Rob English’s new bike

Rob English is not just a talented framebuilder, but also a top-class rider and racer. He recently built this bike for himself. Even though the bike is a superlight racer, it rolls on (extralight) 700C x 32 mm Stampede Pass tires – a sign how far racing bikes have come.

The frame features many of English’s signature touches. For the down- and top tube, as well as the chainstays, Rob used our Kaisei tubes, because they are lighter than anything else he could find.

A neat touch is the upside-down stem: Rather than clamp the stem to the top of a steerer tube that is attached to the fork, the fork clamps to the bottom of the steerer tube that is part of the stem.

Equipped with a range of ultralight parts, the entire bike weighs just 7.0 kg (15.5 lb) complete. Rob wrote a fun story about his bike and its (tongue-in-cheek) 622 mm disc brake rotors on cyclingtips.com.