Category: Building bikes

I’ve decided to add a new version of the Talos to the linup based on some feedback I’ve been getting from customers, and to make the Talos a bit of a more rounded offering. The elevated chainstay design is slick and unique, but it does limit dropout selection. There’s just no good way to integrate sliding or rocker drops into the elevated CS design without designing and making our own dropout frame components (which I’m working on, but more on that later).

The problem then becomes how to get such short chainstays with a yoke. I’ve never liked the current offerings of CNC’d yokes, as they don’t actually allow you to run very short chainstays. So I began the process of developing my own that met all of my criteria. After quite a few versions that just weren’t perfect, I arrived at the current design that I’m really excited about.

Without going into a ton of nerdy framebuilder stuff that isn’t that interesting, I’ll just say that this was my solution to a very complex problem. And it came out pretty aesthetic, so I’m very happy with it. This is what we’ll use to offer a rocker dropout version of the Talos.

The rocker drops have about 19mm of travel, and mount the brake within the rear triangle so adding a rack is much easier. The Rocker drop version of the Talos will also come standard with rack mounts. I feel that this makes it an incredibly versatile bikepacking machine.

I finished this prototype and am now bringing it to Norway for 3 weeks of testing. On that note, the shop will be closed from August 1st to the 24th while we’re on summer vacation. We’ll see you at the end of August!

I recently finished this custom mountain bike build for a client in Telluride, and it marks an exciting time for Myth Cycles. We are now building with Pinion Gearboxes.

This was the first build we’ve done with a Pinion gearbox, but it most certainly won’t be our last. If you aren’t familiar with Pinion, it is a drivetrain replacement that acts like a transmission. All the gears are in a box that is bolted directly to the frame, and gear changes all happen between the crank and chainring. This means you can run a simple singlespeed rear hub, and even a Gates Carbon belt drive if you want to. The gearboxes come with 6 to 18 speeds, but the most popular (for mountain bikes) seems to be the C1.12, which has 12 speeds and about one more gear of range than an Eagle drivetrain.

These gearboxes keep all the gears in an oil bath, which means very low maintenance. They require an oil change every 10,000 Km, or every year. If you have a chain connecting the gearbox to the rear wheel, it will require normal chain maintenance. But a belt will require very little, in the right conditions (i.e. no mud).

Pinion does add weight to a bike. It’s hard to calculate exactly because it replaces a lot of parts, and it’s integrated into the frame. By my reckoning, it adds roughly 3lbs, give or take. But the weight is low and central, so it’s not as noticeable.

Shifting under load? Nope. This is the first thing a lot of people ask me about Pinion. That sounds like a downside if you’ve never experienced it before. However, we have a Rohloff on our tandem which shifts in a similar fashion. Yes, you have to pause pedaling for a split second, but the nice thing is you can dump a ton of gears if you want to. With a little getting used to it, it becomes very natural.

Right now we are only offering Pinion on custom bikes. For a little more info and pricing, our Custom Framebuilding page now has a Pinion section. If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to reach out via our Contact page.

This is a Large Wyvern frame in the Flat Blue powder coat option. It really came out great with the simple black accents, and has an understated badass-ness. The black powder coated King Cage really worked on this bike. I can understand why folks really like those.

This is the mid range build kit I sell with these bikes, and these are some of the highlights:

-Fox 34 Float factory series
-Sram GX Eagle 1×12 drivetrain
-DT Swiss 350 hubs with WTB scraper rims
-Fox Transfer 125mm dropper, factory series
-Maxxis tires

This is pretty much the build kit I ride on my own bike. It’s a great balance of not being overpriced, but being a really nice build kit you don’t have to worry about upgrading in the future. Anyway, I’ll let the photos speak for themselves:

I’ll just say it: this is the coolest bike I’ve ever built. There are a lot of reasons I’m willing to say that, and the first, obvious one is self evident: it looks incredibly badass. However, there’s more even than meets the eye. First off, this bike is for my wife, who absolutely shreds every bike I hand her, so I really wanted to make her something truly aggressive that fit her riding style. 66 degree HA normalized, with short 415mm chainstays. Built for a 130mm fork, and rocking 170 cranks.

The tubing was carefully selected to be strong, without being unreasonably heavy. The seat tube was bent in house. The top tube started life as a 4130 straight gauge .9 wall tube. It was centerless ground until it was .8 wall, then externally butted to .6 wall for 6 inches at the front of the bike. Then bent in house as well. I bent the chainstays as well, and machined a yoke that plugged into one end of the round tubing. All tubes on this bike were bent in house, except for the downtube.

The rear post mount brake mount was a first, and proudly one of my own design. I call it the Snail-Eyes post mount system! With the brake off, they look like eyes on long stalks. I plan to offer this on all my custom bikes in the future, as well as on custom forks.

The powdercoat was also done in-house, and is a flat pink to flat black fade. Both very low-gloss finishes, and I think they go with the components extremely well. This is a fade we plan to offer as a finish upgrade to any of our custom or stock bikes.

Anyway, I think the photos speak for themselves!

Custom Framebuilding