A Look at How ENVE Makes the ENVE Custom Road Bike - A Contender Bicycles Tour

Full custom has meant a whole lot of things, from a bespoke build with unique component choice, to a stock frame with custom paint, but ENVE’s custom road is about as custom as it gets. The ENVE Custom Custom Road is about as bespoke as it gets, carrying the features that make modern road bikes appealing with the artistry of a custom frame builder.

The Custom Road places ENVE in a position unlike that of just about any cycling company. Until now, ENVE has focused solely on producing wheels, forks, finishing kit, and some other parts. But not only does ENVE make just about every component but the groupset, the frame itself is fully custom, bespoke built to the rider’s fit and needs.

While this post covers how ENVE makes custom frames, we will cover how ordering is done as well as our ride impressions in a future ENVE Custom Road Review. Stay tuned!

Custom Carbon Unlike Anything Else

Just like ENVE’s wheels, the process starts at the machine shop. Here, all the tooling is cut and the fixtures are put into place. Molds for unique tubes and fixtures that allow ENVE to put the tubes together are also fabricated here to produce exactly the right frame for the rider. 

Like wheels, carbon is brought upon arrival to a walk-in freezer, ready to be trimmed to size in the carbon-cutting room. Sheets are then cut and pressed before being put into a mold or bladder. This is part of ENVE’s special sauce, which is why we don’t have any photos of it.

The small parts layup room uses unique mandrels that create the tube shapes that become the ENVE Custom frame. This is the carbon layup process people talk about, and it allows them to make the tubes before they even have your custom geometry numbers. This is the other part of the special sauce ENVE uses that separates the ENVE Custom Road from others.

Once tubes are assembled and ready to go they go to a cut machine where they are cut to length. Each part is made longer than necessary to be cut down based on the rider’s fit. If you need a short headtube or seat mast, they’ll cut it according to your fit needs.

After being cut, they are ready to be bonded and cured. In the back and to the right are the jigs that bring the frames together. The design itself is reminiscent of a certain company that moved their alloy frame welds away from high-stress tube junctions and into joints that provide a unique bit of polish to their custom carbon frame. Overwraps are put in place where tubes meet one another to improve strength.

The value of these tubes is that each tube is designed with aero principles in mind, which can be achieved through their careful tube design. The end result is a bike that looks remarkably contemporary to other road bikes, just with the freedom to make the bike fit and handle exactly as you’d like.

Each bike also gets a one-piece bar stem. The bar shape is based on the ENVE SES AR bar, which features more flare in the drops than one would expect with a mildly-aero top bar that provides a nice platform for weary palms. But the one-piece design means they need to get the stem length right as well. Fortunately, the stem is almost infinitely adjustable and makes for exactly the right bar width and stem length one would want. 

The final step is to paint and finish the frame, but that is easier said than done. If you’ve ever dealt with custom paint, you’d know this is where much of the overall turnaround time comes from. Base coats are put in to seal the carbon before paint. There are four initial paint templates with 38 colors in matte and gloss, which in total creates thousands of options. There are even full custom paint options too. ENVE’s paint program is top-notch and provides an artisanal level of frame polish.

Frames are called a chassis because it has the frame, fork, headset, bar/stem, headset, integrated bar and stem, seat mast topper, and thru-axles.

Conclusion

As you can see, this is the finished product: an ENVE Custom Road made specifically for Ryan here at the shop. Between a gallery and ride review, we’ll be sure to have more to share very soon with you all. Thanks to ENVE for the factory tour of their wheel program as well as their excellent explanation of how their frames come together.

Have any questions about the ENVE Custom Road or Custom All-Road? Give us a call during business hours or send us an email any time to info@contenderbicycles.com