Looks like the HC rack is setup for a more traditional curved fork like the Polyvalent instead of the straight leg Searchlight. What’s the situation on the rack side of those stays? Can they be adjusted at all?
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Looks like you need shorter stays. The ones on my HC rack are fixed.
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Ah yeah, I forgot NFE legs were curved. Wasn’t paying a lot of attention, clearly, when I bought it. No adjustment on the other end.
Maybe cut one end of the stays off, or buy some new ones, and use something like this on the rack side?
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Installed a front dyno light on the old ruiner.
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I put a Fred-bar on my OPEN in the weekend to prep for my next big ride. The whole idea is to save handlebar real-estate for a handle bar harness. I’ve never used a Fred-bar before so was really surprised to see the tiny reach. I don’t think its going to give me enough of a different position to make it worth while with my current aero extensions. A friend has some that are 400 mm long compared to my 300 mm so I will try them out. I already have the elbow pads forward of the extension clamps but the extension ends are way too close. Also there seems to be very little room under all the stem/fred area to mount stem pouches. Everything is a compromise with this kind of thing. I could just go back to mounting the aeros on the bars, but they are carbon bars, and I am not sure if I want to unleash the amount of clamping force onto them that I would on the alloy Fred-bar.
I want to be clear, I’m slow AF, but my Z2 rides are ~30kph and occasionally get to 40kph if there’s any kind of tail wind. There’s a 40 mile ride that’s mixed gravel/pavement on which I’m several minutes faster on my road bike vs. my gravel bike primarily because of aero. Subjectively, being on the more aero bike and position just feels nicer overall for that ride in spite of the more gravel-appropriate tires of the gravel bike.
Admittedly, I have a pretty strong bias as most of my riding is my daily exercise which is flat, steady, and targeted at Z2 with plenty of potential wind.
Oh I’m a couple mph faster on a road bike than a sport touring bike, there’s definitely cumulative advantage to a lot of small changes in a setup.
Nothing gets better in my life if I’m a few seconds faster over 90 minutes of riding by myself for fun, so I’m not going to go messing with a lot of hidden cable nonsense. If the industry makes it universal on new bikes, we shall see which way I jump
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I guess my point is that subjectively being a little faster feels “nice” and I’d consider it. Presently, I’m assembling my Carbonda gravel frame and I did consider it, but I already have Enve bars and stem which I like so…
Road bike is tidy but not completely hidden. Some day I’d like to ride an aero road bike but I don’t care enough to drop a lotta bongs on it.
Probably just a long-winded way I’d saying “I agree”.
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yeah I agree with that, I like the feeling of a fast bike like compared to a slow bike. My road bikes are set up to feel really good for up to two hours or so, my sport touring bikes are ten pounds heavier, way less aero, and are set up so I’m comfortable on a 4+ hour nonstop block of pedaling.
My thing about a lot of contemporary road bike design and componentry is that they save watts in a laboratory setting, but 1 watt is totally lost in the noise of actual riding. the payoff for having to re-bleed your rear brake when you adjust your handlebars just isn’t there for me.
I do occasionally think about how round tube frame + aero rims is sort of a misfire, but what am I going to do, pay an extra $5k for custom shaped alloy tubing?
I can’t rationalize all of the aero stuff for performance/racing reasons, but damn if it doesn’t look cool and pro. Aesthetics rule everything around me, spend that money, dolla dolla bill y’all
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It helps that I think all new road bikes from the Venge forward look dumb as hell.
Ok dropped seatstays look kinda rad on the right bike. The rest of it can go jump in a lake!
It me.
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I’ll admit that I’ve been challenging myself to get faster so that when I get done building my budget aero bike, I’ll be almost as fast as I look
I used to upsell fancier tri bikes to people by telling them that aero makes more of a difference when you’re slow, because you’re out on course for longer. There’s more time to be saved.
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That kinda reminds me of a tip for the old “how to sell zipp wheels” manual. They suggested using both hands to hand a customer a Zipp wheel then one hand to hand over a brand “M” wheel (their terminology). This was supposed to make the Zipp wheel feel lighter lol.
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bike industry in 2022: still basically using carny tricks to hustle the rubes
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tbf, it was a decade ago
That’s all of capitalism from the bottom to the top.
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