The Lightest Disc Brake Bike???

The Intro

I've always been a bit of a weight weenie and have a massive love of riding up hill and have spent the last few years participating in the UK hill climb season. As many of you will know hill climbs on a bike are a brutal affair. It's basically a lung busting individual time trial up a nominated climb. It might be 1 minute or 15minutes but either way, you know you're going deep from the start.

The hill climb scene isn't subject to the UCI minimum bike weight rules so a massive part of racing hill climbs and the scene in general is modifying your bike to be as light as is possible. This modifying used to be mainly drilling holes in stuff to remove material but now thanks to many manufacturers catering to this niche area, you can now adorn your bike with super light components to complement your handy Dremel work.

Anyhow, in this blog I'm going to tell you about a bit of bike history that led to me building up what was at the time of writing, the lightest disc brake hill climb bike in the UK... or the world???

The Build Up... keep reading

So over my hill climb years I've been through a few steeds in the quest of light. It all started when I bought my first proper bike, a Colnago Extreme C (C meaning Climber). A frame that was designed specifically for the 2004 Tour de France Alpe d'Huez time trial. A frame so good that many of the riders carried on riding it after the uphill race of truth. Now for me this bike was mega, traditional geometry which looks amazing, light (not by a hill climb standard) and stiff and just had composure and class for days. I Everested on it and even got to take it to the Alps to send it up Alpe d'Huez albeit with a broken rib. I should have never sold it but at 7.4kgs I needed something lighter.

Then, after a brief foray with an S-Works Tarmac SL5 that I just didn't enjoy I found the razer blade of road bikes. Stiff as you like and light as a feather... Drum roll please! May I introduce the beautiful Canyon Ultimate CF SLX (2014). This was the kind of bike you ride and it just feels alive under you, like a really overly energetic Border Collie pup wanting to run everywhere, or smash it up every hill in sight in this case.

The Canyon weighed in at a feathery 6.25kgs wearing my own hand-built Wheels by TC carbon wheels, Sram RED eTap groupset and carbon everything else.

After 2 x haute routes in 2019 (Dolomites and Alps) where the Canyon didn't put a foot wrong, I set about turning it into a machine even more specialised at going up hill ready for the UK hill climb season. This involved stripping off the etap front mech, fitting a lighter stem and handlebars, a carbon version of my much loved SMP saddle and some pretty sexy EE Cycleworks brake calipers. All of these changes got me under the magic 6kg mark including pedals.

Canyon V2... keep reading

So after what felt like a pretty good hill climb season I wanted lighter. I'd seen bikes at the nationals under 5kgs... an entire kilogram lighter than mine... obviously that's why the likes of Dan Evan, Ed Laverack and Andrew Feather were dropping me like a bad habit???

A friend of mine had recently sent his bike off to Fat Creations, Alister and Beckie worked wonders on his and stripped off SO much weight losing the original paint job. I love a bit of DIY so I got in touch with Alister and he very kindly offered to guide me through the process and Beckie make up the stencils for my logo.

Out came the razor blade, wet&dry and elbow grease...about a week or so later beauty emerged... 1kgs for the frame and fork!

A bit of stenciling here and spraying there and pow... this was my finished design.

I decided to swap out the electronic groupset in favour of the lighter and less problematic mechanical. The groupset was a mixture of Sram RED 10 speed and 11 speed parts paired with a 1x GARBARUK chainring and another pair of Wheels by TC lightweight clinchers. The outcome... 5.540kgs including pedals and a Wahoo mount.

As with any project, when its complete sometimes you lose the love for it because its no longer a work in progress. This bike was awesome, an absolute missile on the hills but I had to let it go.... I had bigger ideas.

The Big Idea - A Disc Brake Hill Climb Bike

You'll notice almost any really serious hill climb bike uses rim brakes. It's because both the frames and components tend to be lighter lighter... but what if someone had a crack at a disc brake hill climb bike? I know it wouldn't get down to the same crazy light weights of some of the rim brakers, but my would it be cool and possibly faster in real world situations.

I've got eyes on a strong performance in the Haute Route Dolomites 2021 and would love to have a crack at another everesting (but this time go fast) so I thought, disc brakes are the one.

So to keep it realistic, I'd have to forget about the 5kg golden weight barrier for a rim brake hill climb bike and focus my sights in on 6kgs which seems to be the equivalent for a disc bike.

The Base Bike

I promptly stripped the bike of all the components it came with - wheels, Cannondale Hollowgram SI crank, seatpost, bottom bracket etc and began building a spec.

The Rough Spec

• I knew it needed to run SRAM Red because that was the lightest but I didn't want electronic. I love the simplicity of a mechanical groupset and enjoy being able to remedy any issues that might arise myself.
• I've always loved the super light alloy SISL2 crankset so that had to go on.
• A silky smooth C-BEAR ceramic bottom bracket.
• Extralite Hyper Stems are hard to beat and look awesome.
• Lightweight carbon seatpost saved over 100grams on the stock carbon item.
• My carbon SMP saddle. Not the lightest at 130grams but my bum loves it.

The Wheelset

Which brings me neatly onto the wheels... now I've been building seriously for around 5 years and have already built some epic hoops but I wanted this set to be my finest.... boy were they that! Key requirements were:

1. Obviously lightweight, but not at the expense of usability.
2. They had to be tubeless ready clinchers because I need this bike to be completely useable and I want the self sufficiency clinchers bring even at the expense of a bit of weight.
3. I wanted an easily serviceable hub that wasn't brittle so Extralite was out.

I settled on a pair of beautiful Light Bicycle Falcon Pro AR35 rims laced to Carbon TI X-Hub SP Disc hubs with the all time favourite Sapim CX-RAY bladed spokes and SAPIM alloy nipples.

If you fancy a wheelset like this or have a dream build in mind, get in touch with Wheels by TC.

The Big Reveal - The 5.895gram Disc Brake Hill Climb Bike

So its probably time to show the bike off a bit. I'm sorry to do this to Specialized after all of the hullabaloo they made about the new Aethos that weighs in at a portly 5.9kgs and costs a frankly crazy £11k, but here goes....

My sub 5.985gram Cannondale Supersix Evo Hi-Mod Disc

So Whats Next?

The bike is AMAZING to ride, rides as well as the Canyon but the difference in braking is next level as you'd expect.

I've got some big and quite cool plans in the pipeline for this bike but they are more than deserving of another blog that will follow shortly.

Not only will this bike be one of the lightest disc brake bikes out there, its soon to be potentially the only 1x12 speed mechanical disc brake bikes in the world.... yes I know SRAM don't make one...

Thanks for reading.

Any questions about the build or wheel building please get in touch.

Thanks

Tom

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