Curve Belgie Disc
In many respects cricket and cycling are basically the same thing. The players wear strange uniforms, the fans get progressively drunk and the whole thing takes ages. Yet, in many ways they are so very different. It’s always clear who the winner is in cycling. Also, bibshorts and helmets are fit for purpose, whereas white trousers on grass and floppy hats for running are less so. And it takes an Arctic storm to halt a bike race. Australians are always being told to calm it down a bit in cricket too, whereas no one ever discouraged Robbie Mcewan from throwing elbows and calling people c***s.
In fact, hardness and aggression are highly prized attributes in cycling – if ones that need to be carefully controlled. And the same can be said of the Curve Belgie, a titanium monster that blends clout with class, but occasionally struggles to find the right balance.
Material science
A framebuilder recently told me something I’ve heard more than enough times to know that it’s true: ‘You can build a steel bike that is too stiff.’
That’s probably obvious, but the point he was making is that there are erroneous beliefs – myths, even – that surround frame materials. Steel is lively but flexy, aluminium stiff but dead, titanium is plush and eternal, and of course carbon is light, stiff,
aerodynamic and comfortable and will help you make better decisions about financial matters.
There is some sense to this, but the key to understanding why a steel frame is likely to be more flexy than a carbon one is to accept that weight is important in bicycles, and that stiffness in general terms is largely dictated by tube diameter. Wider tubes are stiffer but potentially heavier, as they require thicker walls so they don’t crumple.
So in oversimplified terms, it all comes down to stiffness-to-weight ratios for different materials. Steel is at the bottom of the pile, carbon fibre the top, with positions two and three held by aluminium and titanium respectively.
Yet, of all the metals, titanium is the most prized, despite aluminium having better stiffness-toweight and both it and steel being much cheaper and easier to work with. So what gives?
I asked this question of Ryan Flynn, director of Curve bicycles, and he replied that they ‘love titanium for its ride quality, superior strength and smooth compliance, at half the weight of steel but with the same strength.’ I asked myself if titanium suits the kind of bike the Belgie wants to be, and the answer is as follows…
Channelled aggression
Flynn describes the Belgie Disc as an ‘aggressive road bike’, and I agree, but perhaps not in the traditional road bike sense of the word ‘aggressive’.
The geometry hits some racy marks, with this size 56cm coming in with a moderately short 155mm head tube and 410mm chainstays, but it’s not insane, and the head tube is marginally slacker than truly aggressive racers (73° plays 73.5°). That increases wheelbase and trail, two things that tend to swap agility for stability. Rather, the Belgie’s aggression comes from its beating titanium heart.
The bike is noticeably smoother than other (mostly carbon) bikes, where the frame seems to skim the tops off the high-frequency, lowamplitude buzz of poor surfaces. Yet this isn’t the smoothest titanium bike I’ve encountered, and the big hits still get through as per any bike. What the Belgie does to its credit, though, is to feel like it’s punching the road back every time it gets hit. The thing feels rock solid. It also feels remarkably stiff when pedalling hard, be that climbing or sprinting, and it’s these factors in combination that give the Belgie its aggressive character.
This isn’t technically a bike pitched at leaving tarmac road surfaces, but I’d happily smash the
I’ve ridden other titanium bikes that don’t have nearly this much smash and grab about them
Belgie down some singletrack, across gravel or over cobbles, with the only limiting factor being a maximum tyre size of 28mm. I’ve ridden other titanium bikes that don’t have nearly this much smash and grab about them, and the ‘road’ carbon bikes that I’d be happy to really thrash around are few and far between.
With most road bikes there’s a slight element of wanting to protect the bike, avoiding rough patches of road, hovering slightly over the saddle over bumps and cushioning a drop off a curb. All good practices – smoother is faster, and we should all employ a bit of mechanical sympathy when riding – but the point is the Belgie feels like a bike you could run over, then throw down a well, only in the middle of the night it would claw its way back out with blood dripping from its gums, screaming your name.
Strike, but not out
Melbourne-based Curve began life as a wheel company, and the G4 disc wheels here feel like they channel all the same attributes as the frame, with no mollycoddling needed. And just to prove these traits, the Belgie and its wheels were the product of a respective second and first place at the gruelling Tour Divide (Canada to New Mexico, 4,418km) and Trans America bike race (6,800km). But for all this double-hard brilliance, the Belgie has its quirks.
Back to the material/tubing discussion. The Belgie’s frame is pretty heavy at 1.8kg, so too the overall 8.38kg build, but here I believe it’s a necessary evil to produce such a stiff frame. The tubes need to be oversized and the frame somewhat ‘overbuilt’ to achieve this stiffness, and to do that in titanium means using a lot of metal.
However, this has led to some problems. I found the oversized chainstays exacerbated the already wider rear end (as is necessary for disc brakes), and I occasionally clipped the inside of my heel on the outside of the stays, despite Curve having done the decent thing in bending them in towards the wheel to try to avoid heel strike.
I put this to Flynn and he said this wasn’t a problem he’d encountered, but conceded certain pedalling styles and Q-factors could lead to this, so I can’t level this as a flaw so much as a subjective criticism. But what I think is objective fact is that lighter or less powerful riders will find the Belgie a lot of bike to handle for everyday road riding.
Anyone will be glad of its indestructible and racy poise, and there’s no doubt the bike looks stunning, painted as this one is by Ooey Custom (an extra £550; a non-painted frame is £2,295). However, if you’re a climbing whippet or a flyweight crit racer, you might feel held back by the bike’s weight, while those looking for a truly plush titanium cruiser may feel a tad beaten up by the Belgie’s stiffness.
As for me, a middle-to-heavyweight chopper, I loved it. And Shimano makes pedals with 4mm longer axles, so perhaps that’s all I need.
It feels like a bike you could run over, then throw down a well, only in the middle of the night it would claw its way back out