LITESPEED ARCHON

A great-riding bike inspires poetry, song, joy. Think Dave Stoller on a training ride. But poetry comes about through understanding position, geometry, materials. Turning science into poetry is alchemy, and the best builders do it all the time. Litespeed, which has a quarter-century of titanium know-how in the bank, tossed their legendary Ultimate out to make a new ultimate titanium bike, the Archon.

As Litespeed is fond of traditional road racing bikes, the Archon's (R-Khan) geometry was designed as a stage race bike, one with all day comfort and stability yet still feels fast. Compared to their Archon carbon-fiber frames, this titanium version has a lower bottom bracket and slightly more relaxed angles.

Even though the Archon is a stage race bike, Litespeed wanted to give it modern stiffness, stiffer than Ti bikes of old, to resist torsional forces in front and pedaling forces in back. The head tube is double butted to minimize weight. Yes, it's light, but what keeps the front of the bike stiff are the top and down tubes working together at this head tube juncture. The top tube is big and complicated, stunning visually, and an impressive feat of engineering. It begins as a flat sheet of 6/4 titanium and is formed to bulge and wrap around the head tube. It's the only 6Al-4V titanium on the frame, and more expensive to create than the rest of the tube set put together. The down tube is a double-butted, bi-axially ovalized 3Al-2V titanium, with a long transition from the vertically-oriented oval shape at the head tube to round to the horizontally-oriented oval shape at the bottom bracket shell.

The down tube wraps around the bottom bracket shell some way for even more surface area contact and resulting in even greater stiffness. The seat tube is also wrapped around the bottom bracket shell, meets the down tube in front of the shell, and is ovalized at the juncture along the same plane as the down tube so the two tubes can offer tremendous stiffness in resisting pedaling forces while still allowing for vertical compliance.

The chain stays might look straight and simple from far away, but stand next to the Archon and you'll see that they've been pinched, stretched, and curved all in the name of greater performance. The right stay is smaller than the left, giving more room for drive train clearance while the left has been horizontally ovalized for better power transfer when pedaling. The shaping provides maximize tire clearance, and at the same time allows proper clearance for your heels and ankles.

The seat stays follow a fairly straight line from the dropouts to the seat tube juncture. This is a departure from the curved cantilever stays Litespeed used to produce. They found they didn't need to do the curving anymore, thanks to better design. Now they're horizontally ovalizing the seat stays to the tune of 13mm long by 18mm wide, so there's vertical give with greater torsional stiffness.

The Litespeed Archon comes with micro-sized titanium dropouts, and the replaceable derailleur hanger is also made from titanium. The bottom bracket shell is threaded to accept 68mm English bottom brackets, and on the other end, the headtube takes a traditional 1-1/8" headset. Litespeed recommends installing a fork with 45mm of rake for optimum handling as designed. This frame will include an Enve Composites Straight 2.0 fork with a 45mm rake. The Archon accepts a 31.6mm seat post and a 34.9mm clamp-on style front derailleur. It is Brushed Titanium with screen printed decals.

2012 Litespeed Archon Pricing