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Just in: Tokyo Fixed Road Rocket

New steel road bike made for going fast blasts in to our orbit

Tokyo Fixed, founded in 2009, is one of the most exciting bike shops you could walk into with bikes and bags hanging from the rafters and the shelves stacked with an eclectic array of products - from merino wool jerseys to helmets and everything in-between.

Having built up a good reputation for building custom bikes over the years, with a heavy bias towards fixed wheel and singlespeed bikes, they're now looking to make an impact on the road scene with their first proper road bike. They've offered a road frame before, the Wide Open, a heavily retro inspired frame with a traditional crown fork. The Road Rocket has higher ambitions.

The frame is a mix of Columbus Spirit and Max tubing, the former for the seat tube, head tube, top tube and seat stays, and the latter for the chainstays and down tube. They combine to give the frame a most elegant appearance.

If you've never been near a steel frame, you'll be stunned at how skinny the tubes are, with the top tube in particular of a narrow diameter. It certainly makes you do a double take if you're only used to aluminium and carbon frames.

Tokyo Fixed use the combination of Spirit and Max tubing to harness the individual benefits of each. The idea is to deliver a frame that is at once comfortable – steel's trump card – yet stiff and solid enough not to wilt under some earnest pedalling and out-of-the-saddle sprinting.

The Road Rocket tubing is designed to resist the forces from pedalling through the use of large oversized Max tubes that are also ovalised and tapered along their length. The chainstays are 36mm at their fattest point and the triple-butted down tube is 40.3mm. It's also ovalised to create smoother junctions at the head tube and bottom bracket shell.

It hardly need saying (just cast your eyes over the photos on this page) that the frame is extremely nicely finished. Closer inspection reveals welds of the neatest variety, tiny dropouts, smart cable routing and tidy cable stops. The quality of paint finish appears to be of the highest order with a slight sparkle in bright sunshine.

Rather than plaster the bike with stickers and logos, Tokyo Fixed have kept it nice and simple with just four decals: a head badge, seat tube logo and two down tube decals. Classy.

A 360g Columbus Minimal full carbon-fibre fork is fitted into the head tube. It's painted the same colour as the frame and spins on an external 1 1/8in headset.

Tokyo Fixed claim a frame weight of 1.7kg for a 56cm like the one we have here. We put the bike on our scales and it came in at a very respectable 8kg (17.6lb).

That's built up with a Shimano Ultegra groupset, Strada wheels, Easton and PRO finishing parts and a Fizik Arione saddle. It's all no-nonsense kit that just works and allows the frame and fork to shine through.

Those Strada wheels are a particular highlight. These are the Velocity A23s from the Hove-based brand. Strada's own hubs are laced with Sapim CX Ray bladed aero spokes to a 23mm rim. Tyres are Vittoria Open Corsa Evo CX 23mm; they appear a lot wider on these rims.

Tokyo Fixed don't supply fully built bikes and instead focus on just selling the frame and fork and leaving the build up to the customer. The frame and fork costs £900. That sounds like a very good price for a high-end steel frame like this and it's easy to imagine a sensible build costing in the region of £2,000, making it a viable alternative to more mainstream offerings. If you're looking for something a little different, this could very well be it.

There's something ever so nice about the way a steel road bike rides and we have high expectations for the Road Rocket. Every cyclist needs to have owned a high-quality steel frame at some point in their cycling career. Tokyo Fixed's offering is a well priced frame with beautiful aesthetics. Watch this space for a full review soon.

David worked on the road.cc tech team from 2012-2020. Previously he was editor of Bikemagic.com and before that staff writer at RCUK. He's a seasoned cyclist of all disciplines, from road to mountain biking, touring to cyclo-cross, he only wishes he had time to ride them all. He's mildly competitive, though he'll never admit it, and is a frequent road racer but is too lazy to do really well. He currently resides in the Cotswolds, and you can now find him over on his own YouTube channel David Arthur - Just Ride Bikes

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6 comments

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localsurfer | 11 years ago
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Nice, but definitely overpriced for a tig welded frame.

I've a custom-built fillet-brazed 853 frame with the same forks as this, and that was only a bit more.

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jcb.cc replied to localsurfer | 11 years ago
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Yes some UK builders do offer relatively cheap custom frames but most will charge well over 1k for a Spirit frame. Its hard to say what is cheap for a off the peg steel frame as hardly any brands offer them.

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jcb.cc | 11 years ago
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I agree this is a fantastic looking frame, i like the TF brand and don't think I would be put off by the name.

I've been considering getting myself a steel frame and I hear MAX is some amazing stuff.. I'm looking forward to reading the full review.

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b3nharris | 11 years ago
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How does the Colombus tubing compare to (say...) Reynolds 725. Seems an expensive frame and fork compared to Genesis Equilibrium (http://www.genesisbikes.co.uk/bikes/frames/equilibrium).

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Shanghaied replied to b3nharris | 11 years ago
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AFAIK Spirit is the top-of-the-line stuff, just below the stainless XCR, so it's comparable to 853. Max is not as advanced metallurgically speaking but has manipulated profiles, so probably why it's used for downtube. The fork by itself is worth about £160 - £180. So that leaves a 700-something pound frame. Depending on where it's made, I sort of agree that it's a little expensive for a production 853-level frame. But then again they probably don't order in frames in the same numbers that Genesis or Charge does, so the price is bound to be higher.

Must say that I think the decals and paint job is rather lovely, but also wish that they'd used another shop-brand - I can imagine the Tokyo Fixed name would make a lot of potential buyers who are not into the fixed gear thing and all that it implies uncomfortable.

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Gkam84 | 11 years ago
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Very nice looking frame, but I can see the confusion now when you try and explain to someone that you have a Tokyo Fixed road bike.

What do you ride?

A Tokyo Fixed Road Rocket

Ah, so you are a fixie rider?

No, I ride a Tokyo Fixed ROAD bike

Yeah, so its a fixie........as so it continues  19

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