Excellent choice!
It’s a great bike as standard, at an awesome price. But there are some components that a lot of experienced riders will want to upgrade straightaway. Even inexperienced riders will find themselves wanting to get rid of them when they begin to improve and start to notice the little things!
I thought I’d share my experience with upgrading a few bits and pieces of my P2 to get it to where I want it. More experienced STers probably won’t get much from this, but if you’re in the market and considering this bike (and just about everyone who is buying a TT bike in its price bracket would look at the P2) then it might help you.
I’ve always found the ST community to be a great source of information, so this is my way of giving back and contributing to the knowledge base!
PARTS TO UPGRADE
#1 - The Brakes & Brake Levers
The bike comes with FSA Gossamer brakes, which I found to be simply awful. They just don’t slow the bike down quickly enough. I had the same experience with them on my Cervelo S2, so I swapped the calipers out for Shimano 105 (£60). The braking still wasn’t quite there, so I upgraded the profile design levers for these 3T levers (£47) that were recommended in a thread on Slowtwitch. Now things are working very nicely, the 3T levers are better looking and probably more aero, so perhaps I’ve saved myself 0.5 of a watt there.
When I got the bike it had come with US-style brakes (right hand rear), which meant that cables had to cross over in front of the headtube. I’ve now also switched this back to normal, which has cleaned up the front end a little more.
#2 - The crankset
With the size 56 frame, I got a 52/36, 170mm FSA gossamer crankset. I have always ridden a 172.5mm, so upgraded that to Shimano 105 (£105) as well. This needed an adapter (£35).
It’s not just the crank length though, for some reason I just prefer the feel of Shimano cranksets. I’m sure someone reading this will be itching to tell me there’s no way I could possibly notice a difference between the two and offer some highly technical explanation about why, but for whatever reason it seems to feel nicer to me.
#3 - The aerobars
The aero extensions are pretty standard. However, the base bar on the P2 feels a little narrow when you grip it, and this can be pretty uncomfortable. Granted, this sometimes helps you as you should be reminded not to stick the the aerobars, but when you’re on the way out of a city through traffic, or riding in a group, base bar is is! I’ve changed to Cinelli gel cork tape (£10) which makes a big difference - but the next thing I’d want to upgrade on this bike would be the aerobars.
I also found that when I had the aerobars in the position that was comfy for me, the base bar was a little high. This made it hard to get my weight in the right position to steer through technical sections and descents. So I bought some risers for the aerobars (£20), which meant I could drop the base bar without changing the position of the elbow pads and extensions.
With all the metal in the front end, things can get a bit chattery on a bumpy road. Not in a ‘road buzz’ sort of way, but you really feel the knocks coming up through the fork. This was much improved by some latex tubes!
#4 - The Stem
Wanted a longer one, so got it. Not a criticism of the bike here, just a fit thing. Any stem will do but I bought a 3T one on sale for £40.
#5 - The Wheels
I wanted a fast wheelset, so went for a Hed Jet Plus, 6/9 combo. Conti GP Force/Attack tyre combo was recommended by HED, so that’s what I went with. No problems at all with this wheelset, the frame and forks accommodate them quite nicely. The original brakes struggled to get wide enough to fit them, but it was no problem with the 105s.
#6 - The saddle
It’s the case with any TT bike that you’d be lucky if the saddle fits you perfectly. I had to change out the stock fizik arione, and am currently testing a fizik tritone. This is a totally personal thing, so ignore what I’ve done.
#7 - Other bits and pieces
I use my Garmin Vector S on this bike when I need it, and have added Torhans’ bento and aero bottle, and a profile design FC35 bta bottle.
WHY NOT A P3?
For me, initially, price was a big factor. I’m from Australia, living in the UK, and because of the state of various currencies it made the most sense to buy the bike on a recent trip to the US. So there was a US$1500 difference between the P2 and P3.
Excluding things I would have upgraded on a P3 anyway (power meter, wheels, aero accessories, saddle, stem), I’ve spent about £280 (US$440) upgrading bits and pieces (actually I probably spent a bit less by buying things when they were on sale). Granted, my aerobar and groupset is not quite as nice as the P3, but it’s at a level that I’m happy with, and I’m generally a guy who is fussy about these things.
So I’ve basically built myself a ‘P2.5’ for about US$1000 less than I would have had to spend on a P3. Depending on which power meter and aero accessories you go for (and whether or not things are on sale) that $1k would cover just about everything else I bought except the wheelset.
I did all the mechanical work on this myself. That required a torque wrench, some allen keys, cable cutters, and the odd bit of youtubing to see how things were done. It took some time, but I enjoyed the tinkering and learning. It’s worth noting that it’s an incredibly easy bike to work on, pull apart, put back together etc. which matters when you’re travelling to races!
PHOTOS
Here’s what it looks like (it could use a wash but not too bad at the moment):
Front end (and yes, for the hawkeyes out there I’ve noticed the bars aren’t perfectly centred!):
Side view of components etc:
CONCLUSIONS
The P2 has been great, can’t recommend it enough.
The upgrade process I’ve gone through has been fun, and really improved the bike a lot. The ONLY drawback is that now it’s a little heavy. But that’s only compared to my Cervelo S2 with di2 and DA C24 wheels! I also wish I could’ve got the black version, but it came out a couple of months later. Oh well.
In terms of helping buyers choose:
- If you’re tossing up between a P2 and a P3, you basically need to work out whether you’re willing and able to put a little bit of time in to order some parts online and do some wrench work. If you are, you can save some money. If you can’t be bothered, and the extra cost isn’t a worry for you, I’d say go for the P3.
- If you’re tossing up between the P2 and a slightly cheaper bike, I’d say it’s worth the stretch to go for the P2 if you can. It gives you the platform to build a seriously nice bike over time. As an example of how good it can get check out this great piece that tririg did where they built up a P2 to see how could it could be. Perhaps I’ll get mine to that level someday!
Anyway thanks for reading, hope this was helpful for someone.
