The SusterNgepot!

Most of the bikes featured here are all about going fast or for intense sport use. So masculine. Then some of you might realized, “Wait, Pancalen Cycles is a husband and wife operation, right? Does the wife ride bicycle as well? What bike does she ride?” Well stop guessing people, because this, is MY ride!

The frame came from an old United city/sport 26” steel bike, dated back from the late ‘90s (seriously, I forgot. I haven’t much into cycling back then, long before I met my husband). When my then-future-husband brought his bicycle to Jakarta five years ago, he wanted to share the joy of bicycle riding with me. He saw this bike neglected in our storage, so we rebuilt the bike through many stage... and five years later, this is its recent incarnation.

We spray-canned this frame pearl white just because we wanted to try doing special effect paintjob ourselves. We left the front fork red, because it matches the Shimano DX BMX V-brakes that my husband found in a swap meet. We're supposed to put matching DX brakelevers as well but it’s kind of tough find, so we put Shimano LX v-brake levers on. Both models features adjustable cable pull ratio, the differences are in the lever arms length (DX is shorter) and silver finish on the LX levers as opposed to DX’s signature red. White frame and red details, that’s where the name “SusterNgepot” came from.

What’s the point of married to a wheelbuilder if you can’t have him built your one-off set of wheels? The funky wheel lacing pattern is called 3-trailing-3-leading, and it worked only on 36-spoked wheels. Although the design looked confusing it’s not that hard to built, all you need is some time to calculate different spoke length for each segment and you’re set to build them. By the way, the rims are Araya VP-20s taken off my husband’s first bicycle while the hubs are GP track hubs.

To add comfort to the originally sporty frame the cockpit was rearranged with 45mm Syntace stem and Velo Orange Tourist handlebar (latest, very welcomed improvement). Rewrapped old Vetta saddle provides nice cushion while I put the 36/16T gearing to work. Nothing beats the simplicity of single speed drivetrain.

I really loved this bike, especially for the wheels. We know this pattern isn't as strong as traditional cross pattern, but I've been riding it for a long time and not much problem found so far. Interested in building wheels like this? Drop by to our shop and maybe my husband will show you how!