Engineered Bicycles launch new crit bike

Bristol-based Engineered Bicycles have released a new aluminium criterium bike, the Donder, to go alongside the Zondag cyclocross race bike that we’ve shown you in the past. 

Like the Zondag, the Donder has been designed in the UK by David Fong and handbuilt in Italy.

The Donder is designed as a criterium race bike and, according to David, the priorities in the design were to produce a stiff frame for precise and stable cornering and the efficient transfer of power, and also to make a bike that was both lightweight and resilient.

The Donder is made from a custom Dedacciai aluminium tubeset with a small amount of scandium in there to increase the strength and allow narrower wall thicknesses to be used, reducing the weight.

Why has David gone for aluminium? The thinking there is that aluminium is resilient enough to handle the knocks associated with crit racing.

In order to get stiffness at the front, the Donder has a 44mm internal diameter head tube and an oversized down tube, so the junction between the two is large for, in theory, added stiffness.

Engineered Bicycles use a traditional press-fit headset for a solid connection between the bearing and the cup. The upper bearing is 1 1/8in and the lower one is 1 1/2in, which is a combination you’ll find on quite a lot of performance bikes these days. The idea is that you get greater stiffness and improved steering precision – clearly key attributes in crit racing.

The bottom bracket is a BB86 press-fit standard that’s compatible with a wide range of different chainsets. A threaded BSA bottom bracket is available as an option, and a BB386EVO version of the Donder is in development if you’d prefer even greater chainset choice.

You can choose to have one or two sets of bottle cage bosses, or none at all, and you can select from a whole range of different colour finishes.

Engineered Bicycles offer the Donder in six stock sizes from 50cm to 60cm. The 56cm version, for example, comes with a 56.5cm effective top tube, a 15.6cm head tube, and 73°/73.5° frame angles. The stack on that size is 565mm and the reach is 388mm.

The price for a stock frameset is £1,250. That includes a Deda full carbon monocoque fork. Orders take 6-8 weeks to arrive.

A complete bike in the build shown – with a Campagnolo Centaur carbon groupset and Campag Bora wheels – is £3,900. Engineered Bicycles say it weighs 7.1kg (15.6lb).

You can go for a custom geometry if you like with the price adjusted according to the complexity of the changes from standard.

For more info go to www.engineeredbikes.co.uk.