Last month I picked up a Cotic Roadrat under the Bike to Work scheme where you make a salary sacrifice but then save a good percentage of the cost via a Tax break. It’s an interesting bike and exactly the kind of thing I wanted to replace the Harry Hall as an all year round workhorse. I’ve had a few niggles with it that I’m still trying to solve. The first is that the wheels just feel dull. I’m not sure if it’s the tyres or the actual spoke and rim combination, but they don’t feel as comfortable or sprightly as the S-Works tyres on the Bonty wheels I had previously.
The other niggles are firstly that the chain seems to be easily derailled off the chainring – annoyingly when starting off from a standstill (usually from traffic lights in rush hour). Despite using the chain tensioner to try and dial out the slack that is allowing this to happen, I’m still being irritated by this. Secondly, when you slam on the rear brake, the wheel gets pulled in the drop out to the non drive side. Which is annoying because you have to get off and undo the quick release to put it back in it’s place. I’m thinking that a new set of QRs or Allen key skewers are the way forward with that one.
Other than that it’s a great bike. The extra length certainly makes a difference when riding it so in all it’s a better riding position. Now it has some custom graphics on it and a few stickers, it’s certainly unique.
R O T H A R . C O M 
Hows the chainline looking regarding the chain dropping from the lights? is the bb area particularly flexy? Would chain tugs help with both this and the disk pull? i know they are not an elegant solution but it sounds like they might be needed at last until you get a bolt up rear solution
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Chainline is spot on – Tim at Sideways Cycles ditched the Gusset spacer kit for a more flexible shimmed approach when he built the bike up.
The drive side has a chain tug as standard, but to fit a pair you’d need a longer quick release anyway. I think the issue is really that the QR design makes it hard to do them up tight enough. As a result they don’t clamp with enough force to stop the wheel being pulled out of line.
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