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NAHBS 2016 – Holland Cycles’ shapely lugged carbon HC road bike finally out for a ride

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Holland’s HC carbon lugged road bike has been a two year project spanning six prototypes to get to this point. Now, it’s in production and is a full custom road bike that’s 100% made in house, including the fork.

Working with founder Bill Holland, Mike Lopez produced the carbon fiber components and was the founder or Reynolds Composites. He also created this fork and was responsible for much of the carbon work for the Serotta forks and tubes.

Why lugged? Several reasons, first of which was because their concept was to design something they had complete control over the angles and build. Normally, this would mean tube to tube construction since each lug requires a mold, and you can’t realistically have an infinite number of molds to create every conceivable angle. Here’s how they did it…

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They have a set of lugs for each part, all within 1.5° of the next lug where they would need to be adjusted. On the inside of each lug’s insertion point is extra carbon material that’s simply padding, not structural. To get the exact angle they need for a full custom frame, they simply machine away part of the padding so the tube sits inside at the angle they want. Then they’re bonded together.

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Constrained Layer Damping is the other reason for lugs, which means the bonding agent between lug and tube acts as a vibration damper between them, so vibrations won’t travel all through the frame.

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The top and down tube transition their angles from front to back, which is subtle but adds visual interest as the light hits it. It’s laid up with the parting line for the molds on the sides of the tubes, which puts the overlapping material on the sides of the tube rather than top and bottom. That makes it laterally stiffer while giving a bit of vertical flex. It also makes it less prone to damage if the handlebar swings around and smacks it.

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They use full UD (unidirectional) carbon tubes and woven lugs, but they could do a top cosmetic layer of either on any part of the bike if someone wanted.

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Top and seat tubes taper thinner where they meet at the seat tube, which combines with the flat seat stays to allow a big of articulation at that joint, which helps smooth the ride, particularly when seated. As they say, it’s a Ferrari that rides like a Lexus.

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Note the heavy shaping of the chainstay, too. These pics don’t do it justice, this is a gorgeous bike.

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The fork’s dropout boss is bonded into the fork during construction, then the actual dropout part is welded on afterward, letting them adjust the rake anywhere from 40 to 50 mm.

The fork has a claimed weight of ~415g and can have a custom layup just like the bike. Which was the whole point, giving them the ability to completely customize the fork’s rake, angle, tune and everything else. Because a 150lb rider doesn’t need the same fork a 210lb rider does.

The titanium parts come from Paragon Machine Works, and everything else is made at Holland’s San Diego facility, possibly making this the only U.S. made production carbon fork. And, thanks to Mike Lopez’s Reynolds fork experience from Mike gets all the necessary impact and safety testing.

This bike, as built with Di2, would be about $17,200, and is headed for a customer. Retail is $6,400 for the frame, and $700 for the fork with ti dropouts. Each one takes about 50 hours to build.

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Holland’s titanium cyclocross bike gets a few updates, too.

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Cleaner internal routing…

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…bigger tire clearance…

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…and flat mount brake dropouts with thru axle compatibility as an option. The modular design of the frame lets them fit a variety of dropouts into place to suit the customer.

HollandCycles.com

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spike
spike
8 years ago

Glad to see Mike Lopez’s name in this write up. Sort of looks a little like a Serotta Meivici. 😉
Now if we can just get Holland to make a hard tail mountain bike frame.

Tom
Tom
8 years ago

what a gorgeous lugged CF frame (though well past my cost threshold)!

Mike
Mike
8 years ago

Very purdy. And $17,200! Dude, I feel poor (I’m not poor at all).

CHuff
CHuff
8 years ago

That’s Mike Lopez magic right there. Beautiful to behold, and I’m sure it rides fantastically too.

Antipodean_eleven
8 years ago

That’s a really wonderful looking thing, I have some serious carbon wood right now but 17.2K? Now, before people start with the old line of ‘you can’t afford it, so you complain about it…’. Think about it. 17.2K

I get low volume and the costs associated probably more than a lot of people, but really? I can go and buy a very fast, very complex, almost top shelf moto, made in the EU, for that in the US (BMW 1000S RR starts at around 15k for example). Lots of carbon, lots of tech, lots of… everything.

Ultimately, unlike a moto, a bike is just a bike. The difference between this Di2 equipped bike and another, costing half as much is pretty small, some weight savings maybe? Sure, if your client base has more money than they know what to do with, then fine but as a design and production exercise, it falls into the same category as say a Marc Newson watch, i.e. anyone can make something really nice, if you throw enough money at it.

I was always taught that the aim of good design is to achieve a number of different things to improve what already is. Thus doing something regardless of the cost to do it but just ‘because’, is probably not a good starting point, unless there are some very significant advantages.

While I have not seen pricing, what Bastion Cycles is doing is far more interesting in terms of design and production.

Dan
Dan
8 years ago

Yo, I believe that Alchemy is doing their forks in USA, so Holland is definitely not the only USA-made carbon fork game in town.

Fred
Fred
8 years ago

Wound up?

Chase
Chase
8 years ago

These bikes are very pretty Peet’s Coffee Queens.
I live in an area where you see riders (mainly guys) who can barely ride at all using high rise stems and triples with full matching Team TdF sponsor gear that ride 10 miles on a Sunday of mostly flattish roads and park at the Peet’s and hang for hours. Then put it on the back of an expensive car (you choose) and go home.
Sadly,these bikes are made for them. They will probably never see the miles or terrain they were intended for.

chase
chase
8 years ago
Reply to  Chase

Velo-No jealousy at all. Just an observation. I fully endorse any and all extravagant exchanges of money for fun and recreation. God knows I do it on many things.
I have just noticed these guys are the sort of clique I do not enjoy being around, I avoid them at all options. I find they are often way to serious for such little talent and display of fine machinery. I think the term is “poseur”.

Velociraptor
Velociraptor
8 years ago

> I live in an area where you see riders (mainly guys) who can
> barely ride at all using high rise stems

Jealous, eh? If they enjoy doing that, let them… They aren’t harming you.

> They will probably never see the miles or terrain they were intended for.

Then wait until next year when you buy the bike off them for 70% off when something new appears.

Mark
Mark
8 years ago

The Holland carbon frame is really a beautiful thing. I saw it at NAHBS and it was one of my favorites at the show. But that clunky seat post clamp really ruins the aesthetics of this bike. This frame deserves some kind of integrated seat post binder. IMHO they need to redesign the seat lug to incorporate this.

Veganpotter
Veganpotter
8 years ago

I don’t know about that resin concept. I wouldn’t want resin making up for tubes that don’t fit flush in the lugs. It seems like a good place for resin to fatigue/crack

Mayhem
8 years ago

I get that the frame is full custom and labor-intensive/expensive to manufacture, but how do they get to the price of that complete bike? Even a full complement of Enve and Dura-Ace Di2 at full MSRP (which only a fool would pay) shouldn’t be that much compared to the price of the frame…

1Pro
1Pro
8 years ago

i have NO idea how that argo beat this in the carbon awards thing there at NAHBS. not even in the same sport.

JBikes
JBikes
8 years ago

How do they handle heat input to the CF fork legs while welding the fork drop-out to the boss?
This is one area where I think it would seem to make sense to have a run of complete boss/dropouts CNC’d in various offsets from 40-50 mm and use what the geometry calls for.

Mike
Mike
8 years ago

The welding on the dropouts is done before they’re bonded in. Perhaps there was some confusion on that during the traffic at the show.

The poser bike comment makes me smile. Go for a ride with Bill, Cody, and Neil sometime and see who’s smiling in the end. Most of their customer’s rock as well….

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