A few months ago a really nice woman stopped by our shop to chat about e-bikes. She was 5’4″ and petite and had been struggling to find an ebike that fit her that was not super heavy. Most of the ebikes out there that are fully powered are very heavy, and she did not like the way they handle or how difficult it is to load the bike onto a bike rack.
We set out to build her an ebike that was around 35lbs instead of 50-65lbs like the other ebikes she had tried. We started by doing a full bike fitting on our Guru fit bike here in the shop. Once we determined the exact riding position she liked for comfort and power, Lennard created a CAD drawing for the bike so she could see a 2D drawing of the bike and how it would look.
After the design was approved we sent over the design and tube spec and cutting sheet to Nalby, our veteran titanium framebuilder to get into the frame building queue. During the time while we were waiting for the frame to be done, we finalized all of the component choices with the client and worked with her to come up with a nice looking finish job with custom anodizing.
When we anodize the frame, we start with the unassembled frame and polish the areas where we are putting graphics including the Zinn logos, the designer’s signature, as well as the customer’s name. Then we anodize that area with the desired colors, place vinyl stencils over the area and the sandblast the frame. Once you peel off the stencils, you are left with a beautiful custom anodizing of the graphics.
When she came to pick up her bike, she was thrilled. She immediately took it for a spin, and was so excited she immediately told her husband that he needed to order one for himself. It’s wonderful to be able to ride an ebike that performs like a regular bike would. It doesn’t feel like a heavy clunker that is hard to move around, but a true performance bike. Her bike weighed in a 35lbs fully built, which is very light for a full power ebike. We are really glad to be able to keep people riding bikes even when a non ebike is no longer an option. We can’t wait to see the look on her husbands face when he gets his!
