Made entirely from Columbus' Foco tubing. Foco is made from an alloy called "Thermachrome". It has the interesting and specific characteristic of having exactly the same tensile strength after brazing or welding as before. There are no hard spots in the frame. This brings the frame closer to the builder's ideal, of taking the 8 tubes of the frame and uniting them into a single unit. Previously, Nivachrome, used in EL-OS and Torelli/Nemo 747 was considered the ultimate because it only lost 10% of its strength after brazing. Now near perfection is available. The tubing Mondonico selected is the 28 mm top tube and 32 mm downtube drawn to 0.4mm wall thickness that both Mondonico and I believe yields the finest possible ride available on a bike today. The thin-wall, lightweight 18mm seat stays give an aggressive, modern look to the bike.

Design

The Mondonico FOCO is the latest in the slow evolution of frame design from Mondonico. It uses his proven stage-race geometry. On special order, the Foco can be made with a carbon wishbone rear triangle. This takes 3 to 4 months.

The Mondonico fastback seat stay system, standard on the Foco frame. Click on the picture for a larger view. Foco frames can be special ordered with optional monostay or diamond seat stays: for details on those treatments, and an explanation of the difference between the systems, see the seat stay page