So here she is. The new Team Chad race bike. We took an old Zipp 2001 frame and brought it forward into the 21st century. As most know the Zipps had some pretty annoying issues primarily with the shifting and rear brakes. This is why I wanted to take all the good of the Zipp and remove all the bad to come out with a super bike. That is what we have here. An electronic shifting, hydraulic braking reliable and fast (hopefully) tri bike.
This should get us started for discussions. The saddle hasn’t be leveled yet…just wanted to get some pics up for the masses.
From this side you can see the new internal cable routing and the removal of the old cable guides which used to be on the frame. Calfee Designs patched the old holes and worked all the new holes for the Di2 and the hydraulic lines.
Here is a nice front quadrant shot of the bike. Zipp bars with the RT8 braking system.
An above shot of the aero bar cluster. You can see the bar end shifters, which were built by Calfee, are fully concealed under the bar tape.
Closer shot of the bar ends.
Front shot of the bars.
That’s right. The battery is nicely tucked away in the aero bar extensions. This is the little charging port for the battery.
This is a front shot of the Margura RT8 brake. The little bit of riding reveals to me that these are some very cool brakes.
Here is a shot from below of the rear brake nicely tucked away. Good-bye days of rusted brake lines and squishy rear brakes.
Front derailleur and osymetric crankset.
Rear derailleur. To keep from running this through the structural portion of the chainstay there was a tube installed to run underneath the chainstay for the cable run.
So that is it. This is the new Team Chad race bike. I am looking forward to many, many fast races on this bike. Hope it meets with ST approval.
Very nicely done. Would love to see that in the wind tunnel.
I have been trying to convince the guys at Kestrel to do a beam bike, but the collective view seems to be “not enough market for beam bikes”.
With 40-54 being some of the largest age groups with bad backs, deep wallets and desire for comfort + free speed, I truly believe that the time is ripe for a beam bike revival. It is just a matter of putting some marketing muscle behind it and capitalizing on all those fat wallets.
TJTollakson with his Dimond beam bike is potentially sitting on a gold mine. All it requires is some solid education, some wind tunnel data and marketing horsepower and there is a market to be had.
Specialized is already proving that none of us care about UCI legal bikes. Softride screwed that up big time when they could not out market the perception that their bike was UCI legal…yet they were winning countless Ironmans.
Let’s see what happens in the market now. On my Airfoil pro, I’m riding half way between beam and rigid, but full beam is where it truly is at. With today’s technology in carbon and components, the time is ripe for a beam resurgance.
Nice job by djciii showing the world of ST what is truly possible now over 1993!
I believe this is now the most awesome bike I have seen posted on Slowtwitch. Prior to this posting, there was the tricked out black Trek. I didn’t think it could be bumped from the top spot, but this one has done it. Very, very nice indeed.
Did Calfee have to cut the frame in half to do the installation?
From my understanding he did not have to cut it. He was able to use the original internal cable guides with some expanded drilling. That is what I understand to have been done by him.
Very nicely done. Would love to see that in the wind tunnel.
**TJTollakson with his Dimond beam bike is potentially sitting on a gold mine. All it requires is some solid education, some wind tunnel data and marketing horsepower and there is a market to be had. **
Nice job by djciii showing the world of ST what is truly possible now over 1993!
So, as I was considering this build I contacted TJ to ask him about internal routing. He told me that the original frame routing was too small to accept internal routing. He said the he choose to ride SRAM Red on his frame and elected to not look to make it compatible with Di2. I think this is a big missed opportunity for him. I think any new bike should be built to accept the newest components. Otherwise, you run the risk of looking dated. I hope he reconsiders with his new frame and allows the new Dimonds to be Di2 ready (also Magura as these things feel great).
The fact that the internals are still useable is a testament to both good design from the factory and a loving (or at least non heavy sweating) owner.
Congrats again, I’d love to at least do something similar with the rear brake on mine.
Just for fun…this is where we started on the build. Here she was before her makeover. You can see the cable guides and old internal routing holes that were removed. The new cables run through the top of the frame behind the headset:
