Nothing unusual about another sweaty man on the running machine next to you, but this was 3am in Hartford, USA. The 2018 North American Handmade Bike Show (NAHBS) was underway and I was there representing Enigma with Jim, Enigma’s founder. So this guy next to me had to be suffering jet lag too …. One thing’s for sure, he was an amazing runner and almost had the treadmill on fire!
This was my introduction to Keith, great guy and owner of Reynolds steel, the iconic British manufacturer of quality steel tubes for bicycles based in Birmingham. It was a natural choice for Windover Bikes to team up with Reynolds given their world leading tubing and our desire to hand craft the very best steel bikes. We explained to Keith and Tom, Reynold’s operations manager and an all round top bloke, our plans in 2019 and they immediately got behind us. We’ve tried all sorts of tube combinations and Tom and team have gone to the trouble to make custom tubes for us to meet our exact needs.
We’ve this week finalised the tubing for our first small batch of drop bar mountain bikes (code name MEGA) which we’ll make from our workshop in Worthing. Having prototyped our first iteration in Wales as far back as Autumn 2020, the aim is to have framesets available for sale from April 2022. They will combine with our very own fork that we had to design and spec in-house as there is nothing on the market that meets our needs for this innovative model. The fork was recently ISO tested by the manufacturer and undergoing further independent tests in Germany prior to production in February.
We’ll keep you posted on this exciting model and to give you a sneak preview, the first is heading Matt’s way, Race Director for the Pan Celtic Ultra Endurance Race Series. He’s going to give it a good thrashing and we’ll be reporting back on his adventurers on the MEGA as the madness associated with all things Matt and bikes unfolds …
