Road frame with Ritchey Breakaway fittings

Put you bike in a suitcase! With Ritchey's Breakaway framebuilding components, a road frame can separate into two parts and the whole bike can fit in a small suitcase or box for air-travel. This 4 degree sloping top-tube frame is effectively sized at 57.4cm, and fits in the SandSMachine 10" Edge pull, Designer Style hard case. The pictures below show packing stages minus some of the tube protection foam.

The Breakaway frame joints are lightweight, solid and robust as you'd expect of a Ritchey component. This frame's a fillet-brazed steel road frame and fork. It's a serious test of framebuilding skills since there's no hiding any misalignment once that seatpost is removed, and fillet-brazed frames distort waaay more than a TIG-welded frame during construction. This frame weighs about 65g more than a standard frame.

Built of oversize road tubing, a mix of Columbus Zona and Life tubing was used together with a TrueTemper lightweight oversize-road steerer, lightweight fork crown lug and oval blades.

The frame has some nice features: built for 57mm reach brakes to accommodate large tyres: stainless Llewellyn front and rear dropouts, polished and masked during painting: Llewellyn's sweet downtube STI bosses and a simple head-tube pump peg. A Tubus rack was part of the design to be mounted to the rear dropouts and seat-stay bridge. Painted up in Ducati red with mettallic-silver decals.

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