Fair Wheel Bikes Built A 9lb Flat-Bar Specialized Aethos

Fair Wheel Bikes is known for putting together cool builds and we’ve got a new one from the Tucson bike shop. This time it’s a flat-bar Specialized Aethos that’s ready to ride—as in actually ready to ride—and hitting the scale at less than 10 lbs.

If you are already outraged, you likely aren’t alone. When I asked Fair Wheel co-owner Jason Woznick for details about this bike, he prefaced it with information he knew would come up. To start, Woznick set expectations by saying this build is inherently “just a basic bike for cruising around downtown. It’s not a commuter. It’s not a race bike or a hill climb special. This is a bike for someone who just wants to cruise around town taking in the sites on a super cool and very light weight bike.”

Fun is good so that’s certainly a good place to start, but Woznick also wanted to make sure it was clear that this really was a bike that could be ridden. There are custom parts and it is obviously feathery, but it’s not overly delicate. Woznick is clear that “nothing on this particular build has a weight limit under 200 pounds.”

There’s also some housekeeping that he shared. While the bike looks like a fixie, it’s not. That means the brake doesn’t go on the front. “A fixed gear uses a front [brake] because it can balance the braking between the caliper on the front and pedal braking on the rear,” he said. “A front brake without the ability to balance with some form of rear brake isn’t a good idea.” He also focused back on the point of the bike, noting that this is more akin to a beach cruiser or a BMX bike for the street and reminding everyone that “it makes wheelies and manuals more fun.”

The other housekeeping detail that Woznick emphasized is about weight. Manufacturers—and I do this as well in our bike reviews—typically do not list the weight of the bike with pedals included. Pedals vary in weight and are easy to add to a full build weight, so it’s generally left to the reader to do the math. Woznick thinks that might create some distrust in this case.

If you watch the video about this bike, Fair Wheel Bikes lists a weight of 4.36 kg / 9.61 lbs without pedals. Given that, Woznick expects that some people will assume the bike is actually heavier than 10 lbs. In fact, according to Woznick, it’s not. He states that the choice was made to provide an “apples to apples comparison,” but for those who are skeptical, the pedals added later were TriRig Mercury pedals. According to Woznick, those pedals weigh 88.5 grams for the set and push the final build weight to a grand total of 4.49 kg, or 9.90 lbs.

As a final note, Woznick claims “there were lots of places we could have gone lighter, but this bike wasn’t about being the lightest possible, it was about being the lightest bike that fit this particular rider’s needs and aspirations.”

If you are looking to build your own flat bar Aethos, check out the Fair Wheel Bikes website for more info.

Parts list