I was just on a ride with one of my friends going to Kona. He has a 15 year old rim brake TT bike and was toying between going all in on new tech, or just go with the final edition of high end rim brake aero bikes in the second hand market (and keep using existing wheels). Also he is not sure he wants to keep doing Ironman, so the 5 year old high end rim brake bike would meet his sweet spot of price vs performance.
What do you all recommend? Assume budget end up being around $3K
I can’t imagine you’ll find anything with new tech that will fall within that 3k budget. Honestly what top tier old tech are you going to find which fits that either? Would he just be hoping to find a frameset that he can swap components onto?
I would think that you can get 5-6 year old rim brake full bikes that you used to cost in the range of $7K to $10K for around $3K just because the rim brake platform is effectively obsolete at the high end. It would depend on build but you can always play around with that. But of the rim brake tech from say 2019, what models would some of you sugges (let’s assume he can find a good deal from a seller and park price on the sidelines of the discussion).
If you’re going that route, I’d probably just get a p5 or speed concept. Maybe the tririg onmi if you can find one, although i doubt you can, not super common bike.
This is where this new “Road Cycling” sub-forum confounds me. With the exception of the stupid UCI rules, TT bikes have much more in common with the bike leg of Triathlons than Road Racing or Crits. Yes???/