marcoviappiani wrote:
Loving my new Felt IA14. Here are some thoughts:
- I just love how it looks and received loads of positive comments
- the price point compared to other brands is great. With the difference I can get a proper bike fit and accessories
- There were no relevant instructions included, only some generic Felt stuff that was not specific to this bike. Had to google stuff and go on Felt's own site. That's actually not entirely correct, there was a small disc included but I haven't had a dvd or cd reader in years.
- Lots of room for improvement in training the bike shop. I also had the issue of the bike shop misrouting the cables. Need to send it back to fix it. They also misinterpreted how to close the quick release of the front break
- Like somebody else also experienced on this thread, the 3T difflock cap was stripped (I presume from the bike shop because it was already like that) and the bike shop will send a replacement. Also, it took me a while to figure out how to adjust it.
- The calpack is pretty bad won't stay closed and I've added tape to keep it still. I don't see it useful for anything more than storing energy gels which becomes useless if you decide to store gels in another manner (liquid in a bottle for instance). I'd love to hear alternative ideas on how to take advantage of the calpack
- The bontrager draft box fits well, but lid comes off quite easily and I've applied tape to make sure it stays closed. Accessing it while riding is not really a reasonable option so I only see the draft box useful for storing spare tubes and other kit.
- Crank length is 172.5 on the 54cm model instead of the 170 indicated on the Felt website. Not sure why, will need to check this with bike shop.
- It's heavier than I thought it would be. This is obvious because of the size of the tubes, but it's worth mentioning.
- Unless you use very small non aero bottles, you'll struggle to be able to fit two bottles of hydration on down tube and seat tube
Here is what I changed to mine, let me know what you think:
- ISM PR 2.0 saddle
- Kru wheels (55,88)
- Bontrager Draft Box II
- Elite Crono aero bottle
I'm considering changing the breaks and need to find a better solution for ironman hydration.
Nice looking bike. I've got the IA10 and this has been my experience so far.....
-Agree
-Agree
-Completely agree. But I did not even receive a CD. Basically the paperwork included was worthless. The stuff that is on the Felt website is very helpful and they should really include it with the bike. At the price, $2 worth of photocopies would really be nice.
-Same goes for my bike shop. I keep finding things that, to me, should be obvious after having to learn about them myself. The shop has been worthless. Wires were too tight coming out of the aero bars and my shop said there was nothing I could do about. After talking to Superdave it appears to simply be a matter of about $40 worth of parts and a simple fix.
My arm pads needed to be wider apart and my shop said they were adjusted as far out as possible. Once I started pulling things apart on my own I found a whole set of additional bolt holes that allowed me to get plenty of width I needed in the arm pads. This should have been the most simple thing for the shop to take care of when they were fitting me. I have no idea why this was not taken care of. Again, something I ended up doing on my own. The shop was pretty worthless, besides taking my money and delivering an assembled bike.
-3T...not something I've dealt with.
-Calpack. I've only used it a couple of times so far, but I really like the GU blocks and this space seems to work great for filling up with GU blocks.
-I have an XLAB aero pouch in place instead of the draft box. So far I really like it. I thought I might have issues pulling bottles from behind my rear, but it actually works great.
-I'll probably change my crank length when I order a Power2Max
-It is heavier than I would have thought too. It is actually heavier than the cyclecross bike I had been using for my triathlons which really surprised me.
-I've got a Torpedo BTA and an Aero TT as a fuel bottle, along with my aero pouch in the rear for hydration.