Kirklee Goliath

Kirklee Goliath
Originally uploaded by shamacycles

What started off as a simple quest to build a better bike than his current Trek Madone slowly became a monster of its own. First we chose the frame and of course being the number one Guru dealer in the country it would seem likely that we would build a Guru instead of some of the other fine frames that I offer in the shop. After listening to my client and what he wanted I leaned him towards the Kirklee. A small company based in Austin turning out custom frames that can easily be dialed in to what I would want for my clients needs. Light, smooth, and fun. Now the hard part...what to paint it. See with Kirklee we deal with a painter and the sky is the limit. After about a week of back and forth the owner settled in on an idea or a theme...WOOD. My first reaction was "no way", done poorly it would be a really horrible looking bike. As I thought about it longer I saw the potential here. Potential for something unique and set apart from the rest. After some more back and forth with the client, Kirklee and the painter we picked the shade, finish and grain of wood the paint is supposed to represent. After that we gave the painter artistic freedom to do what he does best....make it look amazing with out our own ideas mucking it up. The one thing we wanted was a branded look for the logos and name of the bike. If you notice the name on the bike says "Goliath". No, that is not the owners name, his name is David and is not very tall. Having a sense of humor about it he and his two sons came up with the name Goliath. Of course I think its great and fitting in a way....I knew this was going to be a big bike. Now with the custom tubing and geometry figured out and being made, the paint lined up, we then chose an Edge 1.0 fork to be painted in to match as well. Next in line was the selection of the components. We talked a while about each part and basically wound up with a pretty amazing build even if I do say so myself. Sram Red shifters, front D and rear D handle all the gear changes via the Power Cordz ultralight and smooth cable system. The gold KMC chain spins through two gold Tiso ceramic pulley wheels before rolling around a Dura Ace cassette mounted on a DT Swiss 240 hub laced with DT Swiss Aerolite spokes holding onto an Edge 45 carbon clincher rim...which rolls on a Schwalbe Ultremo DD tire. That gold chain spins through the rear via the power put down onto a set of Dura Ace pedals attached to a custom set of Lighting crank arms which turn over a set of Rotor QRings. The crank set up spins nearly frictionless thanks to a Zipp BB30 bottom bracket shell housing a set of Enduro Zero ceramic bearings. The Sram Red shifters are mounted on a Zipp Countor SL handle bar which is held in place by a New Ultimate stem that happens to match the very clean New Ultimate carbon seat post that holds onto the Selle SMP Carbon Lite saddle. If and when you ever want to stop this rig a set of Zero Gravity GSL brakes will slow you down nicely. The little add ons include a Soul Kozak seatpost clamp, a set of KCNC ti skewers as well as a very hard to come by pair of Emporelli bottle cages. Wit this huge list of parts selected on this rolling work of art...what does it weigh? Well of course even though the frame is small and made very light...its still pretty heavy due to the paint work....still this bike complete as shown in the pictures here tips the scale at 13lbs 9oz. I, was not even expecting it to be that light. Yep, I gotta say it, this bike even exceeded my own expectations!