The Gear: Fara Cycling F/AR bike
Posted By Gravel Union
On 1 March 2021
The team from Fara Cycling sent us the details of the latest addition to their fleet. At first glance it might ‘just’ seem like a relatively standard, albeit stunning looking, all-road bike, but read on to discover the clever details.
With beautiful scenery and seemingly never-ending gravel trails on their doorstep, it’s no real surprise that 66% of the range offered by the design team at Fara Cycling are aimed at away-from-the-road riding. They already offered a road bike and a gravel bike, but with the recent phenomenal growth in popularity of bikepacking, they wanted to offer a complimentary bike in their range which would cater to the #fastfar crowd. Want to ride across a continent or see how many metres of climbing you can fit into a 3-day exploration of an island? Then the new F/AR might well be for you.
At present there are only (super-realistic) computer generated designs of the bike, rather than ‘real’ images, but these give you some really interesting insight into the design ethos. Take at the look at the main frame (seat tube/top tube/head tube/down tube) junctions and you’ll notice something interesting – the distinct lack of straps holding the frame bag onto the frame. The design team wanted to integrate the fit of the bikepacking luggage with the bike, so designed both at the same time. The frame is fitted with integrated fidlock mounts, allowing the bikepacking bags to be connected seamlessly to the saddle, bars and main frame. They say that this integrated design approach means “ the bag system will attach and detach easily in seconds and fits perfectly to the F/AR’s frame geometry.”
For more information on all the clever details on the F/AR bike, check out the Fara Cycling website. In the meantime, we’re going to go back to dreaming about long-distance bikepacking trips with scenery like this as your backdrop.