Lynskey R260 Disc Maiden Voyage
 

My direct from the factory order came Friday night. It was 4 weeks and two days from order date. It would have been quicker but they were waiting on a wheel delivery. The customer service was great. They responded quickly to questions by telephone and electronic chat. I ordered the complete bike, pre-assembled. It was well packaged and only required me to install the seatpost and change the saddle to my Brooks C15, install the front wheel, pedals, and place the handlebars in the stem. The frame's fit and finish were beautiful with industrial mill finish and etching. The welds look really clean and the frame has a glow that looks really cool.

It was definitely not a light build (it weighed about 22 lbs on a home scale but with pedals, saddle bag with multi tool, pump, tube in box, garmin 800 and two bottle cages and my kind of heavy Brooks saddle). I went with 105 and mechanical disc instead of ultegra/hydraulic and aluminum seatpost, stem and bars to keep the budget reasonable and peace on the homefront. I have a bontrager carbon seatpost which will help. The wheels are FSA Vision Teams (30 mm), again, not light. The fork is a Lynskey pro carbon with 15 mm thru axles. I am keeping my Trek so the goal of this acquisition was comfort while still doing relatively fast group rides. That is a marketing cliche but exactly where my head is at. No racing but no plodding either.

The next morning I took it on a club ride. It drew a lots of scrutiny and positive comments from the group before and during the ride. A lot of attention was directed at the seat and chain stays which are a really unusual shape (curved and offset). It has a huge amount of clearance beyond the 28cs I am riding on. It was a good ride to test it on. 48 miles with 2,300 feet of climb but also some long flats before and after the hills. It was only about 43 degrees but there was little wind so a really nice fall day.

To get to the point (finally), the bike felt great. It was exactly what I was looking for. I am a pretty good climber and it didn't seem to lose anything on the climbs despite the weight. The 11 speed 11/34 105 cassette gave me the full range of options for climbing and descending. The wheels rolled well. The bike descended beautifully; my Trek is really twitchy, probably more so since a crash last year. This was much more steady and confidence inspiring on a couple of very long and windy downhills. The brakes (TRP Spyre mechanicals) stopped very adequately. No problem with being too grabby or having to squeeze too hard. On a nice ending flat of about 15 miles with a slight tailwind, The bike was plenty snappy.

To summarize, I couldn't be more pleased with how the bike looks and handles. I am a longtime titanium lurker. I have always loved the looks of them. I have ridden steel, aluminum and Carbon (carbon for the past 10 years) and they all have their benefits, but this is a really smooth ride and the look is gorgous imho. I went with narrow (40mm), short drop bars and that was also a great choice. My Trek's bars were 44s with a much deeper drop. These fit me perfectly and just feel like they give me a perfect position and control (and they are almost identical to my old trusty Nishiki which I don't ride all that often anymore.

Final opinion: I highly recommend the Lynskey and my dealings with the company. :thumb: I'll post a couple of pictures after I clean the crap off it from my ride.

Kudos. Next bike, take pics BEFORE it gets dirty!

Pics definitely needed!

I have been eying the possibility of building a titanium bike and visited their website numerous times. I'm a bit disappointed to hear that a road build with 28s reached ~20 pounds, however. I had thought Ti came with more weight savings than that. Are you sure of the precision of the scale you used? I would have thought your bike would be in the 18 pound range at the very most.

Did you choose a 50/34 front?

They market this bike as fitting a 28c max. Would you mind measuring to see how much clearance you have?

Yes on the front compact 50/34. I should have weighed it before putting all the accessories on it but it was a last minute decision. I also don't know how accurate our scale is (I'm always a bit lighter at the doc's office). Also, keep in mind this is not their lightest (nor their heaviest) frame. They have road racing frames that I'm sure are much lighter. This is one of their sport frames and I did not build it light so depending what you get and how you build it up, you could have a fairly light build.

I had actually contemplated going the other way only because the bike you built up doesn't have clearance for the width of tires I'd want to run. But if it's going to be 25 pounds, I might as well build a steel bike.

I see their site says max width of 28c but mine has a massive amount of clearance behind the 28c I am running. I think it would handle well beyond 32c if not much higher. Give them a call. And it's not close to 25 lbs even with all the extra crap I have on it. Close to 22 with all that (bag, pump, heavy seat, tools, tube, cages, etc).

Don't weight bike with acces. on the bike, just the pedals and tires on!!!

LOL - Clearly. It was an afterthought as I was about to put it in the car to get to a ride.

PICS!

Be sure to pay attention to the brakes for a while - the pads will continue to bed in to the rotors and they'll get progressively better. This can be problematic when the user isn't quite used to discs, though. I had a moment, a couple weeks in to riding discs, when they were finally breaking in and, in my inexperience, I grabbed too much lever with my weight a little too far forward - damn near went over the bars.

Thanks. Here it is. I know, small ring....

It's pouring rain outside so this is dark and gloomy. Doesn't show the etching very well.

And I see the bars dropped when I was centering them earlier....

Here are a few more. One of them shows the clearance on the 28c's and the unusual chain stays.

Nice, that's a ton of clearance, so much so that I had to check the manufacturer specs - they say it'll clear 34s, not 28s.

Looking good! They should be shipping my R265 frame early next week.

I feel the same way about my 2017 R250. I have about 750 miles on it since I got it 4 October and it's just such a nice ride, I love it.
You mentioned how steady yours is descending. That was one of the first things I noticed about my R250. Just smooth and stable. I did a ride yesterday (Tour de Gruene TX) and there are some pretty big hills there, my max speed was 44 mph, and I was really impressed at how the bike felt at that speed. It did not feel like I was going that fast, where on my carbon bike it's more "interesting" at that speed.

I weighed mine on the bathroom scale (I think it's accurate) and the bike with pedals and H2O gages came in a little over 18 lbs. That's with 105 group and the Vision Team 30 wheels, caliper brakes.

I used to do 45 on my trek semi regularly; now it gets the wobbles over 40. I didn't let the lynskey loose because I don't yet fully trust the discs. The biggest hill had a hard left before the bottom. Felt great at 36mph. Next time.

I assume mine's comfortably under 20 lbs without the tool bag and with the original seat. I'm sure the discs and 28 c's are heavy. Enjoy!

The R250 was marketed as fitting 28C max. The R260 is marketed as fitting 32C tires, and has wider chainstays. The R250 uses Lynskey's #5 Pro Carbon fork on disc-equipped bikes, which will fit 28C tires. The R260, however, specifies the Lynskey Pro Carbon Gravel fork, which will fit 45C tires!

I'll let you know specifically what my bike weighs on Friday. I've got a Lynskey R260 on the way with Ultegra Di2 and hydraulic disc brakes. For the wheels I'm getting Stans Team Grail wheels (12x142TA rear, 15x100TA front), but in a "custom" 32h front and rear lacing. I'm a big boy, so I asked if I could get 32h up front, and they had Stans do up a front wheel in that lacing for me.

Now that I have the tracking number for this bike, I am obligated to refresh it at least two or three times a day to see where the bike mostly recently was, even though I already know it's not going to arrive at my house until Friday.

Yep, but their gravel frame would be heavier by at least a pound or so.

Would you mind taking a picture looking downward from the seat tube area so I can see the tire clearance? That looks really good!! If you were able to build an 18 pound bike with that kind of tire clearance out of the box, I'm tempted to pull the trigger on it right now. If it'll fit a 700x32, it probably will fit a 650bx42...or perhaps a 38 with fenders. I may have to take another look at this idea.

Btw, as the photos show, the tire clearance is absolutely ginormous, particularly in the fork. It was this increase in tire clearance that motivated me to change my original R250 order to the R260 after five or six weeks of waiting for the R250 to ship.

I've got a pair of Compass Stampede Pass extralight road tires (32C) just sitting here burning a hole in my workbench. When the bike comes in I'll put it together, throw the pedals on her, and get you guys a good weigh-in with a fish scale before doing any of the mods. The weight will be with the original Kenda 28mm tires they shipped it with. Once I've got it together in stock configuration I'll take it for a quick 9-15 mile ride just to see what it feels like with the stock parts, then I'll swap out the saddle for my Brooks B17, swap out the 28C Kenda tires for these 32C Compass tires, throw on my bottle holders, underseat tool bag, etc. and reweigh it and take it for another spin.

I'm fully expecting that with the Compass 32mm tires at lower pressures this thing will ride like a dream.

You posted almost an hour ago...Where's it now? :D

Oops, it says the shipping label was created, but it hasn't yet been scanned at the first location, so it's still probably sitting on their loading dock.

So I think it's right here. :-)

I'm so pumped for you. This forum is a bad influence because now I want to order one!

I'm actually afraid to call them and ask about the 650b conversion.