Today we introduce you a very curious special project that we had the pleasure to build a few months ago.
Christoph configured a Nua Sílice Pinion with our online bike builder, but left a surprising message in the comments space:
"Can you change the standard fork for a Cannondale Lefty Ocho Carbon Fork, please?".
For the few of you who do not know this famous fork, a myth for its extreme smoothness and its radical appearance since it has only one leg, it is a model designed for the mountain XC modality, where fast, agile and light MTBs are sought. So this customer wants to install an XC fork on our gravel model…? No problem!
To do this we had to redesign the entire geometry of the bike around the Lefty, which is much longer than a standard gravel fork. We also had to adapt the head tube, since the headset Lefty needs is quite special. And having to adapt the fork remote control, which was designed to work on a mountain flat bar, also took us a lot of work to install it on the drop bar of our Sílice. We also had to build a special front wheel with that special Tune hub for the fork.
We don't know how many gravel bikes with a Lefty Carbon fork there are out there, but we haven't seen any others so far. Creating bikes that are out of the ordinary is one of the best things about our job.
And how does it ride? Well the answer is surprisingly positive. Those of you who have tried this fork know how smooth and responsive it is to small road imperfections, thanks to the single leg and the needle bearings. When you are riding this bike you have a strange feeling, you think you are riding on a gravel bike, but when the road gets ugly, you are surprised to have that fantastic cushioning with a much greater travel than any gravel bike suspension fork (100mm vs the typical 30/50mm), so you can do things in the forest that you wouldn't do with your usual gravel, or just ride calmly on your usual gravel path without fear of the surprises you may encounter.
We leave you with some photos where you can see more details, like that Tune hub, the Brooks C13 saddle with carbon ovalized rails that required a special titanium seatpost, and other cool parts.
We hope you love this bike as much as we loved building it.
If you want to see more about our models and components, or if you want to configure your own Nua, do not hesitate to enter our builders in the "Bikes" section of our website or just write to us at contact@nuabikes.com.