The Spaceship February 14 2017
UDPATE: The Spaceship has landed! It’s available now as a Frame+Fork kit. In the fall of 2016 Fairdale had an opportunity to make road frames using custom drawn 3/2.5 titanium tube sets. Our initial thought was that it seemed like a fun R&D project to tackle, but that in the long run it probably wasn’t going to be very practical for Fairdale or our customers. Titanium is a great material for high-performance bike frames, but the added cost is usually hard for us to justify over chromoly or aluminum when it comes time for production. However, since this would end up as very limited edition project, or maybe never even leave the prototype stages, we decide to go for it, knowing that it would still be an awesome learning experience. We started with the Goodship’s proven road geometry and modified the tubing shape and sizes for titanium. The frame was designed to be paired with an Enve 2.0 fork with the 1-1/4” tapered steerer tube, both for the increased strength, and the smoother transitions from the fork crown to the lower head tube, and upward to the headset cap on top. Since we didn’t have a long list of the usual constraints, we designed this frame to be dedicated for use with electronic groupsets. We had never used them on our own bikes before, and this seemed like the right time to finally test them out for ourselves. In the past we had always talked about some of the higher-end bikes being like “spaceships”, so using that term for the project’s code name was a given to us. When it came time to name the bike officially, the Spaceship moniker had morphed into more of a term of endearment and it stuck. With help from Shimano, FSA and Enve, the Spaceship build came together quickly and the end result is a bike that is a lot of fun to ride and great to look at too. Will the Spaceship ever go to production? It’s hard to say. If there’s enough interest, then maybe we’ll consider it! The price for the frame and fork would probably end up between $2-2500, and we could offer versions that will work with traditional mechanical groupsets as well. The Spaceship was a great development exercise for us and we hope you enjoy looking at it at as much as we enjoy riding it. Please let us know what you think. Thanks! Geometry & Info Size: 56cm Top Tube Length Effective: 565mm Top Tube Length Actual: 546mm Seat Tube (BB Center-to-Top): 530mm Seat Tube Angle: 73° Head Tube Length: 165mm Head Tube Angle: 73.5° Chain Stay Length: 408mm Wheelbase: 986mm Stack: 569mm Reach: 391mm Fork Length: 367mm Fork Offset: 43mm BB Drop: 70mm BB Type: PF30 (for Di2 wiring clearance and increased downtube welding surface area) Recommended Max Tire Width: 28mm Frame Weight: 3.28lbs (1490g) Weight as Assembled, with Pedals: 17lbs (7.7kg) The SpaceshipOur Goodship built with a 3/2.5 titanium tubeset,paired with an ENVE 2.0 fork. […]
