A-train Cycles

Custom Hybrid

Alex — Tue, 08 May 2012 03:18:25 +0000

When I think about a typical custom bicycle what usually come to mind is a road, cross, touring, or mountain bike. This is not a “typical” custom bike, it’s Robey’s vision of a performance hybrid that came to life in the A-train Cycles shop.

Some of the top features include:

Simple and easy to use Shimano Alfine 11 rear hub
Super slack seat angle so you are able to touch the ground while seated
Upright riding position
Steering that is quicker and more lively than a typical hybrid
Neon yellow paint (these photos don’t capture the intensity of this color)
Paragon Machine Works rocker dropouts

More photos can be found on my flickr HERE.

Tom being awesome

Alex — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 02:25:30 +0000

Mr. Tom Lais received his new A-TRAIN road bike late Friday night, two days later he reports that he has logged 235 joyful miles on his new ride and he sent me this picture to prove it. Way to be awesome Tom!

Thanks fat-bike.com!

Alex — Sat, 14 Apr 2012 04:44:24 +0000

This last February I got the opportunity to sit down and chat with Gomez for fat-bike.com. If you are in to fat bikes this is the website for you, it cuts through the BS cluttering many fat bike forums and provides you with all the information you could want about all things fat bike. A big thanks to Gomez and the fat-bike.com team for providing such an awesome resource for the growing fat tire cycling community.

You can read the full interview with A-train Cycles HERE.

Stainless Cyclocross Bike

Alex — Thu, 01 Mar 2012 04:07:56 +0000

Good things are happening at A-train Cycles, take a look–I hope you agree. This stainless steel cyclocross frame is built from USA made KVA stainless tubing and is complimented by a Chris King headset and a Enve carbon cyclocross fork. Frame, fork, and headset are all made in the United States. A noteworthy feature of this frame is the S&S travel couplers, these allows the frame to be broken in half for easy traveling. (For more information on S&S coupler installations services read my blog HERE.) Polished head tube lugs, front derailleur braze-on and rear dropouts add some beautiful (and shiny) contrast to the brushed finish of the rest of the frame.

More photos of this bike on my Flickr HERE

Bicycle Travel Couplers

Alex — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 18:33:35 +0000

A-train Cycles is proud to now offer bicycle torque couplers made by S and S machine (sometimes called S&S couplers.) S&S couplers are precision lugs that are installed in your frame that allow you to break the frame into two pieces with a turn of a wrench. The purpose of this is to allow you to be able to pack your complete bicycle in a case that is small enough to be considered regular checked baggage on your favorite airline. Fees that airlines charge vary greatly, but to bring a non-couplered bike on a plane could cost anywhere from $50 on some of the smaller airlines to $200 on some of the bigger airlines. That’s up to $400 round trip!

Pricing:

Two couplers for a bike that I am building you– $400
Two couplers retrofitted on a bike that you currently own– $475 (this does not include any paint work)

This pricing includes professional installation and the S&S coupler wrench.

A few S&S coupler highlights:

If you travel and you want to bring your bicycle they will pay for themselves very quickly.
They are strong. Testing done by Sands Machine has shown that the couplers are stronger that a Reynolds 531 tube, meaning the tube will buckle before the interface of the coupler fails.
Made in the USA
Made from stainless steel so they will never rust.

For more information feel free to contact me or take a look around the Sands Machine website.

Photographing Bicycles

Alex — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 20:42:05 +0000

I am by no means a photographer, but for now I am very pleased with my results. For years when I completed a bike the method was to look outside, try to determine whether or not the light was good, and then find the best place to lean the bike for pictures. I would search for the best tree, wall, fence, train tracks, or any other number of things that a bike could be leaned against, and then I would take several dozen photos–hoping that a few were good enough to put online. Once the photos were on the computer I was always disappointed by the result. I had worked weeks on a bike that was gorgeous in person, but whatever it was leaned against was not exactly complimenting the frame. A couple weeks ago while looking through some NAHBS galleries and admiring the lighting and clean studio backdrops that the bikes were photographed in front of, I decided that I wanted to learn to take similar photos of my completed bikes. After several hours of research on studio photography and many YouTube clips I made a short list of the items I had to buy:

Lighting- I bought the cheapest soft box continuous light kit I could find. The kit included three soft box light and stands for about $150.
Backdrop- I found my backdrop from B&H photo for about $60. It is a very large seamless piece of black paper 9 ft wide and about 30 ft long. As simple as it gets!
Camera- I already had a camera so I didn’t need to buy one. I have the Nikon Coolpix P7000 shown here, although it is a compact camera it has most of the adjustability as a high end DSLR.

In addition to the bright overhead lights in my shop I used two soft box lights positioned on stands pointed slightly downward at the bike from both sides. I did everything I could to keep the black paper clean but even walking around with socks I couldn’t help but track some dirt onto the backdrop.

Any guesses to how it is standing up?

Social Media Reminder

Alex — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 21:35:18 +0000

If you read this blog you may also want to follow me on Facebook and Twitter.

KVA Stainless Road

Alex — Sun, 11 Dec 2011 20:37:18 +0000

Finished up with another full stainless steel frame this week and I am pretty excited about it. There are a few first for me incorporated into this frame:

Internal Di2 compatible- This frame will be getting the new Ultegra Ui2 group and I designed it to allow all the cables to be run cleanly through the inside of the frame. Wiring holes on the front derailleur braze-on tab, on the rear dropout, and on the down tube means that visible Ui2 wires will be kept to a minimum. I also incorporated full length internal routing for the rear brake cable. Once built up it is sure to be one of the cleanest looking bikes out of the A-train Cycles shop.
New graphics- New cleaner looking A-train graphics on this bike and all frames to follow. Expect more info coming to my blog soon.
Glass bead-blasted logos- The ‘decals’ on this frame are not decals at all rather they are just a difference in surface texture. After the frame is thoroughly brushed down with Scotch Brite pads paint masking is cut with a vinyl plotting machine and applied to the frame. Next its to the sandblasting cabinet where the exposed letters are carefully blasted with glass beads into the surface of the frame. Extreme care needs to be taken to not blast one spot for too long or the masking might be chewed up by the abrasive media.

Many more photos can be found on my flickr HERE

Fat Bike Season is Coming

Alex — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 20:56:01 +0000

Winter is just around the corner here in Minnesota, and that means it’s time to dust off your winter ride. For some, that means a fat bike or snow bike similar to the Surly Pugsley. I have built a handful of custom fat bikes and have been very happy with the results. I have been able to manage plenty of tire clearance with the Big Fat Larry’s paired with the Rolling Darryl rims, while still keeping good chain line and rear end offset to a minimum. I would recommend a fat bike to anybody, whether it is an A-TRAIN or something else. One thing to consider is that you really only NEED a fat bike on the snowiest of days, but that doesn’t take away from the fact that they are always a hell of a lot of fun.

Below are some glamour shots of one of the sweetest fat bikes to leave the A-train Cycles shop. Thanks to Jeff Rockne for the beautiful photographs.

New Shop

Alex — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 19:43:48 +0000

As the story usually goes around the A-train Cycles shop, things have been crazy. For those who follow my blog, I apologize for the lack of new material. I’m working on it.

I moved my shop from the basement of the Bicycle Chain, a small bike shop in Roseville, MN, to The Fix Studio. I worked at the Bicycle Chain for nearly eight years starting when I was just a young high school freshman punk. After eight years of repairing and selling bikes and around three years of building frames in the basement on my days off, it was finally time for me to move on and make building custom bicycle frames my full time gig. The Bicycle Chain is a great shop and I have fond memories of my time there.

The Fix Studio is a world class cycling fit and fitness studio, but instead of me rambling about the Fix’s credentials just check out their website. I am working as an independent business in the basement of the Fix Studio which will be an awesome opportunity for continued exposure in the cycling scene. I am also enjoying 300 square feet of shop space which is plenty for all of my tools and toys. I am still fine tuning the setup and there are only a couple of things that need to be completed before the area is fully operational.

Build new sandblasting cabinet. I didn’t realize how useful this tool was when working with stainless steel frame until I didn’t have one.
Get some art on the walls. There is no shortage of white walls in my shop, combined with the bright florescent lights needed for building frames, it does not make for a homey environment. Getting some nice art and color on the wall will go a long way to creating a welcoming environment.

Another awesome thing about my new shop is that you are more the welcome to come see where and how an A-train Cycles frame is built. So if you are having a frame built, thinking about having a frame built or just want to talk about bikes, drop by and lets chat! I am in the shop/Fix Studio weekdays during most of the hours you would expect a person to be at work, but if you are making a special trip to see me you can always contact me to make sure I am around.