Ray's Relaxed Road bike Travel frame and fork

Another unique frame, a 49.5cm sloping top-tube for a light-weight rider. A Travel frame built with a blend of Life and Zona tubing and Ritchey Breakway frame components so the frame can be split and packed into a suitcase just big enough to carry a 700C wheel. Set-up for mudguards and a rear rack for light-weight loads. Built with 57mm brakes so 28C and some 32C tyres will fit.

This challenging design does everything it should despite the small sizing and thanks to Darrell of Llewellyn bikes for his advice a while-back on small frame design. The combination of the slacker head angle and custom 53mm fork-offset achieves 3 things: the short top-tube (the right length, shorter than production frames manage), the front wheel kicked-forward to eliminate toe-ovelap* and a sensible trail figure of 57mm. Production frames never get all of these right when they choose to use only 1 or 2 fork offsets across their entire size range. (* the toe overlap is shown by the top-view on the right-side of the design drawing .... the side view is an illusion....think about it!)

The longer-reach brakes present a challenge on such a small frame. Either Shimano's R450 Tiagra-level or R650 Ultegra level calipers can be used and they require a slightly longer fork which shortens the already short head-tube on this frame. The extra leverage created by the longer fork and the shorter head-tube will be OK, given what I've learnt from 29er frames.

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