Hi Cam, great to have you here answering our questions!
I have been discussing this bike with an engineer working on composites. He is concerned about torsion resistance in the DT, which seems to be affected by the fuel cell opening. I am attaching a DT scan he sent me from another bike, which he claims to have a similar opening...
What do your tests show? Noodle or not?

EDIT: the image on the left is a standard DT, the one with the opening is on the right.

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Sr. Salitre

Hey SrSalitre - thanks for the question!

We have been working on SWAT for many years at Specialized and there have been countless FEA simulations and prototypes made of different configurations on many different bikes - most recently before the new Shiv was the new Stumpjumper. The same engineers who helped with the new Stumpy SWAT also did this SWAT (which we're calling the Fuelcell on Shiv). From what they tell me and how I feel it rides, it's plenty stiff - certainly no complaints.

I asked one of the composite engineers who has been a big part of the Shiv's development. He said, "It's definitely not a noodle. The hole is molded and not machined so we can add reinforcement plies all around the hole to help better distribute the loads. Sure, if the hole wasn't there we could cut some additional weight out of the frame - but that's not why we engineered the frame the way we did. The spot where the hole ended up was the best compromise of a place that is easily accessible for the rider while racing but takes the least amount of weight to get the stiffness back. I like where the Stumpy's hole is better from an overall optimization of weight/stiffness, but putting it way lower doesn't serve this rider properly."

Edit: formatting...

Great first post.

Ken

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"the trick is to keep losing weight until your friends and family ask you if you've been sick. then you know you're within 10 pounds. if they start whispering to each other, wondering if you've got cancer or aids, you're within 5. when they actually do an intervention, you're at race weight." - Slowman

Ummm No. What you describe is call the market. Its what you do if you want to build and sell bikes. Just because Specialized built a bike to get YOU to spend YOUR money doesn't mean anyone should "cream their pants". I guess you do that every time you go to the store and buy bread because we participate in this sport and that takes carbohydrates?

It's a triathlon bike, not a track bike, crit bike, "climbing" bike, or even TT bike. While it presumably could have greater downtube torsional stiffness without the fuel cell opening, does it really need to? For a bike that's primarily intended to be ridden at a steady, well-below-maximal effort, and generally in a straight line, there's a certain threshold of adequate stiffness beyond which performance for the intended purpose isn't really enhanced.

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"They're made of latex, not nitroglycerin"

right on---and this has been done for some time in the MTB world with these openings and they do fine. using it as a tri bike worries me very little

i don't think you actually understand the intent of my post. not that i'm surprised.

I accept payments via check/paypal, but here's your marketing materials, also don't sell any of these to men because your marketing should focus only on women based on this time split improvement.

Lucy Charles Legacy S-Works SHIV 2017 Bike Split-4:58:19
Lucy Charles S-Works Sail Equipped SHIV 2018 Bike Split-4:38:11

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Washed up footy player turned Triathlete.

Yeah...again, the masses don't read slowtwitch though. You have Lucie go on tour promoting the bike to major Specialized dealers packaged with some women for tri events and go: "This bike helped me go 20 minutes faster at Kona". It's marketing man...sort of like movie themed cereal.

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Washed up footy player turned Triathlete.

And they did it not looking as ugly. Looking at the stationary photos and video of it I thought well if it’s inovative it you could learn to love it but it looked ugly on the telecast.

I really like what you've done. It's clever. The fork design is similar to the Avanti Pista, and we know that turbulence around the wheel is huge. Could you please show us some CFD results to illustrate airflows?

Most of the commentary here misses the point - it doesn't matter how the bike rides clean, it matters how it rides with nutrition (please don't call it fuel) and drinks on board. That's partly Specialized's fault for not making it explicit, but they probably saw the backlash from Cervelo taping 12 gels to the toptube and decided to play it safe.

I'd like to see this in black. The hypercolour paint scheme doesn't do anything for me, and might be another reason the scofflaws aren't taking this seriously.

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'It never gets easier, you just get crazier.'

FTFY

Check the pictures on tririg. Gomez used electrical tape to keep the lid on the hydration thing. Sarah True had hers taped down as well. Apparently some knew it would stay seated. With as long as we waited for the "new shiv", stuff like this seems very short sited by one of the biggest players in the game.

They have a Bento Box that is on the down tube and have lasts on the frame for a cage or another bento. Personally I don't like where their Bento is overall, but hey...if you can learn to reach that far you'll be alright...much easier than refilling the sail tank on the go.

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Washed up footy player turned Triathlete.

Hi Cam,
Since the S-Works app tells me, that I am right in between size S and M I was wondering what the main differences are between the sizes. Is the hydration system way smaller in S and what would be your recommendation?


BTW:
Did you guys see Braidn Curries solution for refilling the tank on the fly? Pretty interesting. He cut off a bottle an than linked it with a pipe to the big tank.

that is awesome!

that bike looks WAY better with a rider on it.

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Eric Reid AeroFit | Instagram Portfolio
Aerodynamic Retul Bike Fitting

“You are experiencing the criminal coverup of a foreign backed fascist hostile takeover of a mafia shakedown of an authoritarian religious slow motion coup. Persuade people to vote for Democracy.”

You don't need to go that far in marketing, delivering a bullshit time comparison.

The price is enough.
"14k USD, waoowwww, must bee faaaaassst"
It will be enough for many !

Its a beer bong solution to a bad design.

Agree. Specialized needs to sort that hydration system issue. At first look I was sure that could be a problem. The actual racing, with Lucie's problem, Javi taping his down, and Braden having to do some backyard engineering, this system is clearly ill-considered. This is just bad engineering. Surely it was not tested adequately under duress prior to this race. First race out and three significant issues on their highest placed athletes' bikes.

Back to the drawing board, Spec.

In term of reality, this is very true. On the other hand, look how well hard core SUV's sell when the large majority of people who buy them will nevertake them off road. It's all about marketing to people's wishes and dreams, not reality...

Indeed; good analogy. Given the fiasco over the wknd, it’s obviously all marketing bs

Hi Chris_Mint, as long as you can achieve your saddle height on the larger size, we'd recommend going for the Medium. Slightly large capacity for the hydration fuel cell (~100ml) and a bigger aero gain in crosswinds due to some additional surface area. Also, a potentially more compact cockpit.

Also, "optimized for Kona" doesn't necessarily mean it's bad for other courses. In fact being optimized for Kona probably fits well with other courses that are similar in nature. Sure it might not be ideal for some of the most mountainous courses, but you can't optimize for both. Maybe "optimized for ___ conditions" would have been a better tagline, where you could fill in the course conditions and styles the bike is best on. Specifically calling out Kona when most people won't go there though does make the bike seem a bit more out of reach, and bit more unneeded than it otherwise would be.

You have a valid point. I was assuming that “optimized for Kona” meant it was best for high yaw conditions (for instance as opposed to a P-5 which performs best relative to other bikes at low yaw). The big sail/water tank in back would tend to support that but Specialized might mean something else or it could be pure marketing.