I am in the process of turning my much loved P2C from a Tri/TT specific bike to an allrounder! - a bike that has drops and tri bars. Mainly because I am doing longer tris, live in a bumpy area and dont have enough money to buy a new road bike - . My question is would it be better to leave the tri bars with gear shifters and get brake levers or buy a new set of stis for the drop bars ? Has anyone else turned their P2C into a road/tri machine - what d’you reckon would be best?
i have a p2c with road drops and clip ons for the exact same reason you describe. It works excellent in hilly terrain, much better then a full tri set up. I use an ordinary road drop, with t2 aerobars (they are slighty higher then most tri bars), and i have 1 spacer under the bar and normal sti shifters. Having the sti shifters is the main reason why i ride like this. I have many steep hills and cobblestones or bad roads in my area and that is where you want your hands off the aerobars, and you definitely do not want to shift on the aerobar. Also, down in the road drops is the best place to be on technical downhills on bad road surface. It is again a great advantage if you can shift without taking your hands of the drops.
You can ride group rides like this too, but for extended periods of time the bike is still more comfortable on the aerobars. It is a little too steep a set up to ride for long times easy with the hands on the shifters.
Not done it with a P2C, but a mate has doen it with a Transition. He uses STI’s and it works very well for him. He also uses T2 aerobars.
Not done it myself on a P2 but went with the road drops/clipons on my Fort Aero budget build. I deliberately put a Sora shifter on the RD (it´s only running 8 speed) as the downshift button is so easy to reach from the aerobars.
A more impressive build is one below:
This is the solution of one guy on here, Campled. Admittedly it´s not a P2C but it´s a very, very neat solution with the 3T bars. Just put it up for ideas/inspiration.
Plenty of other pictures of tri machines set up for road bars and clipons, but you might have to trawl a few threads.
Sorry cant see it! Has the picture been uploaded??
Looks OK here.