I know the seat post has a variable seat angulation. Im not planning on racing for a while but Im still doing a lot of cycling so I was hoping to get some roadie handle bars and make the bike more of a roadie bike for comfort reasons. Has anyone hear done that or know if its possible??
Thanks
Gorilla
Yes, I think, theoretically it could be done quite well. The head tube may be a bit on the low side to faciliatate the handlebar height you need but Ritchey makes a stem with substantial rise that is top quality that can get your bars up high enough.
the better question would be…why would you want to…unless you spent all your money on the one bike and like to ride road as well…otherwise it would be a roadoverkill.
Theoretically, yes you could do it, but it would probably be a bad idea. The p3 geometry is not a road geometry, and will probably be relatively sluggish due to the long front centre and shallow head angle. I say probably, since I have never tried such a configuration. Maybe I should have back when I owned a cervelo?
yeah thats pretty much it. Id love to buy a roadie bike and just have both but I simply cannot afford that being a student.
gorilla
I agree. Why would you want to? Maybe you should’ve figured this one out before investing in this agressive time trial bike. I’d say if you are doing alot of road riding then buy a road bike. On the other hand, I have been riding my Tiphoon on group rides because my road bike has been tweaking my knee for some reason. Our last group ride was quite windy and there wasn’t any comments regarding me and my tri-bike as it was me on my aerobars pulling the paceline most of the ride. The ride earned me some respect from the other riders. Next time I show up on my Tiphoon I am sure nobody will think of me as a tri-geek on his tricked-out bike. By the way, our group rides are 56 miles long and I didn’t have any problem riding on the cowhorns when I wasn’t up front pulling.
i’m with you there man, i decided to sell my cervelo p2k over the weekend. I actually did ride that as a road bike for a few races, it worked ok, but i couldn’t get far enough back.
Selling my cervelo allowed me to buy a decent track bike (soon to arrive) that i will get much more benefit from, and possibly a set of power cranks next year. If you sell a p3, you should have more than enough money to get a road bike and a used p2k. (assuming you interchange wheels)
I know a guy who did it with a P2K. Rides 74 degree position with the seat slammed back. He fitted drop bars and STI. Seems to work fine for him, but if it was my choice, I would have bought a Soloist instead.
I was looking at the Cervelo site today, and just out of curiosity how is the “variable geometry” thing accomplished? It looks like you just move the saddle from one mount point to another?
And to the more relvant part… I’ve read that it’s hard to train long rides on a tri-geom bike, so let’s say I wanted to buy ONLY one bike for triathlons (training & race), could I use the variable geometry to train as a road-type bike and then switch to the forward mount for TT/Race stuff?
yes you can easily turn it into a road bike, heres how:
take off the wheels
put it in a large box, then put the wheels (race wheels please) into another large box
send both to me
in a few days, i will send you a road bike!
see how easy it is!
Buy a used road bike with down tube shifters. You can find great deals on these and would not cost much more than the change over
It might work. But you will probably want to flip the seatpost head back and slide the seat all the way back to get a more traditional stable roadie position. Once you do that and add drop bars, you will probably find that the top tube is too long. This can be mitigated somewhat with a shorter steam, but stems shorter than 90 mm can make a bike handle a little funny.
I agree with the other posters - the best bet is to buy a cheap road bike. Felt has some cheap ones as does chucksbikes. And don’t forget ebay. If you’re just looking for something to tool around on your P3 “conversion” will probably be fine. But if you want to race or do fast group rides, consider a “real” road bike.
To my mind it can either fit you correctly as a tri bike or as a road bike, but not both. You can certainly juggle the stem, seat, etc and get your body into a good tri and road position on it, but the handling will depend on where your body is in relation to the wheels when you are in those positions. If you are not centered then the handling will suffer.
In one or the other positions you will be too far forward, or too far back. Additionally a road bike tends to have quicker steering than a tri bike.
If you’re insane, maybe it’d be fine. Seriously, the P3 handles like crap and it’d be rather easy to lay it down. WHat nobody has noted is that pushing the rear wheel in that far makes it about as easy to handle as a drunken cowboy at a rodeo. Also, I really don’t know what gerard was smoking when they designed the bike and put the head tube angle at what it is. It necessitates is a fork with 43mm rake or greater, which theoretically makes it faster but has disasterous effects on handling. In short, put a road fork on it and die. Quickly. Combine these two factors, ouch. This effect is magnified in the larger sizes, specifically in the 700c 58 and 61 bikes. I think its a great bike to ride in a straight flat line, but not uphills or around corners. Needless to say, I didn’t like my P3. As large of a heretic on this site as I am, I’ll stand beside the aforementioned opinions.
ALright, rip, wake up. Look at the wheelbase of the bike compared to bikes of its size, it’s tiny. Put all your weight up high as tri bikes do, and it makes for a pyramid that is about to topple over. You can also tell me that people raced them quite successfully for years. That’s fine. I’m glad they do well but people also smoked until the 1960s because they thought it was healthy. In my opinion, it is not the best set up, and in fact some odd handling things occur on a P3. At a high speed, for whatever reason, the bike gets speed wobbles like none I’ve ever ridden. You can tell me that it happens because I don’t know how to ride my bike like shifting weight and digging both knees in but the force of the resonance when you hit the frequency will literally shake your hands from the bars. I’m not joking. A good friend of mine almost wrecked at 60 mph on a mountain descent because his bike almost bucked him off. And he was on a 52cm p3. And he was a professional rider in europe. I may not know how to handle my bike but you better believe he does.
Needless to say, if you don’t have any more money to waste on a bike, race it as a road set up but beware of the intricacies of the bike. Good luck.
…then I’d have to say the bike was set up improperly. I have had absolutely no wobble on mine. I live near mountains and ride them all the time. At IMC I took ALL downhills while staying on the areo bars and at the speeds you mention. I have had many bikes over the years and it is by far the best descending TT bike that I have had.
Just curious, have you ever ridden a properly set up P3, or are you just blowing smoke.
BTW, I can’t figure out myself why anyone would want to use it as a road bike…that simply is/was not the intended purpose.
First, take a look at the fork rake they used. Then compare to another bike manufacturer. Seriously, many people in the tri community need to look outside of Cervelo. I think there are some fantastic companies that make bikes better than a p3 and p2k.
Of all the bikes I’ve had, the p3 had by about 5cm the shortest wheelbase. This includes a hoard of tri bikes, a few road bikes and a 'cross bike. Needless to say, it still handles like crap and these ‘intricacies’ make it a tough bike to ride as a road frame.
What about the other scathing things I said, you know, comparing p3 riders and their knowledge of the product to cigarette smokers in the 60s. What about the speed wobbles and a bike that under me climbed like crap. Smoking was a fashionable thing to do and culturally acceptable, just the same I think a lot of people ride p3s because their friends do, nevermind the fact that the product has some noticable flaws. All of this is fine until they come back and tell me it’s the fastest bike the world has ever seen. I rode one, thought it was cool to look at.
If you’re seriously concerned about obtaining the most aero frame ever, go and buy a 40 cm junior dual 24" bike and put a 200mm stem and a mtb seatpost on it. The bike won’t catch any air.
can’t you tell from the way I speak? Of course I am an expert at everything so of course I was set up properly. Might I ask what fork you used and what size your p3 was…carbon steer tubes seem to make it worse. Actually nevermind, I guess I don’t really care. Glad it works well for some people. Of all my friends who bought one during the first p3 craze, no one still owns amd rides one. Maybe all my friends were set up poorly. I guess one of my friends took a grinder and cut the tubes apart b/c he was so mad at it. It makes a good looking coffee table, might I add.
Trail doesn’t tell the whole story, though. Two bikes can have the same trail, but handle very differently if, for example, one has a longer front-center than the other. A P3 with a 73 degree HTA and a 43mm fork will simply not handle the same as, say, a Bianchi Carbon road bike with identical angles up front. Not saying it will be better or worse, just saying it will not be the same…
That’s a P3T. Different frame than the P3 - different geometry.