14 May 2007

Alright, the new Tephra CTi has offically lept off the drawingboard and is about to become as real as the Intarweb!

Okay maybe not, coz I still have the tech drawings to do, but the customer has signed off on the final draft, the carbon is on it’s way to the carbon people, and the Ti has also been ordered and will soon be on it’s way to the Ti people. It’s weird - I kinda feel like I’m stuck in the middle between Paul MaCartney and Stevie Wonder, attempting to negotiate a good treaty between Ebony, and in this case, a kinda warmish grey.

In case you haven’t been following, here’s the abridged story. I always liked the concept of the Lemond ‘Spine Design’ bikes, except they never really looked like a carbon bike and a Ti bike fused together in passionate embrace, and of course they weren’t custom so as far as I’m concerned they were the usual pap of ‘five sizes fits nobody’. Read: Good opportunity to make a custom version of the same basic concept.

That was about six months ago, but logistics and a recalcitrant fabricator basically made that impossible.

Fastforward to circa now, and all the planets are aligned, we have a great customer who has fallen in love with the idea, so it’s full steam ahead with the project.

It’s no surprise here at Thylacine that we don’t do many roadbikes. Roadies are a fickle bunch, heavily obsessed with brand and the image amongst their peers that comes with the territory. Many of those brands are about 95 years older than us too, so you could say we’re at the ‘edgy, underdog, youthful’ end of the spectrum rather than the ‘crusty, we’ve won 40 Giro d’Italias, what have you done?’ end. No biggie - you gotta start somewhere, right?

So this is a good chance for us to put on our little roadie caps (You know, the one with the little peaks that do nothing) and really go to town.

The process started with meeting the client at John Beasley Cycles to meet John and get fitted. This was a pretty straight forward process with John putting a lot of weight on his breadth of experience rather than any rocket science, which is fine with me. Or, it could be he’s keeping the rocket part a secret, which is also fine with me. Anyway, I won’t bore everyone with the details of three bike nuts sitting around talking about bike, core stability and long femurs coz you’ve read it a million times. Bottom line - I’d recommend John for your next bike fit. He charges a reasonable amount, carries a wealth of experience, and is attentive and down-to-earth. All in all, very much a viable alternative to the eastern suburbs option.

From there I sat in front of the computer for an hour, scratched my nads for a few days, sat in front of it again, did some calculations, and came up with the geometry I think will work well for the client. So, without further ado, here’s the design of the first ever Thylacine Tephra CTi!

Posted by warwick @ 10:27 am

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