in today's episode i'm here with rob quirk and we're checking out the quirk cycles super chub
nice
i'm rob quirk i'm a frame builder based in london i am the owner and founder of quirk cycles you
can see one of the bikes on the back which we're going to be talking about today i've been in a few
of france's videos but not for a while some of you might know me some of you are new to quirk cycles
but yeah i'm going to show you around the workshop and what i do here well first of
all look how light that is so this is the super chub it's an xc mountain bike fully built in this
iteration it comes in at 10.3 kilos without pedals carbon xc mountain bikes that's
what they weigh yeah expensive ones too first of all it's mechanical shifting there's a lot of
aluminium parts on there so the crank is aluminium uh the derailleur is a gx so it's not even top of
the line so this could have been a lot lighter if i was using super premium uh group set i mean
that's the first takeaway here of how light is i go into why i've managed to make a steel
um because yeah it's steel that's what i do i build steel bikes it's how i've made a steel xc
bike as light as it is i mean this is the overland 29er uh i think this frame set weighed nearly two
kilos whereas this one came out 200 grams lighter one of the main reasons as you can see is this
bit and this bit you'll notice that these parts have been 3d printed so the drop out and the seat
cluster is 3d printed in stainless steel these are printed by a company in new zealand 3d printing
is a really good way of making parts which would be difficult to make through traditional
techniques such as machining or casting casting is difficult to do it's kind of similar to 3d
printing in the shapes you can achieve but often to get a part cast it'd be a company in taiwan
maybe italy but they're gonna ask for a minimum of like a thousand or two thousand three thousand
things like lugs like in the old days lugs were cast so this is a cast lug and you see
like the old italian builders like massey you know they've been building bikes for like 60 years or
something and they always have the same lugs and that's because when they started they had to
order like thousands of them so this is why you know it's your signature 3d painting can circum
navigate that so you can make any parts you want in any shape the only downside of it is really
it's uh the cost is quite high so you can see on the drop out here i've integrated the brake mount
into um into the dropout this makes it great for a builder but also it adds structural
integrity because instead of having to weld on your brake mount which adds heat into the part
and increases the number of times you're introducing heat which has an effect on the
lifespan of the part you know you can print it all in one piece so then the only places where
it's having heat put in is where it joins to the chainstay and i mean you can't see it on this one
i think it's there where it joins to the seat stay the other thing you'll notice is the skin
of uh the frame is continuous so the shape of the chainstay goes straight into the shape
of the dropout this has great uh structural integrity so any stress
that's going through the part is distributed evenly through the skin the last
mechanical advantage is because of 3d printing you can use fea to produce a part so that's finite
element analysis this is what engineers will use in cad programs that's computer-aided design
for those you know who don't know so you know obviously you have a you have a program on your
computer that you design your 3d part in and often these programs will have
an element to them where you can simulate the stresses that the part will go through and when
you do that you can then use the results from that to remove material where you don't need it
and add material what you do that makes a stronger part but the big advantage is it makes a lighter
part so you're just removing excess material where you don't need to put where you don't need it
so these dropouts are lighter same with the cluster remove unnecessary material
but also we have these really nice continuous lines so stresses are distributed well
but also you can do things like you can see the seat clamper is uh integrated into
the cluster like the last advantage is it's really cool it looks amazing it's like it's
aesthetically pleasing and it's unique to quirks so these are my dropouts this is my cluster
you know this is something that's unique to a quirk cycles frame and different iterations
of them are going on all of my frames moving forward i've got a strange question for you
rob so the 3d printed technology is amazing and it's great for you at the moment are you nervous
that at some point when it becomes more advanced that whole bikes will be able to be 3d printed
which would obviously mean you're not involved in the same way as a frame builder or people
might not need from from human frame builders anymore not nervous at all and i think there is
already a 3d printed bike or someone who's made almost an entire bike for 3d printing
uh there are certainly builders that are using more 3d printed parts in the frames than i am what
a lot of builders do though or what these builders do sorry is head tubes bottom brackets drop out
seat clusters so then you're left with just the tubes in between which means you can cut at right
angles there's no mitering this for builder uh simplifies the process it speeds it up so i know
people who are building using this technique and build a bike in a day because you can just go boop
boop stick it all together and then you're doing very simple worlds where you wrap around it's a
big advantage for a builder it means they can make more quicker it also increases the accuracy of the
frame because they're simpler junctions and it's very hard to get them wrong one of the features
that most people spot straight away is the lack of cables on the frame so you'll honestly notice that
we've got the stem here but all the cables are shooting straight into the front of the bike so
this is an integrated cable setup is quite common on carbon frames most of the tech is proprietary
so that means it belongs to the manufacturer that makes it and no one else and in the same way
for me to be able to do this i've had to develop my own head tube so you see this is an oversized
56 mil head tube so before that the biggest you would get
is 46 which if you just put them together you can see the difference in width if you want
to send cables inside the frame through the head tube you need to have a 1.5 inch bearing
at the top mountain bikers you'll probably get in all the comments like no no like hidden cables on
a mountain bike because it seems to be this weird thing that they're all against it um like so it's
it's very controversial apparently but one of the things i noticed because for a lot of my off-road
bikes i'd have external cables under one of the tubes when you're off-roading you're going through
mud and everything and then when you needed to clean your bite it was the worst thing so having
no escape so it's not just about aesthetics you know there's practical aspects to having them
also there's a big argument for if you don't have the cables on the outside they're protected so
you're not gonna smash into a rock and sever uh a cable um and again it's aesthetics it looks super
cool it's a really heavy table that rob yeah so this is it's a surface plate but of course it
means it weighs a lot so it's like 250 kilos i'm on the first floor aren't i um for the viewers
at home but on the ground floor there's a gym if you walk into a gym and go oh do you think you can
lift something really heavy they're all like you don't care it's like all these like guys are like
anodizing so you might have noticed there's something showing shots of the bike that all
the aluminium parts have been anodized green i did it myself i did in-house anodizing it literally
took me a week two weeks of being up till two in the morning uh anodising these parts until i
got the process right but got there in the end this is probably my favorite was taking apart
the derailleur which is fiendishly difficult we've got little carbon reservoir caps
so these are made by a german company called hop carbon really nice you know you can
rebuild your derailleur in carbon parts stuff like this the carbon reservoir caps cost much
but i saved two grams so well worth it well worth it i've got a bit of a reputation for doing nice
paint jobs this is actually in my house standard uh finish which this is called kinder which
actually is included in the cost of a frame that you buy from me which is this two-tone you know
two colors split down the middle but um why use some really nice colors i think this is from um
what they call it a renault from the 80s and this is actually a realm so you know it's reproducible
in lots of different colors but where we decided to push it a bit more um me and the painter who
tried jack kingston up in the hull is we decided to try and paint as many of the parts as we could
so you can see the rocks shocks i said that weird we sort of went to town we brought the colors in
uh from the frame but also i think the parts that really start to stand out are things like the envy
carbon worm we took off all of the paint that comes on the envy so
carbon parts are often painted black and the reason for this is uv protection
we wrote it so you can you can see the layup of the carbon through that and then we use the uv
clear coat to protect the carbon from delamination you really get to see you can
really see the layup of the different carbon fibers on the seat post here looks fantastic
mate you should be very proud of that are you too scared to ride it because it's so nice
so it's good so i've had this for six months uh and i've like ridden it around the car park
because it's just so nice and there's just been in this it's the first time i've built a bike
and been scared to ride it you know i tell my customers this is what you should do with your
bike so put some protection tape on it do this do you make this last longer don't build it all this
all the best practice and then when it comes to my bikes it's just like whatever so i
always like grab my bike from painter build it up instantly and then just go rag it and
you know with the paint still where scratch the hell out of it and i'm like this is the first
time i've not wanted to do that because i'm like it's so nice rob you're the best person at talking
about bikes to the camera sometimes in these bike checks it's quite hard to talk about a bike for
eight minutes but i found it very easy just to it's because you know a lot of bug stuff yeah
how can people find more information about you uh you can go on my website which is quirkcycles.com
or you can go on my instagram which is instagram.com at quirk cycles i didn't
need to say instagram.com it's just at quirk cycles links will be down below if you enjoyed
this video check out my playlist on my youtube channel which i put like on the home profile
page thing full of lots of other nice bikes why are you laughing first take me it was great