There are a lot of new things happening at AC; new location for the store, new website and new bikes. Here we’re going to talk about the new bikes, or Mosaic to be more specific. “New” may be a bit of an understatement as we’ve been riding and selling the bikes from Boulder, CO for almost a year and a half, but we have not really written about them much yet. To be fair, we haven’t written about much, so there you go!
The first bike we’re going to cover is a road bike with a twist. Mosaic called it the TT-1 or Travel Titanium One or the top level titanium travel bike they produce. By travel they mean easily broken down to fit into a small box that will not incur any travel fees from any of the airlines out there. The bike is based on the Mosaic RT-1, you got it, the Road Titanium One (you’ll see a pattern when we add more bikes) except for the fact that they don’t butt the tubes as you really can’t when you have the coupler in the middle of the top and down tube. But other than that, this particular bike has the 44mm oversized head tube, small diameter seat stays, custom geometry and finish found on the top of the range road frame.
For this particular bike we built it as a high performance road bike capable of winning any race or event (dependent of the riders legs of course) with the added benefit of being able to break down into a box the diameter of a wheel. We had the goal of making it as light as possible and retaining the characteristics of a standard RT-1 road bike. We started with Shimano Dura-Ace Di2 and while not the lightest high end group out there, makes the actual act of breaking down the bike that much simpler.
we built it as a high performance road bike capable of winning any race or event
Normally, with a travel bike there is a cable splitter for the two derailleur cables and the rear brake cable. But in this case you can just run and extra long shift cable in the down tube and when the frame is split there is no need to take apart the cable which saves a nice chunk of time. Also, by using the electronic group you know the shifting quality won’t be affected at all when you re-build the frame upon reaching you destination.
Not just for travel bikes but for all the frames that allow it we use standard clamp on front derailleurs as it allows for more positive shifting from one chainring to the other. Also, note the 3rd bottle mount. This customer is using this bike for long races without much support and it’s always good to be prepared.
Of course one great thing about custom bikes is being able to choose your own finish. For this bike we kept it traditional ti with no paint but a bead blasted satin finish with polished logos.
This bike was built last summer, before I even heard the term ‘gravel grinder’ but that was the type of terrain that this bike would be seeing a lot of. So we started with some 27mm Vittoria Open Pave tires which fit with room to spare in the Dura-Ace 9000 brake calipers which remain some of the best brakes we’ve ever used.
Beautiful welds and polished couplers as well. Nice touches from Mosaic.
While we definitely focused on light overall weight, we didn’t sacrifice strength on the wheels. This customer will be using carbon wheels for the less demanding courses, but these wheels, built with Dura-Ace 9000 hubs, Hed Belgium 23mm rims and 24 DT Swiss Aerolite spokes front and rear will handle the heavy duty stuff. Also, in our opinion the only way to build the rear end of any titanium bike is with these Breezer style dropouts.
Right now at least, the best quick release skewers in the business; Dura-Ace.
Mosaic has a few head badges available to fit any taste. For this bike it’s the brass bolt on plate…
3T Ltd cockpit and a Bar Fly 2.0 to keep the front end tidy…
I promise that you’ll see much much more from the folks in Boulder, CO! Great bike that already has thousands of miles on it and more air miles that this owner would like to admit.
For more information on this bike or how to build one to your specifications don’t hesitate to contact us or come on in!
Thanks for reading!
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