Tour mag has a similar tunnel/dummy test as well suprisingly with a different set of data.
Cables vs. no cables? After all…a big part of aero road bike “aeroness” is hiding the cables/housings, no?
edit: Oh…and I think I’ve seen something somewhere indicating that perhaps the dummy placement may not have been consistent?..
While I do not have test data for some of the new bikes like the caliper brake-less Ridley and the Litespeed, we have collected data on dozens of other bicycles including many TT frames set up with road parts (a SHIV with drop bars!) for a baseline on component effect.
The Cervelo had a lower drag than any other frame without any parts on it.
The AR1 was the lowest drag as a complete bike. Much of that improvement was the TT-bike-like seat tube and thin widely spaced stays.
The latest crop of “aero” road bikes seem to take more styling cues in their design. The primary focus seems to be stiffness and low weight from these bikes with just an aero fork, downtube, and seatpost.
Aerodynamics is just going to become another box to check when designing a performance bicycle in the future.
We once considered 30mm deep wheels “aero” - now 35-45mm is commonplace and quite standard for a road wheel. 58-82mm has become what some consider “aero” wheels today. When they were first introduced wheels of that depth were TT only - and some even warned about use in mass start or windy conditions.
The balance of where aerodynamics is placed on design is what is going to differentiate these bikes in the future. I think the gap is going to grow again between the brands making premium road frames. With the new materials available, new molding techniques and aerodynamics added into the challenging STW equation a good bike is going to have a significant gap to the napkin-sketched, ENG outsourced brands’ efforts.
BMANX was right all along.
-SD
-SD