Designing My Road Bike: The Ride (Pt. 7)

Designing My Road Bike: The Ride (Pt. 7)

Climbing

This bike is heavy, weighing 8.2 kg. The deep wheels and heavy Rival AXS group contribute to the weight, but the bike is well-balanced and climbs decently. It's stiff out of the saddle, allowing you to focus on the effort. However, it's no Aethos.

 

Flats and Sprinting

The bike's aggressive fit compares favorably to Remco Evenpoel's 2022 Specialized Tarmac SL7, but sized for slightly smaller rider. Its aero hoods position and aero design fork + bar help it excel on flats and in sprints. The low trail design and specific wheels keep it stable in windy conditions, even with the narrow bars.

 

Descending

This bike is an exceptional descender, offering perfect balance and razor-sharp handling for increased cornering confidence. The wider, lower-pressure tires provide excellent grip. This impressive performance is not surprising, given the bike's geometry. 

 

Gravel and Bad Roads

Designed for a minimum of 28mm tires, this bike performs well on bad roads and short gravel sections. While 32mm tires are a tight fit, 30mm tires fit easily, providing much more comfort compared to the 23mm-25mm tires of the past.

  

Conclusions

This design achieved its objectives in the first version, and although commercialization is unlikely, it's an amazing bike as long as I have the flexibility and strength to ride it. The tradeoffs may only work for a narrow subset of the population, but if you think that's you, I'd be happy to chat and share more details about this design.
 
Update in 2024: As you can see this website now lives on a Shopify page. I've decided to launch a small bike brand, but custom bikes aren't offered. Why? I can't figure out the commercial model to do this profitably and part-time while remaining a stellar value to customers. Maybe that will change in the future, but for now this is still one-of-a-kind.
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