Damp and lush Portland, Oregon is a hotspot for the hand-built bike scene. Tony Pereira and Ira Ryan started Breadwinner Cycles there in 2013, aiming to blend their award-winning frame building artistry and business acumen. The duo has since hired several employees to support their growing business and most recently opened a cafe with a giant bay-window where patrons can look into the frame-building laboratory.
The cafe offers a robust list of local beers, coffee, healthy meals, and ride snacks. If this all sounds like heaps of work for a small team, it is. Yet somehow they maintain low 8-12 week lead times for full custom steel bikes.
The Goodwater hardtail mountain bike
The Breadwinner Goodwater is the culmination of Pereira and Ryan’s multiple years of riding and racing experience, coupled with frame-building expertise gained over countless custom XC and enduro builds. The frames are designed according to each unique client’s individual riding and body geometry needs, from axle to axle. The overall functional geometry of the bikes has been rigorously tested and refined and is applied to every unique build.
The Goodwater is designed to be a hardcore hardtail that is fun to ride on any trail for any duration. With a sleek, race day XC bike in the JB Racer, and the Bad Otis filling the space of a proper enduro shredder, the Goodwater is a “party-all-day-and-night” bike nestled comfortably between the two. In addition to the bike’s overall focus on versatility, the frames are capable of rolling on 27.5+ or 29″ tires. The possibilities for customizing a hand-built bike frame are nearly endless, and Breadwinner is sparing no options with the Goodwater.
Some key Goodwater features include:
- Optimized for 140mm fork with 46mm offset
- 440mm chainstay length (fits 27.5×3” or 29×2.3” tread)
- 55mm bottom bracket drop
- 67.5° headtube angle
- 72° seat tube angle
- Custom top tube, downtube, and headtube lengths
- Breadwinner custom Boost 148×12 stainless steel thru-axle dropouts
- 9 paint color options, with custom hues available
- Optional: internal electronic shift routing, dropper cable routing, internal rear brake hose, rear rack braze-ons, S&S frame couplers, and single speed dropouts
The team at Breadwinner have refined their ten frame models for an optimal customer experience in multiple cycling disciplines, yet the quest for an even better hardtail is never complete. With this most recent prototype of the Goodwater, Pereira has shortened up the rear end by 20mm.
“We’ve always used a True Temper down tube on the Bad Otis and Goodwater, but they stopped making bicycle tubing, so I tried something similar on this bike,” he said.
So far, Pereira likes the quick and lively nature of the shorter rear end and will test the prototype (pictured above) to see if they will move in this direction with the Goodwater in the future. There is a drawback to a shorter rear end, though. “It eliminates the option of running 29″ x 2.3″ tires, which is something you can do on the current Goodwater, making it even more versatile,” says Pereira.
Ira wants the Goodwater to be known for its details, functionality, and purpose. “I have seen plenty of hand-built hardtail mountain bikes that seem to have all the specs but they look like an assemblage of tubes rather than a thoughtful bicycle,” he said. “We want all the cables and lines to have intention with where they go and how they function.” They even go as far as putting custom bag-mounts on frames intended for bikepacking. “We build a handful each year for bikepacking and we have even built frames with added braze-ons to mount the bag directly to the frame without the need for straps,” says Ira.
Customers buying custom bikes are involved in the design process, and have a say in the function of a bike they’ll ride for years to come.
Rather than buying a bike that countless other riders across the country will have, with the same color spec and parts package, Breadwinner puts their time and creative energy into making each bike unique.
2 Comments
Aug 4, 2018
While I'm not keen on those awkward hodgepodge color combos, that does look like a real sweet frame.
Sep 23, 2018
art. Dream bike status. Thank you guys for reviewing these amazing hardtails. This bike in particular has become part of popular discussion amongst friends. I have come back to this review a dozen times already. Well Done.