Beaverton Bike Gallery employee and fitter extraordinaire Aaron “Rambo” Harrison recently visited Co-Motion cycles with other BG staffers, and wanted to share the experience with you. (Thanks Aaron!) Also for a limited time Bike Gallery is offering $500 off any custom bike order! See bikegallery.com for more info.

On Monday, February 22nd, 10 representatives of the various Bike Gallery locations loaded into our Dodge Sprinter van to make a trip down South to Eugene, OR, home of one of our favorite (and Oregon-made) custom bike manufacturer, Co-Motion Cycles.
The whole crew at Co-Motion, especially Zach, Chuck, Mike, and Dwan, took time to give us a tour of the facility, give us an overview of the 2010 line, and answer our questions.
Co-Motion Cycles started in 1988, and quickly became known for their tandems. But, they have also produced “single” bicycles as well since 1988, including bikes for racing (road and cycle-cross), sport touring, and some of the most-respected expedition-class loaded-touring bicycles around.

Bike Gallery has been working with Co-Motion since 1989, starting our relationship as one of their first official dealers, with three of Co-Motion’s early tandems. Since then, starting in the early 90’s, Bike Gallery has consistently been one of Co-Motion’s Top-10 dealers, often breaking into the Top-5.

In 2000, Co-Motion moved into their current location, a purpose-built custom bike building facility that includes all aspects of their business. This facility includes two of the most advanced down-draft paint booths in the lower Willamette valley. Each booth can hold up to 6 frames at a time and double as paint-curing ovens once the frames are painted.One of the most note-worthy aspects of Co-Motion is how much of their production they do in-house. The production floor holds some of the classic tools of frame-building, such as “English wheel” tube benders, a heavy-duty lathe, and a traditional vertical mill. But, it is also home to a Mazak CNC vertical mill and a Mori-Seiki CNC lathe as well. Co-Motion uses the Mazak CNC vertical mill to make most of their drop-outs and all of their seat-collars, including the seat collar used by their dual-telescoping seat mast on the back of the Periscope tandems. The Mori-Seiki CNC lathe, which acts like a mill inside of a lathe, is used to produce custom-milled head-tubes and steerer-tubes for their steel bicycles and forks (Co-Motion actually makes steel forks for a number of other manufacturers as well). Back in the paint area, near the twin paint-booths and their shared paint-mixing room, is Co-Motion’s very own heat-treating oven which they use to heat-treat their aluminum frames in house. Co-Motion even builds a vast majority of their own wheels in-house, lacing them first on a wheel-building machine, which speeds the lacing process, but always finishing them by hand.

While certainly famous for their tandems, it’s a lesser known fact that Co-Motion is one of the largest manufacturers of full-size travel bicycles (as opposed to compact-wheeled folding travel bikes). Co-Motion is the largest customer of S&S Machine Works, makers of the S&S Coupler, which allows a bicycle equipped with these couplers to be broken down into a case that complies with most airline’s standard baggage size restrictions. In fact, Co-Motion makes so many S&S-coupled travel bikes that S&S Machine Works has actually developed custom-sized couplers exclusively for Co-Motion bicycles (such as the coupler-equipped Periscope Torpedo Co-Pilot). Also from their extensive experience with coupled travel bikes, Co-Motion has developed what is recognized as one of the best travel cases for coupled bicycles, their soft-sided “hybrid” case. This year brings more innovation where they have teamed up with Lizard Skins, maker of fine neoprene chainstay protectors, to produce their own line of super-protective frame pads. Co-Motion offers the Co-Pilot (coupled) option on pretty much all of their steel singles and tandems. An interesting fact about Co-Motion’s coupled travel bikes is that they don’t cut a stock bicycle in half and then braze in the couplers. Each frame is custom-designed as a coupled frame, with all of the frame’s tubes especially selected to support the couplers and maximize the strength of the frame.Co-Motion makes bikes for just about every kind of rider. Their tandems are broken into three categories: Periscope, Race, and Performance. The Periscopes are great for people with growing families as the dual-telescoping rear seatpost can accommodate riders between 3’6” all the way up to 6’2” (this is also great if there is a large height disparity between captain and stoker and you don’t want to spend the extra money for custom geometry). The Race line of tandems contains their lightest, highest-performance tandems, and the Performance line offers bikes such as the Speedster, which are nimble enough for racing, but also perfectly appointed for touring. The single line of bikes offers similar options: Race (road and cyclocross), what we at the Bike Gallery call “Sport” Touring, and loaded Touring bikes. Some of the most exciting changes to the Co-Motion line of singles for 2010 is the addition of a BB30 option on both the Espresso steel road race frame and the Ristretto aluminum road race frame. What’s most unique about the BB30 option on these bicycles is that Co-Motion machines the bottom bracket shell after it’s been welded into the frame, assuring maximum concentricity of the bearing seats, which maximizes bearing life. Most manufacturers will weld in a pre-machined shell, which can deform during the welding process, ultimately hurting overall performance. The long-term best selling (at Bike Gallery) Nor’Wester sport-touring bike continues into 2010 largely unchanged, although it’s more load-touring sibling, the Nor’Wester Tour is now available with Shimano 6700 Ultegra and STI integrated shifters.

Probably the two bikes that most excited the Bike Gallery crew are the newly reintroduced (as a frameset) Demon cyclocross bike and the Americano Rohloff,

This bike features 14 speed internal gearing

which trades a traditional derailleur drivetrain for a fourteen-speed planetary gear transmission hidden within the rear hub. While the bike they showed us was equipped with a traditional metal chain, the bike is also available with an optional Gates Carbon Drive belt, which is nearly stretch-proof, runs silently, and doesn’t require any lubrication.
After our tour, we had lunch and headed back to Portland (after a quick stop for travel snacks). Everyone who went came back with a little more knowledge about Co-Motion Cycles and added excitement about their bicycles.
If you have any questions about Co-Motion Bicycles, give one of our 6 locations a call, or check out the Co-Motion website at co-motion.com.