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Video: Eurobike faves – Kraftstoff Franz Josef singlespeed

Now *that's* a paintjob. Pity you can't hear the music.....

Next up in our Eurobike Hall of Fame is one of our favourite bikes, from one of our favourite stands - the Krafstoff Franz Josef singlespeed/fixer, from Austrian outfit er, Krafstoff. Pretty poor of us not to find their stand until the last day of the show, particularly as it was booming out what I'm presuming was Austrian drinking songs over the stand PA all day too.

We'll have another Krafstoff corker coming up soon, but first let's give the singlespeed a bit of attention what's interesting about this bike - well apart from the the general fabness of the finish and the bars and brakes etc - is that this is a singlespeed bike running on conventional vertical dropouts rather than horizontal - so the old 'magic gear' comes in to play here, which could make getting your gearing just right a tad fiddly, if you ever wanted to change, but does of course also open up the option of slapping on a conventional set of gears too. Oh, and top marks too for interesting parts slection - SRAM fixed/free Torpedo hub, the OX timetrial gold brake levers. Plus bonus point for nice use of teal.

Krafstoff have a selection of race bikes in their 2010 range, but we didn't notice any in the 2011 selection on their stand… although as you've probably already picked up our powers of observation were seriously dented by this point in the proceedings. It's all in Austrian, but it's worth checking out the Kraftstoff website too - we were particulary taken with some of the model names in the rest of the urban range – the women's version of the Franz Josef is called the Sissy.

Oh, and a final mention for their calendar too… man they must have a lot of trees where this lot come from, cos there must have been the best part of one in each of their catalogues plus the entire stand was made of wood… but more on Kraftstoff and wood in a later video. 

road.cc's founder and first editor, nowadays to be found riding a spreadsheet. Tony's journey in cycling media started in 1997 as production editor and then deputy editor of Total Bike, acting editor of Total Mountain Bike and then seven years as editor of Cycling Plus. He launched his first cycling website - the Cycling Plus Forum at the turn of the century. In 2006 he left C+ to head up the launch team for Bike Radar which he edited until 2008, when he co-launched the multi-award winning road.cc - finally handing on the reins in 2021 to Jack Sexty. His favourite ride is his ‘commute’ - which he does most days inc weekends and he’s been cycle-commuting since 1994. His favourite bikes are titanium and have disc brakes, though he'd like to own a carbon bike one day.

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Stofish | 13 years ago
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This would be really nice if it were made by some hipster kid in his bedroom, not a professional bicycle manufacturer.

"Magic gear" read "we've got this lot of old steel frames we cant sell so we thought we'd bodge them into a fixie lookalike and see if its not to late to jump on the band wagon".

And that brake-lever position combined with a freewheel? Are they sponsored by the Austrian Dental Association?

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Mountainboy | 13 years ago
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Hmmm again...

Kraftstoff 3
Krafstoff 4

A close fought battle but the made up Austrian name came out just on top of the actual company name!

Any chance of a T-shirt, I have no chance of coming up with a funny caption for the Assos/Amstrad thang!?

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Chuffy | 13 years ago
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Hmmm. Locknuts on a vertical dropout.  26 Why?  39

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