That's why there is an integrated compartment for a chain tool. Also holds wet wipes for post-bathroom stop hygiene.

could be one downfall, would have to ride it to know.

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2024: Bevoman, Galveston, Alcatraz, Marble Falls, Santa Cruz

Thrash can and wallet integrations are well thought. I would like to see an integrated urine container.

I think of they passed on the toolkit part of the down tube it would be a really great looking bike!

That brake cable hanging out into the wind at 1:03 though... Trim that sh*t or bend it back. Sheesh. ;)

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Zen and the Art of Triathlon. Strava Workout Log
Interviews with Chris McCormack, Helle Frederikson, Angela Naeth, and many more.
http://www.zentriathlon.com

That's actually a semi-legitimate concern. I'm sure a K-edge chain catcher would be a very smart idea if running a 2x to prevent a chainsuck.

I run a K-Edge and tune my front derailleur (conventional shift Ultegra) as needed. Froome's bike has two separate custom 3D printed chain catchers. The weight to piece-of-mind ratio there seems good.

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Madison photographer Timothy Hughes | Instagram

What a momentous day in the world of high end triath-gear! Omni? What's Omni -- just an orthodontist-level expensive, poorly wrought, bastardized road bike with water bottles strapped all over it, including one on the top tube, right in front of the seat post. With repulsive orange paint. And rim brakes! The future is here now -- I am moving up my TriRig bankruptcy projection to 15 months.

Let's start with looks...I mean, talk about polarizing. When I first woke up this morning, I thought it was awful. Not quite Omni bad, but still, hall of fame hideous. But in just a couple hours, it has grown on me measurably. The videos with a rider on board make it appear like a combination of a motorcycle and a rocket ship. And I love love love the red and black color scheme -- my wardrobe will match perfectly right out of the box. Rolling around with matchy matchy kit is critical for anal retentive, vain, narcissistic triathletes, of course. Aside from that, I don't love the massive logo.

They did a decent job on fit. It will fit me and it will fit me quite well. At my size, it's 1cm longer than Omni for the same stack. Sits right on top of the small Shiv TT for me. Not P4 or Canyon good, but fine nonetheless.

The integration is outstanding. I love the the Barfly mount for the Garmin -- a small need that Salazar has long pretended does not exist. If I don't have that Ventum reservoir with one of these new bikes, I do need a bottle on the down tube, at least for training, and Andean provides that. I like all the room under the bottom bracket. Could totally hide a motor in there, and Weiss probably will. /pink ?

I am a fan of many of the other small but important forward-leaning decisions they made. I love 1x. I like the thru axles...I have them on all my non-road bikes -- the stiffness provided by them is palpable. And so many places to store my Silca wrenches. Shit, might as well carry along the whole set, as well as the new torque wrench jawn from Kickstarter.

But still, I refuse to believe that it's fast...yet. Does anyone actually buy the aero data that Diamondback released the first time around with the Serios? I sure as shit don't. 30 grams slower than a P5? Haha. Okay. They issued one of the less believable charts published by any manufacturer in recent history:


They also sounded like complete morons playing up that 15 degrees of yaw thing, which of course they now acknowledge is not at all important. So my default assumption, right now, is that this bike is very slow. And I won't assume otherwise until I see reputable third party data.

Aside from that, the fact that they designed the frame around a specific set of wheels is genius. Why hasn't anyone done this before? Somebody should work with Flo so those guys don't end up in Chapter 11 with Nick. Flo wheels are exceptional aside from the completely unusable, China carbon brake tracks. But rim braking is so 2015.

Moving on to price...oh wow is this embarrassing for TriRig, Dimond, and Ventum -- the other direct-to-consumer peddlers in this space. I'm all for it, because there are very few bikes on the market that can compete at Andean's price thresholds, especially for those spec lists. I wish they were offering just the frame module, or frame module sans bar, because I like to spec my own builds, but probably I'm a minority here...triathletes are sheep. Regardless, for around the cost of a Dimond or Ventum One frameset, and just a touch more than an Omni, I can get an Ultegra Di2 build with HED Jet wheels (~$6k). That is outstanding, like better than Felt outstanding. Couple this with the fact that I can secure this for a solid discount through a personal association, and I'll be picking one up to test, and, if slow, to dump in the classifieds onto some unsuspecting lemming at a small profit for my troubles. Surely this bicycle is a big loss leader -- what kind of financial resources do these guys have? I'm too lazy to research it. But I hope those grad students were working pro bono.

I don't agree with BryanD that it will be a nightmare in crosswinds. It doesn't look all that much worse to me than an IA. Besides that, I've never ridden a bike I didn't simply get used to in crosswinds, even adapting to deep dish wheels that totally suck. I don't understand the wind weenie thing. Nobody who rides a race setup outdoors all the time is getting blown into the lava rocks.

Unfortunately, I will have to add a bar...probably my Alpha C (*shudder*). I dislike this HED one. I hate how companies come out with these groundbreaking UCI illegal designs and then slap a UCI legal bar on there. Maybe it's just not good bang for buck aerodynamically, or they are just really hard to design, or both -- but holy hell if that Speed Concept base bar isn't one beautiful and sturdy piece of kit.

One major negative for the Andean is ease of travel. This is going to be a huge pain in the ass to fly around with. You for sure have to take the rotors off the wheels (a problem for all disc brake wheels, of course). Will it fit in my hen house? A small probably will since it looks to be a standard fork under there, but if not, that might be a deal breaker. Or I might just have to pull a slowman and have two bicycles -- one not-so-super one for air travel, and one exceptionally super/integrated one for travel by car. But that makes no sense, because nearly every race that matters, I need to fly to. But it ships with a layer of safety foam! Sounds legit.

Anyways, I have to agree with rappstar, I don't get the association with Weiss. A doper once a doper always, at least in the mind of the (non-doping) athletes who will be considering this bicycle. Diamondback is already a bizarre brand in this space, and to me it's an exceptionally odd choice to try to make inroads with this niche through the face of one of more hated athletes in the sport. Why couldn't they have just gone with Matt Russell? Sure, that guy is super boring, but at least he seems squeaky clean. Weiss is a asshole and a cheat -- though I repeat myself.

Speaking of the brand, that might be one of the biggest uphill battles this bike faces. The thing is sold at Dick's for crying out loud -- it's a bit of a laughing stock. Novara probably has as much legitimacy in this space. They need to get a grad school team on the consumer branding research, because they neglected that entire piece. Why not release this thing as a fighter brand? Or try for a rebrand of some sort.

Also agree with Jordan...surely they ran this by WTC? The rules very clearly state that new or prototype equipment must get some sort of special approval.

Anyways, looking forward to my testing. When can we order?

I never said this....

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

Bryancd*

I look forward to your responses about the new bikes more than the bikes themselves.

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2019 T-Rex Tri Series

Also, Flo wheels are made in Taiwan...not China

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

I think we get confused from time to time. :)

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-Of course it's 'effing hard, it's IRONMAN!
Team ZOOT
ZOOT, QR, Garmin, HED Wheels, Zealios, FormSwim, Precision Hydration, Rudy Project

thank you for that one! So aero wise it looks like it's combo of a P5 and SC/IA right? Good low yaw angle drag of the P5 and good "high" yaw angle drag of the Trek and Felt, right?

I love the outside the box thinking. Would like them (or someone) to test all these 4-5 main superbikes in the same windtunnel to get apples to apples comparison.

Since I'm not calibrated to CDA, what's my conversion to grams? I see the P5 at 0* listed at 600g in most plots, the Andean at ~630ish grams in their plot, so curious how the position swaps, but maybe that's due to speeds used in their respective tests?

You missed the point. They are as cheap and awful as China carbon clincher brake tracks -- the one's you order off Ebay for $180 per rim -- and they seem to scratch up just as easily.

ETA: Maybe a little picture game will help you with this. Guess which one I bought from carbon-cycle or one of those crappy open mold profiteers, and guess which one is Flo.

There is an internally routed catheter tube, it empties right above the disc brake rotor to keep it cool considering all of the hard braking you do during a race.

It is a great idea because if you are scared enough that you feel you need disc brakes you also probably wet yourself right at the moment when you grab a handful of brake lever. Diamondback really did their homework on rider personas.

Jay, I saw the bike-only data in your article...is there any "rider-on" data shown yet? As you might remember from my foray into the Win Tunnel last year, absolute differences in bike-only measurements can go down fairly dramatically once a rider is on board. According to the pics and "white paper", they've done a lot of analysis/testing with rider models, so one would think that data is available.

Speaking of rider-on data...I'm curious about what, if any, drag effects there are from the front wheel naturally "sweeping" in front of the downtube/"chin fairing" cutout area while the rider pedals. That's something that won't be captured in a wind tunnel test where the bike is rigidly mounted to the balance...it's really something that could only be captured at a facility like ERO, or by someone doing careful field testing (VE, or otherwise). IIRC, I think at one time Gerard Vroomen mentioned that this effect was one of the things they learned with the Barrachi project bike...and it wasn't a good thing.

Other than that, it's a pretty wild offering. Fairing the chainring is something I've wondered about for a while as well...

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http://bikeblather.blogspot.com/

Maybe Ventum is on to something?

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

is there any "rider-on" data shown yet?


Tom,

Remember the Trimble - http://www.bikehugger.com/posts/trimble-monoque/

I heard at the time that, that bike "tested" well with no rider - makes sense, just looking at it. But when you had the rider aboard, it was worse than open diamond frames!! Perhaps that's why it was short short lived.

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Steve Fleck @stevefleck | Blog

It also beeps in reverse like a trash truck!

Honestly, I think the storage on the down tube and also behind the seat tube should be detachable. That way you can take them off to shake things out and also take them off when/if you don't want them on a ride.

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----------------------------------------------------------
Zen and the Art of Triathlon. Strava Workout Log
Interviews with Chris McCormack, Helle Frederikson, Angela Naeth, and many more.
http://www.zentriathlon.com

Of course I do...

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http://bikeblather.blogspot.com/

Oh yeah...your article also mentions that the top end model sports Shimano hydraulic brakes. What levers are they using for that? I haven't seen any hydro TT levers yet from either Shimano OR SRAM.

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http://bikeblather.blogspot.com/

Right, because Jay Prasuhn's 11 page screed, riddled with typographical and grammatical errors, was not tl;dr. I read it. It sucked.

I remember thinking the same... after the fact (and after hours). Will have to query.

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Jay Prasuhn
Marketing Specialist, American Bicycle Group (Quintana Roo//Litespeed//Obed)
twitter.com/jayprasuhn

I read the entire thing. Long but good I thought. Your reply was equally as good from an entertainment perspective AND without any words - impressive :)

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