1st race bike

johnmg

hi

i have been a casual rider for a number of years with occassional winter runs with a local club

i have been doing a lot more and more serious training over the last 6 weeks and now have the intention of doing the club races and time trials next year

i am riding an old giant ocr4 bike at the minute and now want to get a better bike for racing

for club riders, where exactly does the "proper" bike specs for racing start....do I have to look at things like a Specialized Tarmac, Wilier Iozard, Trek Madone ??? i know you will saydepends on how much i want to spend, so lets say budget is about £1200, what would you buy new or even better used so that i get the best bike for my money

please also note, i would prefer to avoid aluminium bikes unless they are definately as comforable on long rides as a carbon/alu mix or carbon or steel or titanium

i had a ride on a aluminim bike once and it had me numb all over on a 50 mile ride, couldnt wait to get of it

so...suggestions for best buy for a bike capable of both road race and club time trials on a £1200 budget, maybe as much as £1500 if absolutely necessary, new or used

thanks

FSR_XC

The issue I see is whether you are looking for a TT bike or a road race bike?

Either can be bought (in Carbon) for £1200-1500

Have you looked on the Planet X or Ribble websites?

pianoman

Easy one, if you're willing to spend £1500..............

http://www.fatbirds.co.uk/detail.asp/sku=VN-Mistralbike

All for under £1500...........these babies won't leave you battered like the alu bike did. Stick on some SPD's for another £35:
http://www.fatbirds.co.uk/detail.asp/sk ... nism_black

and you're good to go

Also, you could flog the OCR4 to anyone on the basis that it's stiff and direct (don't tell them about its boneshaking qualities) because even with the shortcomings you described it's probably far superior to many of the sub-£300 efforts released by various manufacturers over the last year or so. Make someone very happy for £100 and you'll have £135 left for helmet, jersey, shorts etc...........oh and a club membership?

If you were to say where you are based it would help as not all bike shops are the same.

Best of luck

johnmg

i had thought to have one good bike for road racing, and if i do tt's then just fit tt bars

i reckoned this would be better than splitting my budget between two bikes

i had been told a scott cr1 was a good bike to start with, but what other or better options in this price range
and also, if i bought 2nd hand what would be recommended that can be bought for preferably around £1200

pianoman

i had thought to have one good bike for road racing, and if i do tt's then just fit tt bars

That what I did with my Chinook and I've never had any regrets.

If you have £1500 to spend I'm amazed you would even contemplate second hand. I would only start off second hand if I had less than £400 to spend.

Scott CR1 is good as carbon bikes go (it did extremely well in stiffness tests) but people generally don't use carbon bikes in the winter, they prefer their Ribble/Dolan winter trainers. So you either hide the carbon bike away for six months of the year for fear of crashing it or the parts getting corroded (which happens on winter trainers too) or you ride it all year on the basis that "no one spends big money on a bike to leave it in the garage". Neither of these approaches appealed to me. So that's why I chose titanium.

johnmg

hi pianoman

just had a look at the mistral, its titanium and looks very nice. would this be a good bike to race on ???

its funny, i saw a used titaium bike on here, ( http://www.bikeradar.com/forums/viewtop ... t=12667405 ) i sent the link to another member as i thought it was a lovely bike, but didnt think it was for me, was thinking more carbon to be lighter and stiffer and thinking it would be more competative as a racing bike ???

i live in ireland and would be buying on internet from uk as bikes here are so expensive and not many to choose from

pianoman

Well with Van Nicholas you'd effectively be buying from the Netherlands as that's where all the bikes are put together, lest we forget that the frames are made in China.

As for titanium's stiffness compared to carbon, there was a thread on this forum a while back about the stiffness of different materials and titanium didn't score as highly as carbon but if you want to do TT's you could always dial in more stiffness and aerodynamics at a later date by adding something like the Reynolds Solitude wheelset. I can definitely feel a difference between the winter setup (mudguards, Campag Vento wheels and Stelvio tyres) and the summer one (Campag Zonda wheels and Ultremos, with mudguards removed) and not JUST because the bike becomes 1.5 pounds lighter. Then the tribars will have you sailing along faster still. As far as road racing goes I know someone who uses a titanium Litespeed to race on, it doesn't seem to slow him down.

If you get really good at time trials or triathlons and still want more speed, maybe a full TT bike would be the order of the day. Personally I have no problems with using my Van Nicholas in ten mile time trials and would also use it if I took up triathlon next season.