NAHBS 2013: Kent Eriksen Cycles w/ New Mountain & Road Builds
With a base in Steamboat Springs Colorado, Kent Eriksen didn’t have to travel too far for this year’s NAHBS. They brought a few show bikes to the table and, as always, color-coded them with some anodized flare.
This year they introduced a fresh full suspension build. They built it for the show as 650b, but it’ll scale for both 26″ and 29″. As is, it gets 90mm of travel paired with a 120mm travel Magura fork. Purple anodized components are throughout along with a Shimano XTR groupset, and an ENVE wheelset. Pricing for the frame is $5700.
More info on this build along with a lefty build and a Eriksen’s Ti road bike after the break…
The rear triangle is all titanium. They’ll accommodate both a thru axle and quick release on custom models.
Yoke and shock mounts are cut with water jets and the main pivot is mounted to sealed cartridge bearings on a 20mm diameter axle. To the right is the shock mount for the top tube. It conjoins with another anodized pivot for the rear triangle.
A purple Chris King headset matches some Chris King hubs.
Machine work for the axle’s rear swing link was done in Fort Collins, CO along with the bike’s top tube shock mount.
They’ve been making excellent seatposts for a while in 27.2 and 30.9 widths. Seatposts are available with hardware in many anodized colors in both standard and layback. 27.2 gets a 20mm layback and 30.9 gets a 14 mm layback.
Bingham Design did the top linkage for this build.
Eriksen also displayed the frameset alone with red anodized hardware.
Eriksen brought a 26″ Lefty bike to NAHBS in 2010, and this year they switched to 650b. Weight is just over 20lb with a 1×11 Sram groupset. A Cannondale lefty fork is linked to Eriksen’s in-house headset. Full rundown of the new Cannondale leftys and 650b compatibility here.
An Eriksen branded headset and Enve bars never hurt.
A raw version of their road bike was brought to the show to display with green accents. It’s ready for the new Shimano Di2 in-the-seatpost battery when produced.
The road build won the 2013 award for the best titanium construction road bike. With a frame weight of 2.8 lbs, it gets Ultegra Di2 and an all-around fantastic build with an Enve fork, an in-house seatpost, Dura Ace wheels, and a Cane Creek headset.
Comments
Finally, some real MTBs from NAHBS!!! I was getting tired of those hipster/trendy/made-to-be-hung-from-the-wall 700c steel creations… No offense, I recognize the craftmanship and the attention to detail, but I know there are a lot of custom MTB framebuilders who go to NAHBS, and they get almost no attention from the media. Most of the sites I read on a daily basis focus on the road/city/hipster segments, leaving the MTB behind.
That fabricated swingarm bottom joint piece is a thing of beauty. A well designed (though probably a pig to make) and proportionately stiff and strong solution to an area that so many bikes make a complete arse of.
Are those the Brake Force Ones on the Lefty??