Wednesday, September 25, 2013

Bike Friday Blue color options

The above bike is 2-color Ink Black (Gloss) and Sky Blue Sparkle. Sky Blue Sparkle is $100 extra on pocket bikes like the Tourist, Llama, Rocket and is a nice semi-metallic baby blue. With the black it really looks good. This bike has Black cables, but I've seen it with yellow, gray, white and green and all of these work well.
Here's a great example of a two-color Tikit with Sky Blue Sparkle, Premium White and black cables/decals. Love the white painted rack! Too bad you can't get white tires any more! This paint job would be $250 on a Tikit or $200 on a Pocket bike like a Tourist, Llama or Rocket.

In the foreground, Leo Blue Cobalt, on the right with green handlebar is the Midnight Blue, in the background on the Tikit is the Cream Soda Blue.
Here's a closeup of the Cream Soda Blue showing the excellent look of the paint in outdoor conditions. Indoor this color is somewhat muted and dull, but outside it looks FANTASTIC!

The Leo Blue Cobalt is a combination of Sugar Grape Purple with all of its fantastic metallic flakes and a sapphire blue overcoat. This produces an extremely deep, active paint color. This color is $250 extra on pocket bikes like the Tourist, Crusoe, Llama, Rocket.

This is a close-up of a Midnight Blue bike. Midnight is a similar 2-color paint using Black Diamond overpainted with Sapphire Blue. The Black Diamond paint also has an active metallic flake look so the paint has a very nice depth to it. The sapphire overcoat produces a nice even blue color that looks great in all lighting situations. This color is also a $250 additional fee.
The bike in the forground is my son's bike. Sapphire Blue. This color is really fantastic and though my bike (white in the background) costs over 3x more expensive than my son's and my special 2-color paint job cost more as well... I have to say that I'm a bit jealous of his paint job. I love the Sapphire. In some lights it looks nearly purple, in others a bright cyan.  Awesome is all I can say!  Sapphire also costs an additional $250.
Here's a closeup of a Sapphire Blue tandem in the flourescent lights of the shop just finishing up assembly. This was literally the best-looking tandem I've seen. And I've seen a lot of them. Love that color!

Check out this awesome 2-tone one of my customers ordered. The front 1/2 of the bike (fork, steering tube, monotube) is Sapphire Blue, the rear triangle and seat mast is Midnight Blue. It looks really awesome. All it needs now is the natural leather grip tape on the handlebars to really finish it up well!

Tuesday, September 24, 2013

Bike Friday Handlebars Options

I regularly am asked to send email photos of a photo of our different handlebar options so I thought it might be prudent to upload several of them here so we could just send a link.

This photo shows the top down version of the H-Bar with Trigger shifter and V-brake levers.

Here's a photo from the side showing the bar end of an H-bar.

This is a photo of the NWR Flat Bar Road which is a variant of the H-bar with a slight upward bend at the end of the bar. We often use a reverse brake lever common on Triathlon bikes here. These levers are road-pull so we then need to use Mini-V brake calipers to work. This photo shows a trigger shifter on the bottom end (Alan's Knuckle shifters), but we regularly mount a bar-end shifter to the end closest to the rider (right).

Here's a side-view of the NWR Flat Bar Road showing the upward bend. We also make another variant which sweeps upward much more dramatically (STI Touring bar) and allows you to mount an STI lever like Shimano Ultegra integrated levers. This bar will not allow that type.
This shows the NWR bar with the more typical bar end shifter. If the bike is a single-chainring front, the left side bar end is an excellent place for a mirror.

This is a common upgrade to a flat handlebar. This particular grip style is made by Ergon bikes and is their model GP-3 which includes a lock-on style grip (bolt on) and a bar end that is ergonomically designed for comfort. These come in two diameters, small or large and run from $32 to 60-ish cost-wise.

Standard 5-degree flat handlebar. Works fine for most casual use riding. This particular bar is mounted by the use of a Quill stem which allows adjustment up and down. We do this type of stem on the Companion and OSATA models for 2014.


This is a great comparison between the STI touring bars (left) and the NWR Flat Road bars (right). The STI bar has a much more pronounced upsweep.

This photo shows the STI Touring bar with a bar end and reverse brake levers. We commonly use Shimano or Sram integrated brake/shift levers on this type of bar as an alternative to Drop Bars.

Here's a photo of a drop bar with Shimano Tiagra integrated shift/brake lever (STI).