Jeff works for Ritchey in Europe and is based in Flanders, Belgium. To take advantage of the road and cobble riding, he commissioned Independent Fabrication to build him a single-speed Crown Jewel. Let’s check it out in this week’s Readers’ Rides!…
I commissioned this Independent Fabrication Crown Jewel in 2013. I already owned a custom IF titanium singlespeed mountain bike, but I wanted a road bike built for the ‘roads’ and cobblestones around my adopted home in Flanders. The brief was specific: singlespeed, disc brakes, carbon fork, room for fatter tires. IF talked me out of sliding horizontal rear dropouts by pointing out how ridiculous the geometry would look with such steep seatstays, and put a Phil Wood eccentric bottom bracket in their place. I had my doubts. But I’m glad IF talked me out of it.
There was really only one singlespeed disc hub worth spec’ing at the time, and that was a Chris King mountain bike hub. Enve had just released a road disc fork, and I put a King disc hub in there, too.
Ambrosio Nemesis tubular rims, glued up with Challenge Paris-Roubaix 27mm tires completed my original wheel build. That lasted less than a year before the broken glass on my urban routes out of Antwerp chewed through them faster than I could replace them. I switched to H Plus Son clinchers, as close a facsimile to those Ambrosios as I could find.
The cockpit has evolved with wherever I was working and whatever was coming in for review. Its current configuration has been in place since before the pandemic, and I see little reason to ever change it up since it fits so well.
In its matte black steel tubing, the bike currently holds around eleven thousand miles (about 18,000 kilometers) over 13 years. That might not sound like much for such a long period, but this bike has always shared time with others in the stable. For a long stretch I treated it as my winter machine, the logic being that fewer moving parts (aside from its mechanical disc brakes) meant less to get fouled by Flemish road grit, farm path mud, and months of wet riding. While that reasoning makes practical sense, it’s also a disservice to a bike this special.
As such, I made a change back in December. I tore it down, did a deep clean and polish, repacked the rear hub, wrapped fresh bar tape, put new tires on, and set it up tubeless. It deserved better than “winter bike” status. It always did, and it’s now my go-to bike, faithfully restored to its original glory and purpose: giving me an amazing way to experience the world around Antwerp.
This is my Independent Flanders bike.
Build Spec:
- Frame – Independent Fabrication Crown Jewel
- Fork – Enve Road Disc
- Rims – H Plus Son
- Hubs – Chris King
- Tires – Continental Grand Prix 5000 All-Season TR
- Bars – Ritchey WCS Streem
- Stem – Ritchey WCS C-220
- Post – Ritchey WCS Carbon Link
- Saddle – Brooks Cambium Carbon
- Pedals – Ritchey WCS XC
- Cranks – White Industries – 44t
- Cog – Endless Cog Co. – 16t
- Brakes – Avid BB7
- Levers – SRAM
- Headset – Chris King
- Valves – Stan’s ExoCore
We’d like to thank all of you who submitted Readers Rides builds to be shared here at The Radavist. The response has been incredible and we have so many to share over the next few months. Feel free to submit your bike, listing details, components, and other information. You can also include a portrait of yourself with your bike and your Instagram account! Please, shoot landscape-orientation photos, not portrait. Thanks!