NEW QR/Kinesis aero fork installed

Such a killer fork! This thing is super aerodynamic.

the legs measure 16mm wide and 55mm deep. The stock Torelli fork was 21mm wide and 27mm deep.

So not only is it 4 mm narrower on each side, its over twice as deep. Aslo, the legs are shaped in a tear drop shape like airplane wings.

I had to buy a new headset for $25 with a lower stack height to make the new fork fit. But thats not a major problem. So, $41 spent and about 20 seconds gained over a 10 mile TT. $2 for every second is a pretty good trade.

My New Fork

So I was able to snag this 650c 1" threaded aero fork off of Ebay yesterday for $26 shipped. Messing around with fork rakes and trails can do weird things to a bike, but at $26 and with the possible aero benefits it was a no brainer. I'll compare/measure the fork rake of the stock Torelli fork to the QR/Kinesis one.

Copied from Slowtwitch:

KINESIS CARBON AIRFOIL

There is no fork that "does it all" for a triathlete. The Carbon Airfoil does one thing particularly well. Its deep trailing edge, which extends far back behind the rake line, appears to act as a counterbalance to the forces the wind exerts on the part of a deep rim exposed in front of the fork. This means that if you use a deep rim on your front wheel and combine it with this fork, your bike will handle better on a windy day.

An example of this might be, say, if you wanted to ride a Hed Deep on the front during the Hawaiian Ironman. Such a tactical move would require some cajones and a fork like this.

The photo at left is actually the all-aluminum version of this fork, which you don't want (too heavy). You can see the faint lines just below the crown where the blades meet the crown, and also lines where the bottom of the blade meets the dropout. The carbon version of this fork has carbon legs which replace the aluminum ones.

A Hed Deep would be a mighty fast wheel on a day with crosswinds whipping across the lava fields around Waikoloa, but only at a cost of heeling your bike like a sailboat in a broad reach. Okay, we're succumbing to hyperbole. But it can be a bit hairy out there if you're sporting a lot of surface area on a windy day, and this fork would help keep your bike on the road.

How do we know this? Because in his fork testing Herr Air John Cobb had the foresight to rig an extra scale up to the fiixture that mounts the fork holder to the turret in the wind tunnel. In so doing he not only measured the fork's drag, but the torque required to keep the fork fixed in place during a yaw. He performed this testing while using a variety of fork and wheel combinations. There was less pressure applied to the scale using this fork, indicating that the wind on the road would exert less force pushing the front of the bike leeward.

This is cool, but it comes at a price. The Carbon Airfoil weighs. Even though it's legs are carbon, it's crown is a forged of a piece of aluminum that––well––we heard container ships use them to keep themselves at anchor in Taichung harbor. The fork does now finally come with a carbon steer column, and this takes the 700+ gram Carbon Airfoil and reduces it to about 570 grams or so. Compare this, though, to the Profile Design's and Reynolds Composites' forks that weigh in the neighborhood of 400 grams. That's a difference of almost a half a pound.

This fork was originally the Carbonaero, and was commissioned by Quintana Roo. Kinesis built the fork specifically for that company. It was a good enough fork that both Cannnondale and Trek paid extra to be able to spec it on their tri bikes, and QR got a royalty of every fork sold to each of these two arch competitors.

Before you start thinking this its extra weight makes it a less-desirable fork, just remember that Lance Armstrong rode this fork during his time trials in the Tour, and not just in his first Tour victory, but his next one as well.

It ought to cost between $225 and $250 with a steel steerer, and perhaps an extra $50 to $75 with a carbon steerer.

"disk" wheel

So, I just picked up a CH aero disk wheel covers. Retail is $60 plus $20 shipping. I was able to get them for $45 shipped. A very good price. The covers are just as aero as a real disk wheel too, so cool.

I'm thinking of how I want to decorate it. Maybe a retro Oakley sticker? I'm not sure.

The cool thing is, the parts are rolling in, and the bike is almost done.

There's a TT in 13 days but I wont have any fitness by then. I'll have to throw all of my energy in getting ready for the TT series starting in April.

Chopped my basebars

So, my basebars had an upturn to them on the ends=not very aero.

So I chopped them off.

Also, I found a set of used Profile Bullet levers. They are very unique and cool and aerodynamic.
These are the brake levers:





I then overlayed a picture of the basebars with a standard brake lever on top of the chopped basebar with the Profile Bullet levers:



What you can see is that the standard brake levers were much lower resulting in greater drag.

I am also going to drill out the basebars to route the brake cable internally to keep them out of the wind.

Its all about DIY budget/retro aerodynamics. Lets see if I can beat some guys riding P3C's!!!

Mavic 3G front wheel

So it looks like I found a Mavic 3G front wheel. The guy lives in the UK and sold it to me for $240 shipped. A good price. The pic above is one the seller sent me, thats my front wheel. Cool to see it on another funnybike.

Everything is really coming together on the Torelli and it should be rideable very shortly.