Berlin Show Bike: Letzter Teil

Okay, a day late and a Euro short; as always.  Here is the final installment about the Berlin bike.  Basically, studio photos.

Thanks to everyone that's been following and commenting on the project.  It has been gratifying and maybe it'll get me to post about some of the other projects on which we're working.

Thanks, also to everyone at Seven Cycles for pitching in to make such a fun and unusual bike.  And I mean everyone; each person at Seven had an impact on the project and helped make it what it was--directly and indirectly.

If you'd like to see some better fabrication photos, visit Matt O'Keefe's Flickr page.  It's definitely worth a long look.

Finally, thanks to Ingo Rohm who originally invited Seven to the show, and our German distributor Mario Sillack and his very capable sidekick Bea Bastian:  The Girl That Does All Things--that's what they call her.  They pulled off a few miracles.

On to the studio images:

Carbon rims:  I thought people would hate these.  But they loved them.  People seemed to get the style of motorcycle imagery.  Obviously most people wouldn't ride the bike with carbon rims but it sure does look handsome(?)

 

Fenders:  It's difficult to see the Berlin skyline in photos but in person people seemed excited about this.  And that they could actually pick out specific Berlin buildings--even on such a small canvas as the fender--Brandenburg Gate was a favorite.  The fenders, by the way, are Honjo aluminum fluted 43mm.

Rear rack:  This is a full custom titanium rack.  This is different from any other rack we've made, for two reasons: 

1. The rack bolts to the fender rather than the seat stays; this is designed for a light weight pannier.
2. The rack is offset rather than centered.  We've done this before but not to such a great extent.  We decided to design the legs to create equal slices between the seat stays and fender arms.  This worked well and put the pannier in a low mount setting--for more stability--without causing heal clearance issues.

Belt drive guard:  It's difficult to see in the photo but, again, we included the Berlin skyline on the face of the guard.

Kickstand:  This, for me, was one of the more fun aspects of the bike.  Interestingly, some people took it seriously--in a good way.  We started with a stardard double kickstand from Pletscher.  We cut the legs off and replaced them with titanium.  Then, to help the stand hold its own and stand out a bit, we painted it to match the frame.  We also made custom aluminum foot pads for the legs.  it works really well.  Skip did an amazing job getting the two legs of the stand to be parallel to each other, and to the chainstays, with the legs in the folded position.  It probably looks easy but getting two differently bent pieces of titanium to line up perfectly--and perfectly to the frame--is a testament to Skip's capabilities.

Here's the stand in its working position.  I love double kickstands.  Motorcycle-esque.

Light-stem:  This is the piece that many people seem most interested in--for good reason.  Matt and Tim did a great job taking an ugly set of sketches and turning them into a the most talked about part of the bike.

Here is one last view of it with the light working.  Both the rear and front light are fully functioning--thanks to Matt's wired bomb diffusing abilities--he figured out how to wire the entire front and rear system internally in the stem, fork, frame, and seat post.  I can't wait to have someone commute on it; I know the E3 Dynamo light Will be plenty bright. 

You might also notice that the stem says "sieben"; this is German for Seven.  Not subtle but people dug it.

Okay, that's the close of the Berlin Project Bike.  Thanks again for reading.  Stay tuned for other special projects.

If you'd like to see  a few more of the specification details--and that you can order one--check out Seven's site.

Comments

[Lisa]

You are still crazy and crazy talented. Amazing.