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Prestige Cycles, the boutique bike store in Hove truly, have simply began importing Mosaic frames into the UK and they’ve let street.cc have this RT-1 to have a go on. Who are Mosaic we hear you ponder, if you can really hear a ponder.

Mosaic hand crafted bicycles come from Boulder, Colorado within the U.S.A. and were started by Aaron Barcheck. Aaron worked for Dean Titanium Bicycles for seven years where he rose to grow to be head builder and welder with over 500 Ti and steel frames under his torch earlier than breaking away to kind Mosaic in 2009. You won't have heard of Dean frames but that they had fairly the select following in mountainbike circles again in the day when titanium was the frame materials of selection and so they actually had a reputation for quality.

You'll be able to have your Mosaic body in titanium sheet or steel, and they’ll construct you a monitor, street, cyclo-cross, gravel racer or mountainbike out of it. The RT-1 here is their high-of-the road Ti body, made from custom butted measurement particular 3/2.5 titanium tubes to your custom geometry. The RT-1 body on its own prices £2,550, the straight gauge Ti tubed RT-2 is £300 much less spendy, and if that’s nonetheless too rich in your blood you will get a true Temper S3 steel road body for £1,400.

This RT-1 body has been constructed up by Prestige Cycles with quite the bling equipment as a £2.5K frameset may warrant. Full Campagnolo Record 11 groupset, Reynolds 72 Aero clincher wheels and Continental GP 4000 tyres, ENVE tapered fork, Thomson bars, stem and seatpost, wiki.elte-dh.hu topped with a Fizik Kurve saddle. All that finery brings the overall price for this bike as much as a healthy £7,590, at a weight of 7.57kg (16lbs 11oz) which is respectable for a non-carbon machine, clearly you'll be able to opt for a less expensive creation, or extra, as your wallet and wishes see match. For those who wished a cheaper build for example Prestige Cycles could supply an eleven speed Athena, Mavic Cosmic Elite, Easton EC70 bar and Prologo Naga EVO saddle machine that may convey the value down to a meagre £4,999.

As it’s a customized body you'll be able to have something you like completed to it; internal brake and shift cable routing, EPS inside routing, disc brake mounts, seat mast or seat submit, even S&S Couplings, and custom paint as you’d anticipate. To ensure your Mosaic fits you completely Prestige Cycles supply a BikeFit service, titanium rod a 2 hour session working in direction of getting a customized match to optimise your energy, efficiency and consolation.

Titanium was the poster boy for frame supplies a couple of years again when its comparative gentle weight and oft lauded springy journey made it the go-to materials for prime-end frames, then carbon came along and knocked it off its perch, but it’s still a viable body materials. Its inherent qualities make for titanium forging a snug bike body: it’s durable, resisting the dents and knocks of day to day life higher than other materials, and in a crash state of affairs is likely to outlive better than others. It’s straightforward to cut the tubes to custom sizes, and might nonetheless be built up competitively gentle, it’s corrosion-resistant so it doesn’t need to have a protecting layer of paint over it, and it scrubs up nicely so will look good for years to return. All qualities that some riders look for, meaning there are nonetheless firms specialising in titanium bike frames.

A fast finger trace over the frame reveals there’s not much in the way of tube manipulation, which seems odd in these occasions of every little thing being bent, squashed or bulging indirectly or other, and what there may be is extremely subtle, although a lot of the tubes do look slightly oversized to what you’d count on a titanium tube to be. The 44mm headtube flares out ever so barely and very elegantly on the ends to accommodate the Chris King headset, the fats chainstays curve out from the bottom-bracket and the seatstays are elegantly tapered however that’s about it, unwonkified double-butted tubes rule.

Those tubes are joined together with incredibly neat fish-scale welds, it’s rare to make use of the phrase ‘craft’ when talking about bikes these days but the Mosaic has it dripping all over. All the body is clean, tidy and beautifully executed. The highest-tube is barely sloping, with the rear brake cable internally routed by way of it, whereas the gear cables are directed extra traditionally externally via the down tube and minimalist stops. Emerging from the oversized backside-bracket shell the chainstays are chunky, for better power switch, whilst in stark distinction those tapered seatstays are pencil skinny, presumably to provide a little little bit of compliance to the rear-finish, and useless straight with not curves of wiggles in them, as is the same old trend. They meet up at deep-cowled dropouts to supply both a full weld area to the tubes and stiffness to the rear end.

Although there may be the choice for a customized paint job this frame oozes class with nothing as widespread as paint or stickers hiding its panache, all graphics, what there are of them, are polished and reversed out of a bead-blasted frame. Stylish eh? The down-tube graphic isn’t a repeated logo down every facet, it’s only a single shiny ‘Mosaic’ brand along the top of the tube and the one other adornments are a "R-Series" graphic on the seat tube and high of the seat-stay. The headbadge is an intricately formed piece of stainless steel. On appears alone I like, let's hope it rides as beautifully.