Custom bike fit, Part 1.

Earlier in the week I spent the day down at Baum Cycles with Darren and Nick, working on my bike fit for my custom Baum Wills touring bike. We will tell you all about the two different bikes we will be using later but let me just say that the Wills is full of titanium goodness.

Most people that ride tend to head on down to the local bike shop and pick out a bike of the rack that they like. The salesperson will generally choose the most appropriate frame size based on your height then adjust the seat and handlebars to get you as comfortable as possible, and away you go.

The advantage of a custom built bike is that every aspect from geometry to materials are personally fitted to you, rather than you being fitted to the bike.

The starting point for the custom build process involves spending time riding the fit bike, a slightly odd looking stationary bike that can be adjusted in a variety of ways to fit a person of almost any shape and size.

The contact points between the rider and bike are very important at this stage and will have an effect on the final design, therefore the fit bike will generally be set up with the handlebars, saddle, pedals and shoes that you intend to use.

We have chosen to use Salsa Woodchipper MTB drop bars on our bikes.

Once the fit is complete, Nick will gather all the data from the fit bike and transfer them into bikeCAD on the computer, producing an illustrated version of the bike in this case the Wills drop bar 29er.

From here the final design may go through a little tweaking before Darren transfers all the information to construction drawings in autoCAD. Now it’s off to manufacture.

If you want to read a little more about a custom bike fit and the process go to: http://www.baumcycles.com/custom-fit and take a look. You can also browse some of the bikes Baum have built over the years.

In part 2 of our bike fit post, Garry will talk about his personal experience of the bike fit process and getting a custom bike made to fit compared to purchasing off the shelf.
Darren and Nick will then observe you riding and adjust the fit bike on the spot to customise various aspects of its geometry and work out the optimal rider position depending on the intended use. All of this is then fed into the final design.