Bike Check: Donhou’s Kibosh steel race bike

Tom Donhou of Donhou Bicycles has teamed up with Kibosh Racing, a South West-based race team with attitude, to create a stunning steel race bike with a paint job that pays homage to motor racing’s golden era. 

The frames are built from Columbus HSS and Spirit tubing with tube shapes designed to suit the demands of racing. An oval teardrop shaped down tube and ovalised top tube, along with wide profile seat stays, ensure there’s adequate stiffness when putting the power down. Donhou has also used the world’s lightest steel dropouts from Paragon Machine Works, where the steel dropout has been stripped down to its absolute minimum.

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Donhou is a highly regarded framebuilder, but he enjoyed plenty of help from the members of the Kibosh race team. They were hands-on helping to create each frame, drilling, mitering and prepping the tubes and under the watchful eye of Tom Donhou they helped craft their own stunning steel race machines.

“There are not many team riders that get their hands dirty building their own machines, grafting before they’ve even stepped astride their bike, earning the closest connection possible with the machine they’ll ride and race,” says Tom.

A full Shimano Dura-Ace mechanical groupset adorns the bike with a Columbus Futura carbon fork, and matching Ritchey WCS wheels and finishing kit. The complete bike weight is coming in at about 7.75kg, so pretty good for a steel road bike.

Ensuring the bikes will stand out in the peloton, the paint job has been inspired by Donhou and Kibosh’s shared love of motor racing's golden era when guts meant glory. 

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Yes, we’ve never heard of Kibosh before, but they only launched in 2016. We love the design of their kit and we’ll be keeping an eye out for them at races this season. Their bikes will certainly be drawing some admiring glances. They’ve even organised a road race in Devon that looks like a lot of fun.

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