This stainless steel bicycle tubing Has a Secret

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I’ve started to get to know Rob English a bit. He’s based in Oregon not too far away from me and I first met him years ago when competing in a hill climb time trial in Southern Oregon.

Then my most reliable riding partner spent over a year obsessing and planning before finally picking up his very own Rob English bike.

If you read my stories regularly you’ll remember that colliding with that bike left a Trek Madone in pieces even though it escaped without a scratch. From there English and I seemed to run into each other everywhere.

When I see an English bike, I can always tell who made it.

He works in steel but to call his bikes timeless isn’t quite right. Rob English bikes aren’t so much timeless as they are out of time. They are thoroughly modern yet the steel forms that make up the modern designs look as if they came from another time.

There’s this beautiful balance of past and present and the two come together in a Rob English bike like the yellow steel TT bike he showed at Enve.

gleaming stainless steel gravel bike

I could have featured any of the bikes English had on his MADE display but I let him choose. What he picked was a gleaming stainless steel gravel bike.

Like the best show bikes, it’s got clear signs of use. The bar tape is a bit dirty, there’s scratching on the Enve carbon fork, and it’s not all that clean.

Despite that, it shines like nothing else at the show.

It actually shines so much that I missed its greatest trick. This is a folding bike but I looked at it and I walked around it with a camera shooting all the details and I missed it.

You can’t tell in person that anything is off. When fully assembled there’s nothing to give away it’s true nature.

Let Rob English describe how this bike folds because it’s still a mystery to me.

The details are there though. English bikes shift between electronic and mechanical as customers desire but this one is fully mechanical to make sure it’s easy to pack up.

Instead of worrying about hydraulic lines, there’s a set of Growtac Equal Mechanical disc brakes. They don’t look too bad either as they carry the blue anodization that matches details like the Wolf Tooth headset.

Handling shifting duties, you’ll find a set of Campagnolo Chorus mechanical levers. English told me this is his bike and he had the groupset sitting around so he used it.

What you won’t find on these levers is the trademark Campy thumb button on the left control. Instead, the English dismantled it and modified it to activate the dropper post that carries a Bjorn Setka 3D-printed saddle.

You also won’t find other Campy parts on the bike.

There’s no front derailleur as this is a 1x by gravel bike. In place of the rear derailleur, English has an Ingrid RD1 in place. He’s gone with the silver colorway again sticking to the blue and silver color scheme and the crank plays its part in that as well.

Instead of a Campagnolo crankset, English chose to use a Garboruk road and gravel 1x piece. It’s 7075-T651 Aluminum Alloy with a blue anodized finish and a contrasting black chainring.

Given the tight relationship with Enve that Rob English has, you will definitely find a number of Enve parts on this bike. The wheels are a set of Enve G23 race gravel wheels shod with Schwalbe G-One R tires and English is staying somewhat traditional with 40mm width.

There’s also the fork I already mentioned plus an Enve carbon stem and Enve AR handlebars.

The real star of this build is the tubing. I’ve already gotten a bit poetic about the stainless but it’s hard to overstate the case. I like to shoot the headtube straight on but I had to angle myself out of the frame.

You can see all the parts reflecting in the mirror like finish and the joins are true artistry.

Rob English bikes do require a wait but if you like the idea of a bike out of time, take a look at the English Cycles website and see if you like the sound of the story being told.