TIME ADHX 45 — Campagnolo Ekar 13-Speed | Custom Build Review

This might be Steve’s favorite build yet — a red TIME ADHX 45 custom built for a customer, running a full Whisky cockpit and wheelset with a Campagnolo Ekar 13-speed drivetrain. Here’s the frame, the wheels and tires, the drivetrain, the touch points, and Steve’s take on the ADHX 45 after riding one himself.

The Build

The Frame

This is a large TIME ADHX 45 — one of the last of the closeout frames without the universal derailleur hanger (the newer ADHX 45 frames do include it). It’s not a bikepacking rig: it has two top tube mounts and two water bottle cage mounts, and that’s it. There are no down tube mounts, no fork mounts, and nowhere to hang a rack or fenders. It’s a fun, fast bike, and Steve loves how it feels.

Steve has been riding a TIME ADHX 45 himself, and the thing he keeps coming back to is how responsive it is. Put the power down and it feels like all of it goes straight through the wheels and connects you to the road — but it still rides smooth at the same time. That’s a big part of why the shop was excited to bring the TIME frames in. (Steve also reviewed the green ADHX 45 in a previous video.)

Drivetrain – Campagnolo Ekar 13-Speed

This is a drivetrain Steve thinks doesn’t get enough credit: the Campagnolo Ekar 13-speed gravel group, here with the 10-44T cassette, the Ekar carbon crank, and a set of Shimano XTR pedals. The thumb shifting took a little getting used to — but after a few rides Steve was sold. The shifts are fantastic. The Ekar brakes earn the same praise: he runs them on his own bike and loves how they feel.

One build note on the Ekar hoods: the transition where they meet the bar isn’t perfectly smooth out of the box. When we wrap these, we add an extra piece of tape or two just behind the hood so the final wrap transitions cleanly.

For the cables, this build keeps it simple — mechanical shifting routed down through the top of the headset with a standard stem. You can close it all up and run it fully internal, but with 13 gears pulled by a cable, the fewer tight bends you have, the better it shifts and the longer the cable and housing last — so we deliberately avoided forcing a tight bend up through the stem. Inside the frame there’s a housing stop in the bottom bracket shell: housing runs down into it, then bare cable runs through the chainstay to the next stop and up to the rear derailleur.

Wheels & Tires

The tires are Steve’s favorite — the Challenge Strada Bianca. The gravel around the shop is fairly tame: soft and rolling, not big chunky stuff. These roll fast on the hard pack and float nicely over the soft stuff, and they’re great on pavement too. Steve has ridden every size from a 33 up to a 45 — he was on 45s all last summer, but 40s are probably his favorite. They’re mounted on a set of carbon Whisky gravel wheels.

Cockpit – The Whisky Build

We call this our Whisky build: Whisky wheels, the Whisky Spano carbon bar, and a Whisky carbon seatpost. The Spano is almost an aero-ish bar — the drops are very comfortable, the sweep works well, and it has a nice flex that rides really well.

The saddle is a Selle Italia SLR that went on as a test saddle during the fit and sizing. It’s likely the one the customer will keep, but with a custom build like this we have them ride the test saddle for a week or two to be sure before we set them up with their final one.

Why This Build

The customer had ridden Steve’s Cervelo Aspero — also set up with Ekar — and liked how the drivetrain felt. He spotted this red TIME frame in the shop (he’s got a thing for red; his other bikes are red too), and we had an Ekar group on hand to put on it, so it all came together naturally. There probably isn’t another TIME frame out there running Whisky wheels, a Whisky bar, a Whisky post and a full Ekar drivetrain — it’s a genuinely one-of-a-kind bike, and that’s exactly the kind of custom work we enjoy.