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2015 CYCLOCROSS 1 CONTENTS this photo & cover photo: jeff curtes 1 Contents 14 Paint Options 25 Kit & Gruppo Options 2 Greeting 20 Speedvagen CX Team 29 Crash Replacement Program 3 Standard Features 23 Component Options & Philosophy 30 Additional Information 8 Popular Upgrades 24 Frameset Options 31 Worksheet 2 GREETING I built the first Speedvagen in2006. It was a singlespeed cross bike and was my own personal race bike. It had a homemade extended seat mast with a Thomson seat post, carved down to a stub and glued in place to accommodate my saddle height. I stripped an SLR saddle down to the shell, drilled it out and painted it matte army green along with the frame; “the perfect color,” I thought, “for a homemade hot rod prototype.” That first bike wasn’t called Speedvagen. Around the shop, for efficiency sake, and maybe because we like to think that we’re clever, we tend to take words and smash them together (when I say we, I mean me). The Cross concept bike was affectionately referred to as the “croscept.” Kind of an unwieldy name, right? Well, I raced that prototype for the season and loved the heck out of the bike’s sparse design, light weight and sure-footedness. Around this time my wait list for Vanilla was exploding. I was faced with the conflict of not wanting to compromise what I was doing with Vanilla (It was important to me that I be the builder of my bikes and continue to pursue my craft). At the same time I didn’t want to be exclusive to the point that I couldn’t build bikes for my teammates, the Gentle Lovers, and fellow racers that liked the direction we were going and wanted to go that direction too. That year, 2006, Speedvagen was given a name and a clear direction: a small run of race bikes produced several times a year. The wait would be months, not years, and the bikes would be built in house with a “take away everything non-essential and innovate with what’s left” design approach. Now, in the summer of 2015, there have been seven seasons of Road Machines, eight seasons of Cross Machines and about 650 bikes in total. The bikes have gone to every continent. They have been piloted by their owners in everything from beginner to pro level races including top tens, podiums and wins at National Championships and International UCI events. In the past seven years, with feedback from our race team and our growing family of SV riders, Speedvagen has been gradually evolving. In the early years, our frames were built using many off-the-shelf tubes; we hashed through making our own seatpost heads out of machined stainless steel (if you listen closely, you can hear me pulling my hair out); we built our own seat tubes, we went through version after version of our Berserker Drop-out in R&D, etc. etc. Now in contrast, nearly every tube that we use is custom drawn to our specified size, shape, and thickness; we offer carbon Speedvagen seat post heads, and have a super-light carbon seat tube option on our road and cross frames. Small parts like our cable stops, our stainless steel reinforced brake bridges, our head tube reinforcing rings and our down tube adjusters are all of our own design. These may seem like small steps, but the thousands of hours that have gone into researching, designing and fabricating parts and tooling, make for a better bicycle. We’re looking forward to making this run of Speedvagen the most innovative and meticulously built to date. I hope you are as excited as we are... photo: john watson 3 STANDARD FEATURES SPEEDVAGEN We design and build Speedvagen cross bikes to be great mud machines, we are from Portland after all. And a bike that can handle the mud can handle anything from sand to single track. Here is the best description we can offer, without being too sales pitch-y. Speedvagen are nimble and well balanced while climbing (this comes from how the wheels are laid out under the rider and how that design complements the fit). The bottom bracket is on the lower side, which gives the rider more agility. This means that you’ll be able to take tighter lines than you could on a bike with a higher center of gravity. The tubing is light and contoured for comfort in shouldering, but stout enough to inspire confidence. We have the fastest sprinters in Oregon racing our bikes and they have nothing but good stuff to say about their stiffness. At the same time, people also tout the comfort. photo: jeff curtes 4 STANDARD FEATURES TUBING Our proprietary SSL mix is made up of the strongest alloys from True Temper and Columbus. The stronger the alloy is, the thinner it can be drawn and remain strong. The thinner the tubing the lighter it is. The top tube is gently curved along the underside for comfort while shouldering and the down tube and top tube butts are thicker and longer at the head tube to deal with the stresses of rough riding. Every tube is cold-worked in-house for an even ratio of strength, suppleness and sexualissimo. photo: the vanilla workshop 5 STANDARD FEATURES BERZERKER DROPOUTS This new generation of dropout is our lightest and smartest to date. The Berzerker dropout is cast from a super strong steel alloy and incorporates stainless steel inner and outer faces. The use of dual mate- rials means that we get the strength of the base metal and the protection from wear and tear that the raw stainless offers. photo: bob huff 6 STANDARD FEATURES INTEGRATED SEATMAST When we looked at the traditional seatpost/seat tube interface with all of the clutter of the cables having to navigate their way around the joint, we knew that there was room for improvement. Beyond looking wicked sexy, the integrated seatmast on our cross machines allows the rear brake cable to pierce the seat tube. With this design element, we replaced the rear segment of the brake housing and its accompanying stops and adjusters; that’s six pieces that we replaced with a single, tiny, stainless steel tube running through the seatmast. The result is less friction from housing, stiffer braking from lack of housing squish and real weight savings from all the stuff that’s not there. photo: bob huff 7 STANDARD FEATURES CANTILEVER BRAKE MOUNTS We’re not engineers, but we like to come up with common sense solutions to problems that we see. Considering that its design hasn’t changed much in more than 50 years, the traditional cantilever mount was ripe for a re-do. We’ve machined new stainless steel cantilever brake mounts that take the place of the canti stud. This brake mount pierces two walls of the seat stay and is silver brazed at both intersections. It now sits nearly an inch closer to the seat stay removing the flex found in a standard canti boss. Having the brake mounts pierce and interface with both walls of the stay, allows us to build the frame with thinner seatstays than would be possible with a traditional canti stud. All in all, taking away the canti studs gives a weight savings of nearly 1/8th pound. photo: bob huff 8 POPULAR UPGRADES DISC BRAKES Disc makes sense. One finger braking even on the steepest decents. Need we say more? Ok, we will: Lighter rims, because the braking surfaces don’t need as much reinforcement. This means less weight toward the outside of the wheel, where centripetal force is going to be the strongest and where weight really hurts performance. We’ve been dabbling in using disc on our bikes for the last 15 years, and now that a reliable and lightweight hydraulic disc setup is available for road and CX, we’re excited to make our disc bikes more broadly available. Our disc brake machines will include internal routing through the down tube, inside of the PF30 BB shell and out the chainstays. As well, for disc bikes, we have our own head tubes machined for each customer. This means that not only is the tapered headtube the right proportion for each frame, but it keeps it super thin (commercially available tapering head tubes are very heavy). The up charge also covers the disc dropout, mount in the rear, all of the internal routing ports for the hydraulic lines and a PF30 bottom bracket. This upgrade is $300 for a full build. This upgrade is $450 for a frame set which includes a custom mixed tapered Chris King headset, installed. photo: jeff curtes 9 POPULAR UPGRADES CARBON FIBER SEAT TUBE We’re offering a carbon seat tube as an option on the Speedvagen Cross Machines. Each carbon seat tube will be made for the rider, meaning that when we design your frame, we’ll also design your carbon seat tube to the ideal weight and stiffness for you. From there we send that design to ENVE Composites and they’ll mold a tube just for your bike which we’ll build into the frame. The substitution of carbon for the traditional steel seat tube will cush out the ride and will offer weight savings of between 1/3 and 1/2 pound depending on frame size. This upgrade is $850. photo: jeff curtes 10 POPULAR UPGRADES SPEEDVAGEN CARBON SEATPOST HEAD We’ve worked with ENVE Composites to develop a Speedvagen-specific, externally clamping post. The design has zero setback, more vertical adjustment and a custom diameter.

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