I’m riding a branded-steel + carbon fork fixed gear on the road with geared-bike riders, and I’ve just started doing a little TTing with the local tri club. The bike rides great & is relatively light but doesn’t feel as stiff as I’d like under heavy acceleration or climbing. I’d like to try one of the brake-drilled track frames. The leading contenders are a 2013 Felt TK2 or a 2011 Look AL464. A whole Felt has just come up in my size for about $150 less than I can get the Look frame+fork.
Has anyone ridden either of these frames on the road? Anything else I should really look at in the same sort of price bracket?
Thanks Zach for the fast response. I only have room for 1 bike and I love riding fixed too much to give it up. Gears and me don’t get along so I’d be riding a geared TT bike for business rather than pleasure :).
Fixed gear for TT sounds fun, pretty sure it’s a (big?) thing in the UK.
Both those frames will have trade offs. Personally I think the Look has average geometry for a track bike, headtube is too long per given size meaning it could be hard to get low enough. Toe overlap isn’t too bad on them or not on the size I have rode. Both have pretty high bottom brackets which is nice. The felt has pretty small headtube per given size so it’d be easier to get a good TT position. I rode a 54cm (or maybe 56) once though and they toe overlap was quite bad if i remember correctly. I’d probably go the Felt though.
I put it down to a mid-life crisis. They’ve been nice so far though, only got a little bit of stick about the missing rear-wheel jewellery.
Thanks for the tip about Cervelo TT frames. I haven’t seen any P-series with track ends yet but will keep an eye out. So far I’ve only seen photos of guys TTing with what looks like T-series frames.
Ah, cool, thanks, looks like some of the newer P-series have vertical dropouts but the older ones (which I’d be looking for on the second-hand market anyway) are the ones with track ends. I’ll look out for them.
Used Langsters or Fuji track pros… probably a bunch of other alloy bikes that are similar in that price range that I can’t think of right now. Those Fujis have the highest bottom bracket of any off the shelf track frame that I know of, totally a good thing if you plan on pedalling through corners.
This is wrong, looks like the newer models still have fork ends. I was fooled by the shortness of the fork ends and Cervelo’s own graphic on their P-series site, which shows vertical dropouts!
Thanks for following up…I’ve also been looking out for Langsters. There’s a Fuji track pro near me in my size but it looks like the fork isn’t drilled. There’s a flat spot where a brake could go but no actual hole. Drillable?
Great to know about the higher BB on the Fuji, I hadn’t noticed that. I’d like to feel less stress during cornering than I do now :).
I’d get the LOOK.
I have the LOOK and love it! It’s my commute bike.
I looked at the Felt track models but decided the LOOK was more suited to what I was after.
It’s fine on the road - I run 28 rubber and it handles everything
