Friday, February 28, 2014

Black Titanium Hardware

    Here at Toronto Cycles we carry Black Titanium Hardware and Bolts.
Black Titanium is produced by Physical Vapor Deposition. Like most ways to anodize titanium it is very environmentally friendly. Black is a Physical process meaning it is an applied coating and not done as standard titanium anodizing. Without being too technical: Parts are placed in a vacuum chamber and heated. Plasma will vaporize material and is then deposited onto the titanium.




    As many of you know it's very hard to paint or powder coat titanium. Where PVD is different is in the bonding, it will basically fuse the coating onto the titanium.
    The coating is very durable and will not fade or chip. It is more expensive though as the process required expensive equipment.
    We do anodizing in house but black titanium bolts are special order and I can only have done in bulk. I cannot do custom or outside anodizing in black. We are also expanding further into black so please watch out for new additions and ideas are always welcome.

Friday, February 14, 2014

Point One Racing

We are happy to announce that Toronto Cycles are dealers for Point One Racing and have a selection of products to be posted on the Website! Lets have a look at some of the cool items they have to offer.

Lightest Headset Spacers in the World:
The Nano Second Spacer. Super light and they did a wonderful job on the machining and finish. These are machined to very exacting tolerances to fit perfectly over an 1 1/8" fork tube.

§  5 mm: 1.1 g
§  10 mm: 1.9 g
§  20 mm: 3.7 g
§  30 mm: 5.1 g





We will be updating this page over the next week so come back soon :)

Tuesday, February 11, 2014

AEST Brake Levers and Accessories

Toronto Cycles are distributors for AEST Bicycle products. AEST has some really nice items at great prices. I wanted to take a few minutes to talk about some of the items they have and some custom work we do at Toronto Cycles.

  
2 Finger design with 92mm leverage
A Chain Ring bolt is used for the lever clamp.
56g for the pair including all hardware.
These have an extra pair of aluminum nuts.
Lever End to Pivot= 92 mm
Bar Clamp Diameter:= 22.2 mm




Purple and Pink AEST Brake Levers - Custom Hardware
The photo below shows a custom set of levers we have made here.

 I have has many requests for purple and pink levers. The photo above is anodized here to be purple. I might be performing this in the near future but will have an extra cost since I need to re-plate. The hardware I have swapped with upgraded aluminum parts. These parts I will also post as an upgrade as some AEST levers have non matching hardware (Blue levers and red hardware). The weight is slightly reduced with the adjusting bolts. The nut for the lever is titanium and the actual bolt is aluminum. The 2 gold adjusters are the same as the Shimano derailleur adjusters.

Overall these levers are a really great buy to give a cool retro look. 

AEST CNC V-Brakes
These brake systems are also a very good buy and are similar to KCNC but at a lower cost. I will be doing these in custom colors and also release an upgrade kit that will shave quite a bit of weight by using Aluminum and Titanium hardware to replace the steel.  


Sunday, February 2, 2014

Toronto Living!

Toronto is a great place to live and visit. We are one of the larger cities in North America with about 5 million people living in the Greater Toronto Area. We're across the water (Lake Ontario) from Buffalo N.Y. There's always a few cool things happening here and I wanted to share some info about our Canadian City.

CN Tower
To the left is the CN Tower. It's one of the tallest freestanding structures in the world. This is one of the major landmarks of Toronto. I see this from my home and has nice lighting in the summer evenings. Good place the take the kids and visit.
    
The Rogers Center
 It used to be called the Sky Dome but not anymore. The roof retracts and was considered quite an engineering feat. Home of the Toronto Blue Jays and the Argos (Our Canadian football team). This is parked right next to the CN Tower

Our Mayor, Rob Ford.
Robbie has been a bit naughty lately and has brought much attention to Toronto.

This photo was taken a few days ago and shows the Mayor crashing a high end dinner party. Well, he was invited, then uninvited, then went anyways.

He's running for re-election in 2014.


Toronto Island. With a nice view of the city and the only way to get there is by ferry.

Cyclists enjoy it here as it's car free and during school days its quiet and clean. We go every year.

Toronto is a very diverse city. We have the highest immigrant population in Canada so the city has people from all backgrounds and walks of life.

Next Time...The Bieber gets arrested in Toronto!