Can t wait to see the results.

Ate you testing in the new boardman wind tunnel?

Watching!

Zipp should make frames again.

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I was hoping this would happen when I saw pictures on the social media.

Yes we’re doing testing in the Boardman tunnel - it opened to the public about a month ago and we’ve been doing lots of work there (before it opened, helping out with some of the usability/software aspects) as well as running client sessions every week. It’s a great facility and luckily for us just 35min from the office! We also have an outdoor velodrome 20min away that we use for field testing so we’re a bit spoilt (and two indoor veldodromes within 90min drive).

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AeroCoach UK
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Why the monster spacer behind the TriRig Omega? That's going to be terrible. Also, housing on the cable. You're giving up watts!

It was a take off from another bike which had the spacers, we might be able to sort that before tomorrow!

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AeroCoach UK
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Using a drill/dremel and a small rigid brake noodle, you can "convert" the Ventus II to be able to support a bare cable down to the brake.

I can't wait to see the results. I love these "old vs new" shootouts. That Zipp bike is quite slick looking. I watched one of your YouTube videos recently where you had a guy go mantis with the aerohead. Funny thing: when I went to A2 two years ago that's exactly what I ended up doing and it was the only substantial change I saw on the day.

We’re not drilling the Ventus :D

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It is quite a common thing these days to go high hands but because the Aerohead works well in combination with that it can definitely be a good avenue to try.

There’s actually a 1970s bike vs P4 article from us in one of the UK cycling magazines being published tomorrow, but that was full setups including clothes, wheels, helmets etc. as well as the bike. For the test rider, sitting up on the base bars on the P4 was pretty much the same CdA as a crazy extreme 1970s road bike TT position on the round tubed bike with old clothing, really interesting stuff.

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Hoping it's from a certain Norfolk-based car factory.. but good luck matching the setups if you do!

Looking forward to the outcome, cheers Xavier.

Well, there is the Dimond that was designed [by a Zipp engineer] from an old Zipp frame. You’d just rather it be labeled Zipp?

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Dimond Bikes Superfan

Nope, I don't like the Dimond. The beam isn't nearly as purty.

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That test would look great with the addition of a lotus ;)

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=====================================
S�rgio Marques
When it hurts is when it feels good ;-)
Sergio-Marques.com

I was just about to say this. Way off topic, but that Marquise is such a nice looking bike with practical storage. Having lived in central Iowa and meeting TJ at my first triathlon ~10 years ago makes me even more interested in the Dimond story.

Chicanery,
I still run my original Ventus bars today. They are great, super-aero!
Also, I would love to use my Pearson in place of the Zipp 3001 as I think Graeme's shape of it may be slightly more aero.

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Team Zoot-Texas, and Pickle Juice

Newer fork and sculpted head tube have some promise, but they are still quite wide, and the leading edges just aren't as Aero as they could be.

Have some suggestions having done a lots of bike only and bike + rider wind tunnel & velodrome testing.

Going out to 20 isn't that relevant to most people unless they are really slow. It's an interesting data point but could save time/money just going to 15. On the other hand if you're not paying then test out to 20!!!!

If you're sweeping negative and positive directions you may want to pause at 0 on the way back to reduce hysteresis w/the front wheel / tire

Those old school Zips & softrides always had to have a 5-10mm or so higher non compressed seat height. Wish I could find my data from my 3 Softride beam bikes to give actual #s

Interested in seeing the results, have a great test!

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Brian Stover USAT LII
Accelerate3 Coaching
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Going out to 20 is just to see what happens, rather than it being particularly relevant, granted. We always do repeats at lower yaws + wind on and off for stuff like this (we've done it before, this is just a public test rather than something internal).

I rode one of the first Zipp 2001s with the Allsop beam and that was incredibly flexible, even moved sideways when you went round tight corners which made handling pretty interesting/faster!

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It still has a lot of promise.

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Team Zoot-Texas, and Pickle Juice

IIRC, the zipp beams had an adjustable preload and were quite a bit more rigid than the softrides.

The zipp beam looked sexier than the dimond.

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Swimming Workout of the Day:

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JasoninHalifax wrote:

Zipp should make frames again.

Although Zipp don't make them and I am sure would cost a lot more if it were the case but the engineers of the time were involved with creating the Dimond

https://www.tririg.com/articles.php?id=2012_05_TJ_Tollakson_Interview

If you have the resources, something Josh@Silca recently brought up that I found interesting: Zipp apparently found that behavior across the yaw sweep was not symmetrical after detachment. E.g. if a wheel detached at 15 degrees, sweeping back in it might not reattach until 10 degrees and different wheels behaved differently in this regard. Some better, some worse.

I think the P5 will win. But I really like the Zipp!

Maybe I should throw my Ventus on the old Zipp and knock the dust off of it :D

My guess is the 3001 is a bit behind the P5.

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My guess too. It will be close, but the P5 will be slightly ahead.

Very cool. Looking forward to seeing the results

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Matt

Should be very interesting...

On a side note, seeing that you are looking at older frames do you have any info on this old giant.

It’s a garage build which I didn’t spend any “new” money on.

Ignore the seat, it slipped and I use a dash not that one.

Edit: disregard, giant mcr2 but can’t post pics on phone.

Cheers,
Maurice

Two or three Very Special Bikes are already resident in that very building . . .

Sadly, they aren't that close - bare or with a rider on board.

Not because beams are inherently less aero, but because none of the most recent beam designs have taken things far enough.

Softride Rocket TT - Beam is round on it's front face.
Zipp - Downtube is just HUGE, and the area behind the fork crown is complete crap. At the stem is bad/worse on some sizes as well. The beam itself is like a knife though.
Pearson - Downtube is pretty good (though round leading edge), but there are a few custom ones around that take care of some things that needed improvement.
Dimond - Very good, but wide; as a high drag, high lift design, it suffers in low yaw conditions.
P5x - Fast, but...a lot of surface area.

I own or have owned all of these except the P5x, as well as a Shiv Tri, Felt IA, P5, Suplicy Quantum, Trek SC, TriRig Omni etc. The P5 almost always delivers the best drag numbers. The Omni is often very close.

Most days of the week, I'd rather ride the Softride. It's just a better experience.

Historical note:
Chet Kyle and Ed Burke would not allow me to test the Zipp 2001 head to head against the Project 96 GT Superbike.

That's a good anecdote! :D

Here are the numbers from today as well as a weighted average drag. The Zipp headtube is exceptionally narrow which I suspect is why it does so well at 0deg yaw. We really did give the Lotus and the Zipp the best chance of doing well with the component choices!

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grr stupid work firewall is blocking them.

Considering the age of the Zipp and Lotus frames, it seems like they did pretty well.

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thanks for sharing! Interesting.

Cool to see some Lotus and Zipp data public.

Next up... Lotus 108? :D

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This forum really needs a "like" button. Very cool test.

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Jim Manton / ERO Sports

Can you post pictures of the Lotus 110?

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Make Inside Out Sports your next online tri shop! http://www.insideoutsports.com/

Very interesting, thank you.

Yes we have a few pics up on our Facebook page here: https://www.facebook.com/AeroCoach/

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AeroCoach UK
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Well, damn. I think I hate you.

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Matt

It would be interesting to see how an p3(with a p5 front fork) or a fully optimised p4 would stand up against the latest "super bikes".

~.004 CdA when the frame is pretty much the only thing being changed, isn't that small IMO. I've never seen a bare frame in a tunnel, but with all the parts and wheels the good ones are ~.06. Frame alone maybe .02 or so?

Wow, that's a lot of nice gear. Did you find the Dimond Marquise to be slower than the P5? I have a P5-3 with Ventus II Ltd bar, Scott Plasma food storage, and dual rear carrier for a bottle and tire kit. I'm considering getting the Marquise because the integrated storage and fast looks, but never considered the width making it a high drag frame.

Disclaimer: have not tested a Marquise. Mine is an original model with a P5-3 fork and a few other tweaks.

But the design, while refined, remains the same. It's wide and high curvature. Storage is great, and if you could ditch the two rear bottles completely, there could be a win in some windy conditions.

It is faster than a Zipp. The upper beam is well designed. But, there is a lot of material elsewhere that is hard to overcome.

thanks for this!!!

What can we extrapolate from this to compare a Dimond to a P5?

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Eric Reid AeroFit | Instagram Portfolio
Aerodynamic Retul Bike Fitting

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Hello

great study and pictures. Thanks for sharing all the process and results.
I'm a big fan of the P5 and Lotus (don't know the Zipp), happy to see the Lotus tested :-)

A question : no remark on the measured CdA, but the corresponding power mentioned above is including aero power (around 243 or 244 w for the P5 ?) plus around 57 w for rolling resistance and bike friction for all 3 bikes ?

It’s a different frame, I wouldn’t want to suggest how a Dimond would perform until actually tested!

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Yes that’s right, total power required

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AeroCoach UK
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That's why I said "considering the age". These are 25 year old bikes, and still under 5w vs the current standard bearer at 45kph. It seems like just modernizing them (rear brake on the lotus, derailleur hanger on the zipp, integrated headset, dropping the downtube, headtube shape refinement, bar and cabie integration, tweaking tube shapes, front brake integration, etc. etc) would bring them right up to current standard without making wholesale changes.

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So a Ventum?

Close, but not quite. Ventum is a long way from the original, which was pretty.

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True that. If beauty is power then that Lotus is at least 20W faster. Except for the bodge seatpost...

But if were the P5 built without being subject to the stringent rules of the UCI (as the others weren't, and the P5 was conceived as a TT/Tri bike to comply with UCI), it would likely be faster than this particular iteration. I'd wager it wouldn't be the P5x either, as storage isn't a consideration for Pro cyclists, and I very much suspect it wouldn't be a like a Ventum/Lotus either.

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'to give anything less than the best is to sacrifice the gift'...Pre

Come on. Not even close.

The Lotus is so much better looking !

Same with the Zipp, - Large Frame Small beam and no chance a Diamond can compete on design. For the record, not talking aero here, but pure asthetics. Used to ride a Zipp 2001 - best bike I ever had even though it is 25 yrs old design.

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Eric Reid AeroFit | Instagram Portfolio
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Unfortunately we had to do that to get the exact position the same on all bikes. We did do bike only data but haven't published it as it may have been affected too much by the seatpost clamp on the Lotus, unlikely to be a problem when the rider was aboard though.

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WRT the seatpost, it certainly isn’t how I’d choose to race it, but it provided functionality and adjustability, and was made from sketches on a piece of paper in just a few days. It won’t have helped the bike only numbers, but probably didn’t have too much bearing with Alex sat on top.

What is reassuring, is that despite Xavier having a vested interest and desire in the Zipp doing well (It’s his bike which he used to race here in the UK a few years back), the numbers were, what the numbers were. And it was fractionally slower than the Lotus. Respect for publishing the facts as they were on the day.

People live through rose colored glasses. And probably, bifocals

They should contact the "Rocky Mounts Headquarters" in Boulder, CO--they have a Project '96 Super Bike hanging in the lobby, for the test--maybe they could *rent it* or work a deal for testing...

Thanks for sharing! Just food for thought since you guys got into the chainring game: I think there's a market for a "bailout" cassette along the lines of what 3T has done but with a 12t small cog going up to perhaps a 34t large cog. So instead of

9-10-11-12-13-15-17-19-22-26-32

you would have

12-13-14-15-16-18-20-23-26-30-36

...or something like that. Not all of us push huge watts :)

I would chip in to make that happen!

We can do a carbon cassette right now but not sure what the market would be like! I do think keeping the 11 is a good idea, it's just such a great bailout for downhills (plus the UK TT community need it). So maybe

11-12-13-14-15-16-18-22-25-29-34?

We can get that done in aluminium, best would probably be a complete one piece setup but carbon sprockets would be individual and last approximately 1 race. We've done track sprockets in the past in carbon ... but don't sell them.

Back to the bike test, TRI247 were on hand, link to the article here and video:

https://www.tri247.com/...wind-tunnel-shootout

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AeroCoach UK
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This type of cassette is what I am looking for as well. Closest to perfect I see (and also lightest) is the Rotor Uno cassette:

11-12-13-14-15-16-18-20-23-27-32 and 150 grams

11-34 with a 44t crank would give me the exact range as my current 52/36 with 12-28

11-12-13-14-15-16-18-22-25-29-34 would be okay but the 18-22 jump is too big too soon for it to be "bailout", imo.

11-12-13-14-15-16-18-20-25-29-34 would be spot on to get the same ratios I already use on a 1x.

I still wonder how much the seat post effected the Lotus. One person in the aero field had stated that the seat post was in fact very important as it helped speed up the air inbetween the legs. Or something similar.

We could put the bikes through CFD to compare but that’s a test for another day I think. The blocky section was hopefully high enough up that it wouldn’t be too much of an issue but yes a bit of a compromise.

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Food for thought, I will have to see where we could fit that into the prototyping schedule* but I do like the idea of a specific cassette for 1x tri and TT.

Rotor UNO cassette does seem like a good alternative for the time being, for sure.

*at any one time we have entire products that have been put through CAD, CFD, tunnel testing etc but are just sat waiting for a slot to go into production. I think we’ve got something like 6 products waiting at the moment!

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The Dimond and Ventum hate or the less strongly worded "dislike" is very funny with some of you.

"I want a bike like the Zipp or Lotus."

"Well, there's Dimond and Ventum. Essentially an updated (BETTER) version of both those bikes."

"No, don't like the Dimond or Ventum. No particular reason but just towing the party line that I should hate those bikes for some reason."

Kind of how this usually goes.

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Favorite Gear: Dimond | Cadex | Desoto Sport | Hoka One One

Well, I personally have particular reasons I don't like the Dimond or Ventum as much as the originals. I really WANT to like the Ventum, and I would if it were a little cleaner looking. I "mostly" like the Dimond, I just prefer the beam on the Zipp for esthetic reasons.

The Omni is a bike that I do really like. To me, that is the "real" Lotus update.

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I agree. I can't put my finger on why. I have to say my bias from being a young brit watching Boardman on the lotus leaves me wanting to see a Lotus complely slammed at the front.

You have to remember that there were two different Lotus frames. The Omni is more like the 108 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lotus_108) while the Ventum rips off the 110, and by being steeper with the hydration bottle, doesn't look as 'fast' to the eye...

The Omni has always looked to me like the update of the Cheetah.

Beautiful looking bike. Both of them, actually!

That too.

Now I'm just waiting on an update of the Pinarello Parigina / Project '96 GT Superbike.

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Or a Sword...

More prosaically, a mate bought a NOS Litespeed Blade last year. It's still one of the best looking bikes I've ever seen!

Awesome post. I have always wanted to see a thread comparing the older superbikes versus the current crop. Like most here I have been a fan of the original lotus bike and always wanted one. The images of boardman racing them is in my mind the epitome of cool. Most have had varies issues with the frame splitting at the seam. I was worried about that when one came up for sale. I bought it anyway and have had excellent luck with mine staying together. No problems with riding it on a trainer or over a decade of racing it. I had a friend machine and powdercoat a new saddle mount that allowed for a steeper setup and better hold on the rails. Photo is from a few years ago. It is currently getting updated components for the upcoming year

There are 5 watts of savings on the Zipp and Lotus. No problem coming up with a configuration where it would beat the P5 in that position and configuration.

Seat cluster on both of them are specifically quite messy and easyish to fix.

I wish I had photos of them, but for years I had the original Zipp bike drawings in giant engineering folders behind my desk. The original bike was designed in 1989 on a drafting table with pencil. The second generation bike was designed in AutoCad 2D in 1992 and plotted on paper at 1:1 scale!! We also kept the molds which were works of art. The AutoCad was turned into 2D router profiles and each size was machined in profile view in solid mahogany, then the profiling was hand cut and sanded to create all of the profiles and features using profile form tooling to match the sides for symmetry.. until there was a 100% to scale mahogany bike called the 'buck' for the bike and the beam. Then carbon fiber molds were laid up on and pulled from these bucks using pattern making techniques to create parting surfaces, etc.. For stability, the carbon fiber tools were about 20mm thick solid carbon fiber and cured for days at high temp to develop thermal stability. The whole process took about a month per frame size.

These were the techniques of the auto racing industry of the time as Zipp was originally founded by a former William's F1 composite engineer.. so around the shop we had all sorts of racecar wings, mirrors, steering wheels, etc made by the same methods and nobody could ever bring themselves to throw out the original wooden bucks as they were so beautiful!

20 Years later when I left Zipp we had a super high speed CNC mill in the R&D lab that could make a near production quality set of rim tooling from a CAD model in the same day. I could literally design a rim in the morning and have functional metal tooling machined by dinner time... only to spend the entire next day polishing those tools to be mold ready! Some things haven't changed much!

As a side note, I have a terrible allergy to mahogany dust and shavings, so the march of technology has been very welcome!
Josh

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