Had the bike in action for a couple months and overall am happy. I’m 5’ 9" on a size small (490). Saddle to bar drop as shown is 160mm.I’m doing only TT’s under 1 hour (10M,20K, 40K) so my needs don’t necessarily align with the tri folks directly.
Bike is Campagnolo 10 spd Centaur, Quarq Riken compact (34t-50t), mechanical shifting. Specialized TriTip 40 is a recent experiment with just ok results. Race wheels shown in the picture (Zipp 900 tubular, Zipp 808 tubular both with Veloflex Extreme tires glued) and 11-21 cassette.
I did one modification which is to reroute the rear brake housing from the training edge of the aerobar, along side the stem and into the back of the “sorta headtube”. The basebar is nearly solid resin in a large area where I drilled so no concerns about breaking. I filed a 1/2 circle detail into the stem so I could drill the headtube inside the outer corner. It works fine but the housing rattles inside the basebar which is annoying. I intend to cut the housing shorter but haven’t taken the time yet.
A few niggles.
–Stem to basebar requires assembly paste to keep from slipping with all 4 bolts torqued to 5nM.
–Really don’t like the full length internal housing. The front derailleur isn’t too bad but the rear is just silly long. It also wants to slide back and forth since it’s not secured on both ends. I put a small tiewrap on the ends but would strongly prefer to have a liner in the frame and the housing external. The P-X Exocet 2 I had just before this had the liner with normal housing lengths and worked just fine.
–I finally decided to accept the compromise of the exposed front brake housing and the dreaded “noodle”. Braking is actually pretty good but the rear brake on the drive side has almost no clearance as the pad holder hits the frame.
–The cover for the rear brake required major surgery on the drive side to keep it from rubbing on the brake. Others have reported the same thing previously Not a big deal but annoying for a factory item.
–The headset design is a bit of a headscratcher. With the upper half of the stem removed, there are 2) 5mm bolts that load the bottom half of the stem against the V shaped section of the fork. I can only assume this is intended to be the preload method for the headset bearings. However, it’s overconstrained because there’s also the 5mm bolt on the centerline of the steerer through the upper half of the stem.
–Front tire clearance vertically is really tight. With a normal 23mm clincher on the training wheels, just the small grit that the tire picks up will rub on the underside of the fork slightly.
–I’ve owned quite a few bikes over the years and don’t generally care about toe overlap. This bike however has some serious toe overlap. With 170mm cranks the tire is only 25mm in front of the CRANK, not to mention the shoe beyond that. You really have to watch it starting from a stop.
Yes, the bar tape is dirty. I have been using tennis racket grip material the last couple years but in black. Figured I’d try white. The grip is great, the dirt isn’t “pro”.