That little bit of bend gave us just what we were looking for, and it represented a step forward for the super thin stays we’ve been working with for Mo’s race bikes. The complimentary chain stays required 20 separate operations in initial machining. This is serious stuff.

In the past, we’ve built bikes for Mo that could be adapted to multiple purposes. A little attention from her pro mechanic husband would convert one of her race rigs for road training. Not this bike. Mo runs a somewhat unique crank set with 34/44 chain rings, and her seat/chain stays are optimized to work only with those rings, coupled with a 32mm tire. This is as race specific as a bike gets. It’s a bike for now, for winning races.

We opted to build for cantilever brakes, too, but only because race ready, drop bar, hydraulic disc brakes aren’t quite ready yet. Again, we wanted to build her the optimal race bike for right now, not a bike with compromises for future adaptation.

The final design hurdle we chose to address was toe overlap. Conventionally, a frame this small would have some overlap, and through the years, this was always something Mo was comfortable with, even though we offered to do away with it for her. This time out, we made some adjustments to the geometry to eliminate it, and that gives her more confidence in the technical sections of the cyclocross courses this bike was meant to destroy.

A lot of work went into pre-build design on the Mo Pro 2.0, and that led to a marathon build session that lasted long into the Friday night before Mo’s first race on it, on the Saturday. Seven Production Manager Matt O’Keefe did the final machining on this one himself, before handing it off to Staci for the rock star decal treatment.

As ever, our sponsorships are aimed at exactly this sort of collaboration. We built the original bikes to prove a concept we wanted to bring into production. After building the first generation prototypes, we then designed all the fixturing we would need to do the same design for customer bikes. In turn, the fixturing informed the accuracy and evolution of the second generation bike, which taught us about new ways to manipulate thin stays for small builds. It’s this thread that connects all our design and build work and allows everything to move forward, and to be able to pursue that thread with the input and participation of pros like Mo and Matt makes bike building fun. It reminds us why we do this.

Another solid reminder came in a Christmas tin a few days later. Her feedback on the bike itself is exactly what we wanted to hear, that it combines the best of her first Seven race bike and the first generation Mo Honey PRO. That confirms that we’re listening, and without listening you can’t build great custom bikes. It doesn’t matter whether you’re building for a pro like Mo or someone who will never race a day in their lives. The process is the same. Listen to what the rider wants. Apply everything you learn to everything new you want to do. Keep building. Keep iterating. Occasionally, just occasionally, stop to eat the cookies.

Matt made a cool time lapse video of the build that you can see here. And we were also fortunate to catch the eye of the Velo News staff at our very first race. Emily Zinn did a photo gallery of the project for their site here.

When you build prototypes you expect to see them again. As the first iteration of an idea, they are the canaries in the mine of innovation, and, if all goes well, when they return they bring back a load of valuable information with them. We now have Mo Bruno Roy’s elite race bikes back after they’ve been flogged hard on mud, grass and sand the world over. One is her Mudhoney SLX . The other is her Mudhoney PRO, known as the Mo Honey PRO when we first built it. Now we’ve done a debrief on what worked and what could have been better, and, as always, it’s time to get back to work.

Mudhoney PRO in the prototype phase

If you’ve ever been over your handlebars into a sand pit, you know that the forces that come to bear on a cyclocross bike can be both unexpected and catastrophic.  You also know that trying to get all that sand out of your mouth is much more complicated than simply swishing some post-race beer around and then spitting, like you were at the outdoor dentist.

Because of the big hits a typical CX race bike takes, we think that a pure carbon frame is the wrong tool for the job.  There simply isn’t enough forgiveness in that material to justify the weight savings you would get over a metal bike.  That doesn’t mean carbon fiber has no place on the course though.

Carbon fiber is good at two things. First, it eats high-frequency vibration better than metal, so having some carbon in your CX frame is good when you’re flying over grass or even grinding a big gear on a paved section. You’ll be smoother and get better power transfer.  The other thing carbon fiber is good at is being light.  Light can be good when you’re racing, right?

But it’s not everything.

Metal is good at some things, too.  Titanium, for example, will give a frame a suppleness and a maneuverability that an all-carbon fiber frame doesn’t have.  In the technical section of any course, in the switchbacks or in the mud, titanium will give you the ability to use your whole body to steer with.   A titanium drive train will be easier to power in chattery sections than a carbon one.  Sometimes a little flex is a good thing.

At Seven, we have the ability to build an all-carbon cyclocross racer and make it every bit as customizable as any of the other bikes we build.  When we set out to expand our cross line though, an all-carbon bike never even crossed our minds.  Instead we built the machine that would come to be known as the Mudhoney PRO.

The 2012 Mudhoney PRO

The Mudhoney PRO aspires to wring every last advantage out of the two materials in its design.  The carbon fiber top, seat, head, and down tubes form a light triangle.  Matching seat stays settle your saddle.  By putting titanium lugs and chainstays into the mix, we get suppleness where we want it, plus added durability.  A titanium drive train will improve tracking and traction; it will hold the ground better than a carbon one, especially in the more technical sections.

Marrying materials in this way isn’t easy; it takes advanced bonding techniques to gain all these advantages and still be able to offer a lifetime warranty.  Luckily, we’ve been mixing titanium and carbon since 1997.

We can’t guarantee you won’t go over the bars of the Mudhoney PRO.  When it comes right down to it, sand is unpredictable, and we could all use more practice carrying momentum from the fast parts of the course into the technical sections.  What we will say is that you won’t find a cross racer that tracks truer and holds the ground better.  And there’s always that post race beer to look forward to.

First Place Wins Pie!

Wow.  Wow.  And wow.  Andrea Smith and her Ladies First Racing team are cleaning up the New England cross series this season.   Ladies First swept the podium at this past weekend’s Down East Cyclocross Race in Maine.  We couldn’t be more proud of Andrea and honored that she chooses to race on a custom Seven Mudhoney.

Meanwhile just back from the Czech Republic, Seven Cycles sponsored rider and close friend Mo Bruno Roy has been sampling the mud on the World Cup circuit.  20th in Plzen last weekend, she inched up to 18th in Tabor this weekend: both solid results walking off the plane from her tune-up here in New England and into a field jam-packed with pros.  Mo is riding her brand new prototype Seven cross bike on this European tour, and we can’t wait to get her feedback.  Stay tuned.

Photos Courtesy of Matt O'Keefe; Collage Courtesy of Matt Roy

We recently unveiled our latest cross bike – lovingly and tongue-in-cheekingly dubbed the “Mo-Honey”; stay tuned for the actual name.   Seven racer Mo Bruno Roy is currently testing the pre-production bike and providing feedback on ride characteristics.

This cross project came together out of three distinct and disparate projects.  Initially the venture started surreptitiously two years ago in part as a product of the Seven Cycles Collaborative.  The design also evolved from specific aspects of our Elium SLX line, and the project even includes some of the best elements of the A6 carbon frame platform.  We chose to create this bike because of our track record with the carbon tube design and ride performance on the Elium SLX, knowing we’d be able to make our lightest bike yet, while maintaining the durability for which Seven carbon frames are known.

As with the Elium line, the titanium lugs enable us to easily accommodate any frame geometry, tube size, ride characteristics, and frame options.  Mo’s cross frame is a testament to this – her bike includes many of the custom aspects and features available on any other Seven model.

Recently, this bike was accused of being our “most artistic frame” yet.  We definitely agree.  This new model is the lightest, most technically sophisticated, and visually stimulating frame we have in our line.

The frame price is $4,995; this includes full customization.  All the tubes are carbon except the chainstays and bottom brackets, which are titanium.

In addition to the cross bikes, first production road bikes will be available mid-November.  Contact us for more details.

Thanks to Matt Roy of MM Racing for putting together this photo collage the bike with photos by Seven’s Matt O’Keefe.

Keep your eyes out for Mo on the race course and other rides on some stealthy looking Seven road bikes.

Mary McConneloug's Race Bike

We had another visit last week from Mary and Mike!  Last time they visited we made some progress on mountain bike R&D for the 2012 season.  During this visit we’ve added some cross bikes, too.  This is a project that’s similar in some ways to what we’re working on with Mo Bruno!  So many prototypes happening at once.  At the moment we’ve got 12 prototype and pre-production bikes happening simultaneously -  it’s that time of year.  Stay tuned for photo glimpses – and keep an eye on Starcrossed for spy photos soon. (more…)