Im new to endurance sports and have recently picked up an old (2014 i think ) FELT AR2 fairly cheap to help me do a 70.3. I understand this is an old bike , external battery Di2 , rim brakes etc however for the money i couldnt say no.
im looking to make it a bit more TT friendly . My proposed changes are :
-Remover Riser bars , install conventional bars with Aero bars
-maybe slightly deeper wheels
-Slam the seat forward .
Some problems I have at the minute
-Frame specific seat post , cant increase offset any further .
-Need to put my clip in pedals on this bike .
-seatpost needs to go down
-bike fit eventually
Has anyone got any other recommendations or have had this bike in the past
I have a 2011 Felt AR2. Great bike for flat rides and climbing/descending. Yes, deeper wheels. Yes clip-in pedals, I use Speedplay. The rest of it is fit-dependent. But this bike is faster than I am.
Aero helmet (used, preferably for $ savings). Giro Aerohead is great.
Cheap carbon 50mm wheels for rim-brake. You will need special brake pads, AND your braking will likely get worse than your current setup (since the brake track won’t be alloy anymore) so make sure you practice slowly to get used to it, particularly on downhills and rain. Wheelsets <$600 are just as fast as the $2k+ ones for your purposes. (I’ve tried them both, it’s true.)
In terms of aerobars do you have any recommendations ?
Currently got these riser things on and I hate them .I’m wondering weather I bother with normal bars and clip ons or weather I get an integrated tri set up .
Regarding wheels I’ll look into it , seems to be a lot of cheaper carbon wheel sets these days which I’m sure will be fine . I have carbon brake pads , previous owner left them on so had to swap them over myself .
I have some ultegra SPD on now but I’m toying with the idea of a single sided power meter .
I bought both on Amazon for less than $40 each before the current trump tariffs. Handlebars are easy to install as well. I had zero problems with using both . The hardest part is getting the aero bars to not slip which took some carbon paste.
I think that for this bike, and the more relaxed seat tube angle versus a steeper tri bike, it wants to be ridden mostly like a road bike, up on the horns. And you’ll want that position if you’re using the bike for street riding and climbing/descending. You can add on a set of clip-on aerobars like those from Profile Design, which is what my bike fit guy @ianpeace put on so I could get into aero for longer races. But in my opinion, adding an integrated tri front end would sacrifice the comfort of having a really good dedicated aero road bike.
I should add, that when I bought my Felt AR, it was also used, and the previous owner had put a weird Frankenbike front end on it that we changed out to compact road bars plus clip-on aero bar.
Probably depends on your bike vs tt position but I had zero problems Training and racing with clip on aerobars on a road bike. I honestly think the aerobar clip on Issue is wayyyyy overhyped by bike fitters. I Rode just as fast with those clipons compared To my new tt Bike. And no position adjustments other than seat height.
To be honest at this stage in my endurance sports adventure , aerodyamics is not the limiting factor .spent years doing very short interval work for boxing and wrestling and as a result my aerobic system is atrocious.
Yes true, but still don’t underestimate how much the aerobars will help. It’s minutes per hour of time savings, and more % savings the faster you go. It’s so big a difference that I have zero chance on a road bike against myself on a aerobar bike on the same course, same effort. Of course, you have to be able to stay in your aerobars as well, which isn’t that hard but will require some time/practice.
