These day everyone wants one bike that can do it all. They want something that can handle a cross country tour, maybe an enduro race or two, then head on down to the local criterium. But what you end up with is sort of like a Crescent Wrench™; it’ll work, but it’s not your first choice when you want to do the job right. The best way to narrow down what bike you need is to work backwards. Picture yourself on the ride(s) you plan on doing most of the time and decide what you really need from your bike. Does it need to handle rocky stuff, or will you spend most of your time on fire roads? Will you be racing cross or commuting mostly? And don’t plan for Armageddon because it already happened. In other words, don’t think about what you might do with the bike, plan for what you will be doing with the bike. You’ll enjoy a bike designed for 95% of your riding 95% more than one designed for 5% of your riding.
We’ve tried to make it easy to choose your model based on a couple requirements: cranks and tires. First choose the maximum tire size you need and then look to see if that model will handle the crankset you want to run. Sometimes the two don’t mesh. For example, we get folks wanting their Dirtbomb to run 45c tires and a 39/53 road crank but there isn’t room to make both those things coexist on the same bike due to clearance issues. So with 45c tires you’ll have to compromise and run a 34/50 compact crank. Or, if gearing is more important than tire size, drop down to the Groundskeeper and get your optimum gearing but a smaller (35c) tire. In the end you may have to give a little ground on the tires or cranks. An easy rule for our cross bikes is anything fatter than a 35c tire needs a compact road crank and anything beyond a 45c tire is considered a mountain bike and needs mountain style cranks.
One thing to remember is that we make custom bikes. So what you see here is just a basic framework to help you get started. We can mix and match some of the specs because when you get down to it, most of these bikes are just slight variations on the same theme. So if you want a Royale with longer chainstays or a Grasshopper set up for touring, we can do that kind of thing. Just ask.
A word on forks. You’ll notice some frame models come with unicrown forks, and some with segmented forks. The reason is that we use unicrown blades when we can but in some cases an appropriate unicrown blade doesn’t exist for that application (for reasons such as tire clearance, length, or brake type) in which case we go to a segmented style fork. If you want to run discs on a Royale or Grasshopper we’re going to set you up with a carbon fork of some sort.
Meet the Treehorn, our 650B road/dirt/gravel/whatever bike.
| MAX TIRE SIZE | 47C |
| MAX CRANK | Road compact 34/50 or 1x (up to 46T) |
| STD CHAINSTAY | 41.2 CM (but varies depending on customer and application) |
| FORK | Segmented or tapered carbon (with optional tapered head tube) |
This bike sits atop our cross bike food chain, fitting up to 45c tires.
| MAX TIRE SIZE | 45C |
| MAX CRANK | Road compact 34/50 or 1x (up to 46T) |
| STD CHAINSTAY | 43.5 CM (but varies depending on customer and application) |
| FORK | Unicrown or tapered carbon (with optional tapered head tube) |
This is our meat and potatoes cross rig. It’s built to race cross. Sure, it can do other things too.
| MAX TIRE SIZE | 35C |
| MAX CRANK | Road 39/53 or 1x (up to 53T) |
| STD CHAINSTAY | 42.5 CM (but varies depending on customer and application) |
| FORK | Unicrown or tapered carbon (with optional tapered head tube) |
If you are constantly being distracted while on road rides by all those crappy side roads and dirt road shortcuts, the Grasshopper might be your ticket.
| MAX TIRE SIZE | 32C |
| MAX CRANK | Road 39/53 or 1x (up to 53T) |
| STD CHAINSTAY | 42 CM (but varies depending on customer and application) |
| FORK | Segmented or tapered carbon (with optional tapered head tube) |
The Royale glides smoothly along even the most neglected pavement while responding with gusto whenever you need to get after it.
| MAX TIRE SIZE | 28C |
| MAX CRANK | Road 39/53 or 1x (up to 53T) |
| STD CHAINSTAY | 41 CM |
| FORK | Segmented or tapered carbon (with optional tapered head tube) |
| 28C | 32C | 35C | 40C | 45C | 47C | MAX CRANK | STD CHAINSTAY | FORK | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Treehorn | Road compact 34/50 or 1x (up to 46T) | 41.2 CM (but varies depending on customer and application) | Segmented or tapered carbon (with optional tapered head tube) | ||||||
| Dirtbomb | Road compact 34/50 or 1x (up to 46T) | 43.5 CM (but varies depending on customer and application) | Unicrown or tapered carbon (with optional tapered head tube) | ||||||
| Groundskeeper | Road 39/53 or 1x (up to 53T) | 42.5 CM (but varies depending on customer and application) | Unicrown or tapered carbon (with optional tapered head tube) | ||||||
| Grasshopper | Road 39/53 or 1x (up to 53T) | 42 CM (but varies depending on customer and application) | Segmented or tapered carbon (with optional tapered head tube) | ||||||
| Royale | Road 39/53 or 1x (up to 53T) | 41 CM | Segmented or tapered carbon (with optional tapered head tube) |
Remember 26” wheels? Mark our words; they will make a comeback. Get your disco ball ready.
| WHEEL SIZE | 26" |
| DRIVETRAIN | Geared |
Singlespeeding is dead. Pay no attention to this.
| WHEEL SIZE | 26" 27.5" 29" |
| DRIVETRAIN | Singlespeed |
| 26" | 27.5" | 29" | GEARED | SINGLESPEED | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Holy Roller | |||||
| Tradesman | |||||
| Option B | |||||
| Option 3 | |||||
| Plowboy |
After we get the fit information, we start connecting the dots around those points based on parts selection, riding style, and aesthetics. Then we will send you a preliminary drawing just so you can see where we're at. Once you have a chance to look it over we will schedule a phone interview where we can discuss design details and options and make changes to the drawing if needed. Once we settle on a frame design and you sign off on the drawing, we're ready to start building your frame (although it probably won't get started at that time due to the orders in front of yours).
First, we select the tubes which go through five different quality control checks. If something isn’t up to par, we throw the tube in the "NFG" box and grab another. Next we miter (cope) the tubes on one of our custom made fixtures. We love machines and fixtures, and we’ve invested a lot of money in them so that our miters come out perfect on every cut. This makes a huge difference when welding the frames because the smaller the gap, the less twisting the frame will do which results in better final alignment.
After the tubes are cut and ready to go, we tack weld them in our frame fixture and then check the alignment on our surface plate. Now it’s on to welding. After the frame is welded it gets all the cable stops brazed and then it’s “machined”, which is head tube reaming/facing, seat tube reaming, and bottom bracket chasing/facing. All this is done on a machine rather than by hand which gives us more accurate cuts and better surface finishes.
The final step is alignment. Fortunately this isn’t an intensive process because the frames are really close already. Small adjustments can be made on the surface plate to make sure your bike will ride straight and handle as it was designed.
And finally, paint. We choose powder coating because it is highly durable and more environmentally friendly than “wet”, or solvent based paints. Our local powder coater uses a 3 stage prep process which includes media blasting, a phosphate conversion coating, and a sealing rinse. This all makes for a much better paint adherence. Then a base color is applied which is followed by a clear coat. We forgo fancy paint schemes because we think the understated, single color approach works well with our overall philosophy of “business before pleasure”. When we get the frame back from paint, we clean all the machined surfaces and threads, apply decals, and spray rust inhibitor on all the bare metal surfaces. Every Soulcraft frame comes completely ready to assemble with no prep needed. 