Largest road frame of my career

Every step of this build really made me think. I even had to send the frame back to the painter for a satin clear coat as I had forgotten that request from the customer. I was lucky to get perhaps the very last purple King Inset-8 headset available-everything else was out of stock at the time but the exact headset that I needed was there......a rare bit of luck in 2021.

To build this frame I wound up getting my old jig back from a friend as it had more flexibility to make something with a headtube this long. Once I got the front triangle together I had to transfer the build to my newer jig as it had the thru-axle hardware that the old one didn't . The steerer on the fork had to be extended-fortunately I have a reliable way to do this. It is a Paragon tapered steerer and it is a unicrown flat mount fork with a 12 mm thru-axle. I am building more of these forks lately but this is by far the biggest one ever.

Most of the tubes are from Vari-Wall in Ohio. I had to use a down tube for a top tube as it was the only tube long enough to work. The top tube level measurement is 740 mm. The rider is a hair under 7 feet tall. Everything is off the scale on this bike and I'm sure that tandem gear cables will be needed to hook up the derailleurs. This complexity in the build does not stop with me......the mechanic will have his or her hands full.