THE RIKULAU 953 STEEL BICYCLE

With the proliferation of carbon fibre, titanium and aluminium bikes, one might wonder what, if anything, would be the attraction of steel as a modern bicycle material for a prospective road bike purchaser. The abiding picture of a steel bike remains that of the vehicular transportation of choice for an old Chinatown gentleman who holds the handlebar with one hand, an umbrella overhead with the other, and hawks slash spits onto the pavement every 10 minutes. Steel is just not a sexy material for bicycles anymore. The cultists who insist that steel rides better than anything out there may be right, but if you want to be first in races (or at least not last) then comfort alone will not give you a podium position. That may have been true, until now.

Reynolds is an American company that has been producing steel for many decades. Their steel has always found a special place in the hearts of bike builders and riders alike, being extremely high-quality, stiff and very easy to work with. And whenever Reynolds came out with a new steel, the cognoscenti drooled over the next superbike made with this new material. Not surprisingly, these bikes then go on to become classics in their own right, and highly prized. Witness the glory enjoyed by 531 steel – in its 5 decades of history, 531 was variously used in building aircraft, racing cars and, of course, high performance bicycles. If you care to look into the history of TDF winning bicycles, you will realize that a not-insignificant proportion of these were made of 531 tubing.  Reynolds then followed in later years with even more cutting edge steel such as the 631, 753 and 853. The thickness of the tubing wall, the minimum required to maintain its qualities and strength, was correspondingly reduced for each iteration of tubing. By the time the world got the 853 sometime in 1996, it was known as the strongest steel ever made for bicycles.

When 2006 rolled around, carbon fibre was the undisputed king of lightweight racing bike material. Steel was what you find gracing the cheap bicycle section of supermarket chains. It was this time that Reynolds announced the creation of its masterpiece to date, the steel to end all steels. The 953 was developed in collaboration with Carpenter Technology Corp, the company that started in the earliest days of the American industrial revolution and still making specialty steels for everything from corrosion-resistant stainless steel ribs for the Statue of Liberty to alloys used in landing gears of fighter jets. 953 is a martensitic-aging (‘maraging’, not cold drawn or heat treated) steel which is highly resistant to corrosion and impact forces. For the same weight, it is as stiff as and stronger than 6AL 4V titanium. The thickness of the tubing can be reduced to a mere 0.3mm, which is less than the width of a slip of paper. Originally made for military use, that explains why its impact strength is similar to armour plating. It must be of some comfort to know that your bicycle as strong as a tank when braving the danger-filled streets of Columbia, Yemen or Johor Bahru.

Building with such a supersteel - like living with a supermodel - is not easy. 4 years after its introduction, the number of manufacturers able to consistently produce high quality bicycles based on 953 tubing can still be counted on the fingers of one hand. Independent Fabrications and Waterford, just to name two famous producers, stand in these hallowed ranks. For others, you will need to go outside of the US;  Taiwan, to be exact.  And the company is known as “Rikulau”.

I visited Jean-Francois, the local Rikulau representative, a mild-mannered Frenchman with very definite (and very often, correct) opinions about almost anything bike-related. JF – as I like to call him – is also the local TDF and PBP (Paris-Brest-Paris) rep who organizes the 200/400/600km brevets necessary to qualify for the PBP. Any local reader who harbours dreams of competing in the TDF one day will need to get to know JF very well. This man waxes lyrical about the Rikulau and explains that the tipping-point for him to take over dealership was the fact that Rikulau’s founders were intimately involved in the building of Litespeed titanium bicycles in Taiwan. Rikulau bicycles can therefore boast of an illustrious pedigree of bike-building know-how. Rikulau claims to employ only the best welders in Taiwan, and based on seeing the bikes in the flesh, I have no reason to doubt them.

Rikulau bicycles are highly customizable in terms of paintwork (for a per-colour charge), and there are quite a number standard finishes from which to choose, all of them very beautiful and creative. I was hemming and hawing between the Xochitl and the Mondrian before finally plonking for the former with stylized roses in orange against a black background. Other Xochitl options include an orange background with a highly mirror-polished rose motif, which others may prefer. Rikulau even allowed me to paint my name on the bike, which is not only an effective theft prevention device, but also increases the bike’s uniqueness. However, buyers who wish to later on-sell the bicycle can always send it back to Rikulau to have the name painted over, for a small fee.

THE BIKE ITSELF

I do not pretend to be an expert in bicycle design or geometry, so I am just going to list the vital stats for those who can make sense of it. The bicycle is an XS size (I am a not-so-tall 162cm), with a head-tube angle of 70.5 degrees (no numbers are given for fork offset), chainstay length of 405mm, wheelbase of 962.8mm, and effective top tube length of 510mm. Even though it is small, it does not resort to a sloping top-tube geometry and that is what I prefer. Somehow, the straight top tube for a road bike just looks more... ‘right’.

I chose the SRAM Force 2011 groupset for this bike, not just for the weight advantage, but also because the evolution of the Force gruppo has reached a point where it is so close to the Red that many cannot distinguish it from its flagship brother. It’s only a matter of time before SRAM unveils a newer and badder Red gruppo, but until then the Force remains, to my mind, the best value for money road groupset on the planet.

I also ordered a pair of @OM clincher wheels, with a claimed weight of 1450gm for the pair. Apart from their relative lightness, the wheels have cool graphics adorning the medium deep carbon rims and look absolutely gorgeous against the orange-black colourway of my Xochitl. All in all, I cannot be happier with the aesthetic quality of the bike. It is – simply put – a stunner. Even JF agrees, and he originally thought the rose design a bit, well...girly.

THE RIDE

My first ever ride on a Rikulau was on JF’s 12 year-old son’s 853 (Rikulau’s lower tier steel offering) which was fitted with a very reasonable Shimano 105 groupset and Look pedals, which I used with street sandals I had on at the time. Even with the bike not properly fitted to me and inappropriate footwear, my first impression of the ride was how ridiculously inspired - and inspiring – it was. It’s as if the bike was able somehow to read my mind and point me in the direction I wanted to go. It brought to mind the Discovery Science programme where a scientist demonstrated a wheelchair that could go in any direction the user wished simply by activating it via thought power. The Rikulau felt that intuitive. Another thing I noticed was, when I was driving back home in my (steel) car after the test ride, the drive actually reminded me of how I felt on that bike. Was it the comfort, or the effortlessness? I am not sure, but that was the defining moment when I told myself I had to have the Rikulau.

My first few shakedown rides after I receiving my Xochitl took place around my estate where there are a few microclimbs (don’t bother to look it up, the word is my invention to refer to climbs less than a minute long). These short sharp bursts showed that the Rikulau really wants to climb! It has a natural talent for eating up slopes, helped in no small part by its light-ish weight (7.7kg fully built-up), the wonderful @OM wheels and the pair of Japanese Panaracer Race Type L tyres. Unlike the Colnago C40HP, which used to taunt me sotto voce, when I could no longer muster the strength to power up longer climbs, “Is that all you have?”, the Rikulau simply adapted its temperament to suit my fitness (or lack thereof). Like a wonderful helpmate, it very gracefully and quietly gets you over the slope however much you feel like crumpling into a dunglike heap of exhaustion at that particular moment. On the other hand, every bit of applied force on the pedals translates into a forward and upward movement thanks to the fantastically stiff frame and BB. Standing up to pedal poses no flex that I could detect, but really, there is no need for that at all. Seated climbing suits this frame to a T, and seems to reap the best rewards. On straights, again there is none of that quiet “derision” dished out by the highest end carbon fibre bikes. Call me a sissy, but if I am slow, the bike slows down with me and reminds me to smell the roses and enjoy the ride while it cossets, smoothens the bumps and carpets the tarmac for my benefit. However if I am fast, the Rikulau responds by giving me supreme confidence to take sharp turns and carve corners at speeds I would never have dreamed of using on other bikes (despite the lowish 6.8cm BB drop).

CONCLUSION

My initial assessment of the Rikulau 953 bicycle is that it is a perfectly-balanced, magic-carpet, wind-beneath-your-wings ride that reminds you why you got into this crazy sport in the first place. The casual and fitness cyclist looking for more speed and agility to keep up with the fast group during the weekend rides will find it a Godsend. You could conceivably even win races with this frame, and Rikulau’s representatives have reported winning competitions in both the US and Taiwan on the 953. Based on what I have experienced so far, I have every reason to believe that it is indeed the wonder steel that the world has been waiting for.

PS: Re-reading this post, I realized that in my enthusiasm for this bicycle, I may have ended up sounding rather less than objective. I disclaim any connection with Rikulau Taiwan or JFT Cycling in Singapore, and I certainly do not benefit financially from these 2 entities. I will update this post when I have had more miles on the Xochitl, but in the meantime perhaps the one or two 'negatives' I should point out about the Rikulau is that it is not the lightest bike in the world - you can certainly build a carbon fibre ride for less than 7.7kg for the same price (list SGD3200 for frame and standard carbon Easton EC90 fork). The frame tubing is definitely not aero by any stretch of the imagination, so this will not be the time-trialling bike of choice.