Tong Family

After a few years of relative stability, the new bikes are pretty amazingly cool. Here are some highlights for lusting:
* Giant get lighter with TCR Advanced. These are super popular frames from Taiwan. The new TCR Advanced has a new seat tube design that eliminates the need for seat post. It just clamps to the seat tube saving 175 grams. The whole thing including fork is just 1250 grams. I don’t know what happens to heavy riders who can crack a post. Probably means a new frame 🙂 Its going to a 2990 euro frameset only. Expensive!
* “Trek Madone SSL Prototype”:http://www.cyclingnews.com/teamtech04.php?id=tech/2004/probikes/madone_ssl_armstrong. Trek is updating their frames with a more aerodynamic version. The main change is to go to an even lighter frame material OLCV 55 (the OLCV 110 is used in Trek 5900s and OLCV 120 in 5200). There is production version coming out called the Madone SL as well.
What do all those numbers mean? Just that the bike material is 50% lighter (55 vs. 110). Yikes, that’s amazing. They also did a wheelset that is 100 grams lighter than ever. That’s amazing.