richardlofthouse.cc

REVIEW: Enigma Ethos Steel, Custom Build
£3,000

Visting Enigma, swimming in the sea afterwards

I know this is a big roaring debate currently, whether you should spend any money on your commuter/hacker/winter trainer. But for me, it was an easy decision because I've clocked up c.20,000kms in three years on my trusty Focus Mares, mostly commuting, and spent far more hours on this, my humblest ride, than on all the others put together (the cross bike, the TT bike, the road racer, the fixie and the trainer........).

I decided I wanted a Rohloff hub gear build from Enigma, the titanium and steel specialists down in Sussex, Southern England, but in the end I opted for an Ethos-based custom build, much lighter at the rear end with a derailleur.

Jaco Ehlers did a great job measuring me up

How it unfolded

First Enigma. Jim Walker sold his distribution company and founded Enigma a few years ago, buying the then-bankrupt Omega. Today he's doing 700 bikes a year and targets 2,000 as a comfortable but still highly bespoke business.

Graeme Raeburn, Rapha's chief designer and a friend, had a Reynolds-based steel racer and spoke highly of it. I decided to investigate further. Enigma is an impressive company leading the charge back to British, hand-made bikes. I decided I'd pay a visit.

Ti or Steel?

I decided for steel over titanium

The Test Bike - I almost wanted this one, right away

I visited Enigma in September 2012, with a maximum Bike-to-Work voucher of £3,000 in my back pocket. I rode a ti bike and then a steel one made of Reynolds 853. Steel won the day. The titanium was a racier bike but I wanted one for city life and audaxing would be its fastest outing. I found the titanium to be tighter and less comfy than I had anticipated. Steel frames, mated to the right tyres, roll beautifully. There's a nobility about the progress and bump absorption. With panniers on the back on a daily basis, weight wasn't my number one concern, but I wanted to match my 25lb, alumnium-framed Focus Mares Cross/commute bike.

Getting the fit and build right
Jaco Ehlers, a South African, sorted me out brilliantly and was very generous with his time. Lots of fitting led to a quite different-from-stock build, with a taller head tube for city work, but on a tight, road-bike derived geometry. I ditched the Rohloff idea as soon as Jim showed me one. It weighes a tonne and costs even more. The build was coming out at a fantastic sum of money. I got nervous. In truth, I'd only had my derailleur bent once in three years of London life. It's not that difficult to fix and you can easily replace it.

I opted for classic script, instead of 'modern'

Enigma moved to a larger facility early in 2013

The money goes into the custom frame. We decided on Reynolds 853, which is more comfortable than 931 or 953, which are both very stiff and for racing. Enigma's renowned frame builder Mark Reilly was on hand and he told me that 853 was the best tubing for stiff/compliant, given the intended use. I wanted a steel fork with bosses for a low rider, to accommodate light touring. With all the boxes ticked, the rest of the build was Shimano 105 with tweaks, and a cheap but strong set of stock, Mavic Aksium wheels. Smart in black, and my favourite fast commute hoops, very cheap to replace and just 1,700 grams the pair. I got a smaller large chain ring, an FSA 46 toother instead of the 50/34 compact. In my view the 16 tooth drop of the compact is far too much, and for commuting, the 50 is simply too high. In the city, it means you barely ever go on the big ring and effectively waste half the transmission, accelerating the wear on the inner ring. These are the sort of details I wanted addressed. Another consideration was avoiding toe overlap with the front mudguard, even with size 44 shoes, clips and straps. This was achieved by extending the front fork out by 40mm, and has solved one of the big bugbears of the Focus. To keep a lid on weight I ordered a Tubus Logo Titan titanium rack, and checked the box for a carbon seat post. For a touch of bling, I ordered the Chris King headset.For a touch of real world, I ordered Cane Creek cross-top brake levers, which I swear by on a

5

My Bike: battleship grey and black

commute. They give you hair-trigger braking.

Colour dilemmas
It's one of the great things about a six-month wait for a custom project. You can still change your mind. I'd specced Ferrari Red but had a sudden change of heart. Battleship grey - one of the sexy, avant-greys that are circulating right now on certain Bentleys and Porsche 911s, retro but modern - had come into view and was subtle, less likely to attract thieves but gorgeous to my view, especially with the matched, painted handlebar stem. I called up Jaco and I was lucky: they were due to get the bike painted a week later.

Picking it up
One of the oddities was seeing the bike for the first time at Bespoked, Bristol, where Enigma had asked me if they could feature it on their stand. I was very happy with what I saw, but I couldn't ride it or take it away. A week later I drove down to Sussex and Enigma's new facility at Hailsham. There were a few last minute adjustments and off I went.

Riding it
I've laid down 300kms in little over a week, which included an audax, and a tonne of commuting. The bike is leggier and livelier than the relaxed Cross-bike geometry of the Focus. It is faster but I feel less inclined to cowboy about, partly because of the Schwalbe Double Defense 700x25 tyres (versus Schwalbe 700x28s on the Focus, which were necessary to soften the harsher alloy frame). There is no toe overlap. The titanium rack is exceptionally stiff. I use the whole transmission and switching between chain rings no longer leaves me grabbing a handful of compensating sprockets at the back. I'm happy to return to road brake calipers instead of MTB V-Brakes. They are slightly softer, but the V-Brakes required constant adjustment. That sucked. I love the looks and the grey/black combo is a success. My neighbour is a graphic designer and he is envious to a silly degree.

Final Thoughts
I was treated exceptionally well by Enigma and recommend them to anyone, unreservedly. There is one obvious comment applying to custom builds. It helps to know what you want but to be flexible as well, and better to be fairly involved than passive, otherwise what's the point? Above all, you have to be reasonably patient. You know if you are or aren't. If you get the colour 'wrong', you can take the bike back when it's all scratched up and get it done all over again. That's the magic of a proper, old-school build in the country where you live. You can even meet the guy who made your frame, in my case Joe Walker, Jim's son. It took him three days of painstaking labour. I am not against factories in Taiwan. Not at all. But I am firmly in favour of doing things properly, and provenance, as in the food chain, is just as deisrable when it comes to the most important object in one's life: one's bicycle.

Final, Final thoughts
After a fortnight of hard use, my only upgrades so far: black alloy dust caps on each inner tube valve, from Brick Lane Bikes (£2.00); Brooks Swallow saddle (£129.99). The saddle is my 4th Brooks (the rest sold off quickly) and so far it is the only one that is comfortable from the off - I had investigated buying a well worn-in B17 from eBay, but objected to the prices, while the 'worn-in already' range that Brooks sell is only available in tan! The Swallow is a racing cut but a very supple piece of leather with plenty of give. We'll see in six months whether it really is here to stay or yet another disastrous episode of Lofthouse-weakness-for-beautiful-object followed by a loss-making eBay expedition.
The only fly in the ointment with the Enigma, is that the Pitlock seat collar bolt doesn't fit the supplied seat collar clamp, so I am terrified that someone is going to allen-key their way to £200-worth of carbon seatpost and Brooks. This makes me think that bespoke bike builders should be making a much bigger effort (this includes Enigma!) to integrate a full suite of these security products into the original spec, if desired by the owner. There is nothing more annoying than taking delivery, only to have to replace every bolt and skewer with after market additions, and then finding, surprise surprise, that some of the parts don't translate over. That's the bike industry for you. It can be a very annoying place. Salvation might be at hand. I am talking to a simply brilliant new company called Atomic 22 (www.atomic22.com). The fantastic couple behind it, Patrick Wells and Ayantika Mitra have a fully fledged suite of beautiful, light weight and very secure bolts and skewers for every possible bit of the bike from brakes to saddles. That might be the next upgrade - but if I do it, I'll do it big and work over the whole bike in one go, so that I end up with one universal 'key' rather than a mix of Pitlock / Atomic. I'll pay a visit to Atomic in the process and report back, probably in June.