I’ve been considering going to an aero road frame for road racing/crits and TT’s and Giant’s Propel Advanced has been getting great reviews and done exceptionally well in testing vs. other aero road frames. It’s not cheap so I was considering selling my Argon 18 E-116 AND my road bike and using the Propel for double duty with clip on aerobars (and aero wheels of course).
Any thoughts on this approach? It’s certainly going to be a lighter TT setup (the Argon isn’t a featherweight) IF I can get the right TT position on the Giant, how much am I actually losing from having road bars hanging out there and the need to dip down to shift?
Road bars and sti shifters present a non trivial aerodynamic disadvantage. You could slightly reduce that by using Giant’s or Zipp’s aero road bars.
To put it into perspective, the zipp/bontrager aero road bars save something like 20-50g of drag (10-20 seconds per 40k) over normal road bars, which is just the straight part of the road bar being made aero. Then add in the drop part of the bar, and the sti shifters, and whatever time is spent out of aero shifting.
You could get good at recabling, and swap cockpits entirely.
Or just get a cheap road bike and a great TT bike =)
not to mention that the zipp aero road bars do not allow clip-ons, iirc, which I may not
Good point. Bontrager’s do though, and I think giant said they were going to make some clipons that would work? But, don’t know if that has actually happened.
Jack,
I appreciate the insight and I had considered the “aero bar swap”, just keeping the 3T setup that I have on the Argon now (along with all of the spacers/fit accessories). I’d like to see if I can get into a decent position on the Giant so I’m not losing too much there (rider 85% or drag vs. bike at 15%, or so I’ve read).
DI2 would probably make it easier;)
I didn’t realize the benefits of the aero/teardrop flats on road bars were that significant…
Your chances of getting a good aero position on the giant are fairly slim given that the 1.25 steerer means limited stem options (no steep drop)
And the contact SL compatible clamps are high stack
Felt AR and Cervelo S5 are much better dual use bikes, but you have to plan things very carefully (like TomA) to get a good position for TT on a properly sized road bike
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Road bars and sti shifters present a non trivial aerodynamic disadvantage. You could slightly reduce that by using Giant’s or Zipp’s aero road bars.
To put it into perspective, the zipp/bontrager aero road bars save something like 20-50g of drag (10-20 seconds per 40k) over normal road bars, which is just the straight part of the road bar being made aero. Then add in the drop part of the bar, and the sti shifters, and whatever time is spent out of aero shifting.
You could get good at recabling, and swap cockpits entirely.
Or just get a cheap road bike and a great TT bike =)
I was amazed at the difference a TT cockpit made over drops w/ clip ons. While there were other things that played into it (aero helmet, disc cover added to Enve 6.7s and potentially some wind changes), I was approx 14 minutes faster on lower watts.
The biggest thing for me was the ability to shift from the aero bars.
I can’t wait until I have a dedicated TT bike and my Talon becomes my dedicated road/rain bike.