Our first custom OMG and of course it is our good friend Raoul’s. We wanted to make a cnc 3″ yoke for a fully rigid bike model and Raoul had been asking about a rigid mtb with the Enve MTN fork for a while so when we had the design and the time Raoul was for sure the first one we were going to build. Apart from 3″ clearence and the fork Raoul wanted a wide range – he was relocating to hillyer environs then Leytonstone at the time of this build – the tapered headtube look and of course that wonderous of all bike things – the square taper WI ENO crank. 

Geo wise Raoul was pretty fixed on a long and slack front end (for a ridgid mtb that is) – he had a 50mm Thomson stem in the bag to use already so our sizing needed to work with that – and a tapered headtube. We decided on a 67.5 degree headtube angle and as short a back end as possible with the 3″ 29ers and the new yoke design – we ended up at 440mm. The result is a manouverable and capable bike which is as nice to climb with as it is able to keep you out of trouble when you find your inevitable limit on the downs. 

Most of the componants Raoul supplied so there was very little to do other than focus on the frame and getting the yoke design spot on as with this build the idea was very much to have a design that could become the first STAYER custom MTB so we not only had to make sure that everything worked for what Raoul wanted but also we had to make sure it would work for other componant specifications, different sized frames and that the general design premis of the build could be applied to future custom frame builds.