The handmade bicycle show season picks up again this weekend with MADE Bike in Portland, Oregon. Now in its second year, there’s plenty of buzz around those displaying, including an increasing number of international builders. Perhaps jumping the gun, the forever innovative North American titanium specialist No. 22 has teased what it’s been dedicating significant design time to: an aero road bike.
Still very much in prototype form and not likely to reach customers until 2025, the company’s new Reactor offers the silhouette of an unapologetic modern race machine. A number of the tube profiles have a contemporary deep and shapely profile, the front wheel hugs near to the downtube, while the rear sits tucked against the sculpted seat tube. If you can appreciate the aesthetic of other current-generation aero road bikes, this one is quite striking.
Such an aero machine is arguably a new domain for No. 22, and it’s an absolute rarity in the handmade world of titanium frames. The likes of Rob English and English Cycles have long played with the benefits of narrow steel tubing to make one-off time-trial bikes (feature incoming!). Meanwhile, Australia’s Bossi has its Strada SS, an aero-profiled titanium bike with production sizing. Still, this new Reactor seems to take things up a notch further with early aero consultation coming from the likes of Silca and then followed with extensive CFD (computational fluid dynamics) design time. No. 22 has yet to put its prototype in the wind tunnel, but that’s apparently on the cards, too.
To be shown at MADE, the prototype is wholly printed from titanium powder (aka, 3D-printed titanium). According to No. 22’s co-founder Mike Smith, “the final makeup is still to be confirmed as we progress through prototyping.” What’s likely is that the frame will utilise heavily formed main tubes connecting to complex 3D-printed lug assemblies. “We may print the entire tubes and then weld them in, but need more ride quality testing to confirm,” added Smith.
In addition to the goal of clearance for 34 mm measured tyres, another detail unlikely to change is that of the carbon fibre integrated seat tube that’s bonded within the printed titanium lugs. The use of carbon fibre here is an element that the company’s current Reactor road race bike features. The filament-wound tube shown in this prototype was produced by fellow maker and designer July Bicycles (a new builder at the inaugural MADE event).
Up front sits a matching deep-legged fork, something Smith has confirmed is the company’s own, utlising 3D-printed lowers with its own carbon steerer (a concept Prova Cycles recently landed on, too). The stem is also No. 22’s own, another 3D-printed titanium item that almost certainly borrows some of the design ideas used by the company before. Meanwhile, the handlebar is Enve’s Aero model.
It’s clear that No.22 is taking a real performance-minded approach to this bike and aims to build upon the existing round-tubed Reactor model that’s purposefully stiff and race-focused. This new Reactor could prove to be competitively aero, stiff, and likely more durable (to impact, at least) than many carbon fibre aero race bikes, but it certainly won’t be as light. “We want to be cagey for a final frame weight as we have a long way to go, but we’re currently tracking to have this about the same or slightly lighter than our Aurora road model,” Smith said.
What isn’t clear is how much one of these things will cost (clue: a lot) and whether such a performance-minded customer could be swayed from the lure of magic black plastic. Either way, it sure is lovely to look at.
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