Custom Enigma Extensor (Columbus XCR stainless steel)

neeb

So I eventually decided to "do a Rob Penn" and get a custom steel frame "for life". I'll probably always have a carbon bike and replace it as the technology evolves, but I intend to keep this as my "other" best bike for a long time to come.

I'm very, very happy with it. To be honest, I wasn't expecting it to be as good as it is. I've ridden quite a few bikes and like modern, stiffer, more responsive ones and I wasn't expecting a steel frame to match up to modern carbon in that respect. Actually though, it does! It's practically as stiff as my (very stiff) carbon bike and noticeably more so than my last carbon frame and a Ti frame I have. The bike feels just as lively and is just as fast, the only trade-off is the 600g weight penalty, but for something this timeless that's a price hardly worth mentioning! It has a wonderful firm but "taut" ride feel, very refined...



It's made from Columbus XCR stainless tubing. Top tube and seat tube are 31.7mm, butted to 0.4mm and 0.5mm respectively. Down tube is actually 35mm (butted to 0.45mm) rather than the "super oversized" 38mm that is now the standard option on the XCR tubesets. Apparently that's all Columbus were able to supply to Enigma at the time my frame was being built, because they were having trouble producing the tubes - the metal is so strong it was breaking their drawing machines! This has worked out perfectly for me, because at 63kg I'm sure that the 38mm dt would have been overkill. Honestly, I'm a reasonably powerful rider for my weight and there is no way I'm flexing this frame, these tube profiles are perfect for me. I would say that you only need to go super oversized if you are both a big and powerful rider.

The geometry was partially based on my favourite carbon bike with a few tweaks. I know my setup and preferred geometry pretty well so it was just a case of doing the sums to get the frame to match. I need a fairly forward saddle position relative to the BB, which I could either have achieved with a very steep seat tube angle and a setback post as on my carbon bike (which has a 74.5 seat tube angle), or else an inline post and a slightly slacker angle. Mark at Enigma recommended the latter, and a 73.5 angle puts me bang in the middle of the rails with an inline post. The reach was based on a 110mm stem. I decided to go with a 45mm fork rake together with 73 degree head tube angle to reduce the trail just a little - I knew I preferred the reduced trail of 43mm + 73 hta on my current carbon bike (about 58mm trail) over the greater trail I'd had on previous bikes, so I thought going just a little more in that direction would be ideal. I can just about notice the difference with 56mm of trail on this bike compared with 58mm - it's just tiny bit more responsive in steering. I can be a nervous descender sometimes, which makes me tend to understeer - the less trail I have the less I do this and the more I feel in tune with the bike and confident descending, but that's just me, I think trail is a very personal thing. Note that the head tube length is designed for the Chris King headset which has a larger stack height than modern integrated ones, so that 133mm is the equivalent of about 145-150mm.



Here's the bare frame as it came out of the Enigma paint works. Mirror polished stays and logos. The colour is Pantone 353c. I based it on the colour of a wooden cottage I pass on one of my regular routes - when I saw this it was just a case of "that's the colour I want my frame to be"... The colour looks different in different photographs, none of them really do it justice!

neeb

I built it up with wheels and groupset I already had on a previous bike.

Frame: Enigma Extensor, custom XCR tubing
Forks: Enve 2.0, 45mm rake
Wheels: Campagnolo Eurus
Groupset: Campagnolo Record, 2009. The cransket is actually Chorus, but you would need to peer very closely to tell. Compact BCD with TA rings, 50x36. The right hand ergo has had the internals updated to the latest version.
Cassette: Record 11x23
Tyres: Schwalbe Ultremo ZX
Tubes: Continental supersonic
Cables: Jagwire
Headset: Chris King NoThreadSet, silver soto voce
Seatpost: Thomson masterpiece, black
Seat colar: Thomson, silver
Saddle: Specialized Toupe Pro, 2011.
Stem: Deda Superleggero, 110mm
Bars: 3T Ergonova Ltd
Cages: Enigma
Pedals: Speedplay Zero with Ti "long" axles from TiSpindles.com
Computer: Garmin 800 on Raceware mount, with speed/cadence sensor
Quick releases: Enigma

Total weight, including pedals, cages and Garmin: 7.4kg

napoleond

That's the nicest custom steel bike I've seen in a looooong time.

Possibly my fave BR bike actually. Good work.

bencolem

I think I like it - need a pic of it outside in the summer sun to really understand the colour. Top choice though - everyone who's been riding for a while understands the need for a bike for life!

neeb

NapD: Thanks! Didn't you have designs on a Rourke at one point? Did you go for it in the end?

bencolem: Will try to oblige on the sunny outdoor photo at some point. Problem is my phone has a crap camera and the SLR doesn't fit in the jersey pocket... ;-)

rajMAN

Lovely bike, great tubeset, excellent proportions and it looks the biz. what a great investment you must be very proud. :shock:

napoleond

neeb wrote:

NapD: Thanks! Didn't you have designs on a Rourke at one point? Did you go for it in the end?

bencolem: Will try to oblige on the sunny outdoor photo at some point. Problem is my phone has a crap camera and the SLR doesn't fit in the jersey pocket... ;-)

Didn't go for it in the end. Was uninspired tbh. Seeing ones like yours is giving me ideas again though.

My ideas involve gold shamals though and they aren't very forthcoming...

marcusjb

Very handsome bike - impressive and well executed

declan1

Beautiful.

rokt

WOW...very, very nice

sloppyschleckonds

Probably one of the nicest builds posted on here. Chapeau sir.

nchappy

Veeeerrrry nice.

antlaff

Great colour. Great bike...enjoy

carl_p

Totally beautiful - better than Rob Penn's which is bit of a pigs breakfast.

nicknick

I don't normally comment but this is stunning! Brave colour choice but it looks fantastic built up. A good weight too.

cedargreen

ooh that's nice. Lovely and unusual colour; nice to see something a bit different. From the frame geometry it looks like my size too...

velocissimus

That's gorgeous and very classy. Nice description of the ride too.
I'm intrigued by the colour and would also like to see a photo in daylight to get a better idea of it.
Are you keeping those bottle cages? I wonder whether metal cages would suit it better. All the other details of the bike look great and give it plenty of character.

neeb

Thanks for all the positive comments! Will try to get some outdoor photos sometime.

Are you keeping those bottle cages? I wonder whether metal cages would suit it better.

Hmm, I like the Enigma cages in use (I've got them on the other bike too). I guess metal ones would look good, but at least I have some black on the bike so the carbon ones don't clash horribly. Something to think about.

I thought about bright green anodised alu for the seat clamp and headset (the Chris King headset has that as an option), I think it would have set off the more subtle green of the frame quite well. But in the end I went for silver to balance out the polished stays & logos lower down.

verylonglegs

OK I'll play the villian seeing as no-one else will but...a sloping top tube on a custom build? Ruins it for me personally but hey that's the variety of life, you love it so fair play.

neeb

verylonglegs wrote:

OK I'll play the villian seeing as no-one else will but...a sloping top tube on a custom build? Ruins it for me personally but hey that's the variety of life, you love it so fair play.

Personal thing..

My view is that unless you have a a strong traditional aesthetic and think that anything other than a straight tt looks "wrong", a sloping one is superior in all respects. Lighter, stiffer (OK, we're talking tiny quantities, but still..), more room for tweaking firmness/comfort through the seatpost. There are no functional reasons to go for a straight top tube. The real reason though is that for me, it just looks better. It's weird, there is a degree of slope beyond which I don't like sloped top tubes - in fact Enigma often specify about 8 degrees as standard, which is too much for me. Mine is 5 degrees, which is my personal sweetspot.

At the risk of getting too subjective and arty farty, I think the reason that straight tts don't work so well for me is that all of the other tubes on the bike are sloped relative to the horizontal and vertical planes. So a completely horizontal top tube clashes geometrically for me, once you get over the conditioning of the traditional frame aesthetic. With a horizontal tt I am always comparing the line with the line of the horizon or the ground, and of course it never exactly matches. With a sloping tt the dynamic expression of the frame is freed up.. Blah blah...

Yossie

NapoleonD wrote:

That's the nicest custom steel bike I've seen in a looooong time.

+1. Utterly lovely. Chapeau that man.

metronome

Ohh love this! And that colour scheme's just amazing 8)

itsnotarace

So much win

TMR

Nice to see an Enigma without a ton of spacers under the stem.

Any chance of a full frontal? You, not the bike obviously

napoleond

The Mad Rapper wrote:

Nice to see an Enigma without a ton of spacers under the stem.

Any chance of a full frontal? You, not the bike obviously

That always confundles me about enigmas, custom build but usually with a load of spacers...

drlodge

Yossie wrote:

NapoleonD wrote:

That's the nicest custom steel bike I've seen in a looooong time.

+1. Utterly lovely. Chapeau that man.

Its the lovliest stainless steel bike I've since since, oooh, this morning when I clocked mine ;-)

Lovely paint scheme, very different to mine but lovely all the same.

drlodge

neeb wrote:

It's weird, there is a degree of slope beyond which I don't like sloped top tubes - in fact Enigma often specify about 8 degrees as standard, which is too much for me. Mine is 5 degrees, which is my personal sweetspot.

Nice observation...my Rourke I think has about 4.2 degrees drop on the top tube, they set up the frame with 4cm drop so I worked out Tan-1 4/54.5. This modest drop gives the frame a very clean look, however I do wish I had a little more seat post sticking out to help with the wee EPMS fitting and getting a rear light on the seat post too.

ugo.santalucia

NICE! 8)

neeb

NapoleonD wrote:

The Mad Rapper wrote:

Nice to see an Enigma without a ton of spacers under the stem.

Any chance of a full frontal? You, not the bike obviously

That always confundles me about enigmas, custom build but usually with a load of spacers...

They seem to err on the side of short head tubes when they are doing custom builds based on their own measurements/fittings. In my case I knew what I wanted and I'm a bit of a bike geometry nerd so I was probably testing Mark's patience with my millimetric tweaks to each drawing he came up with..

drlodge wrote:

Its the lovliest stainless steel bike I've since since, oooh, this morning when I clocked mine ;-)

Lovely paint scheme, very different to mine but lovely all the same.

It's a nice club to join, especially since no two custom steel bikes are the same. Love the Rourke! I thought about going for a Rourke but I'd decided (for some reason I forget) that I wanted XCR instead of 953 and Enigma are about the only people in the UK working with it.

iantr

Saw this old thread and thought I'd find and add a pic of my Extensor, just for fun...

neeb

Lovely!

I've still got my Extensor. Oddly enough I'm expecting delivery tomorrow of a Reynolds 46 Aero carbon rear wheel built up with a Powertap G3 hub which I'm planning to use on the Extensor. It still loses very little to my top-end carbon bike in terms of performance.

Wheel selection makes a big difference to how the Extensor rides, IMO. My only mild quibble with it is that it's not particularly vertically compliant, so can be a little harsh riding (that's the trade-off with round steel tubes I guess - if they are stiff laterally they are also going to be quite stiff vertically).

For some reason the Reynolds Aero wheels work particularly well with the frame. Might post an unpdated pic in due course..