Parlee Z4, Part 1.

Here it is, Parlee's Z4 frame. Parlee is arguably the world's best manufacturer of carbon fiber framesets with numerous awards for "bike of the year," "race bike of the year," "coolest thing ever," "bike most worthy of trading a kidney for" etc etc. That being said, Parlee doesn't actually make this bike. The Z4 was introduced last year as a more affordable way to get your hands on a better than average carbon bike. To get the price down they moved away from a "one at a time" approach building each one by hand in Peabody Massachusetts and went overseas to find a more affordable way to do things. Lots of companies do that in today's market and some even do a good job of it while others are simply trying to undercut the competition by finding cheaper and cheaper ways to make things. While Parlee was trying to find a more affordable way to do things they never at any time thought about compromising the quality of the bike itself.




You'll see that they've paid attention to what makes a nice professional quality bike. Extraordinarily sleek dropouts, a burly bottom bracket, and a delicate yet elegant carbon cable guide are all indicators of a top quality frame. "But what does it weigh?" The Z4 actually weighs in at a lighter weight than its more prestigious top shelf brethren, the Z1 (an example of which also arrived this afternoon at bicycles, also an incredible frame that will be built up into a demo bike in the near future, you'll be wishing you were tall enough to ride a 56cm frame when you see it...) There are lots of ways to weigh a bike frame so I weighed this one twice, once as a complete frame including water bottle bolts, seat collar, and cable guide, and once without all those "extras." As a bare frame the Z4 weighed a mere 967 grams but even with all the stuff that makes it a real bike frame it was still sub 1000 grams at 997 which, for a size large, and a real world weight as opposed to the weight you publish in the ad copy, is a very respectable number.



The fork is made by Edge Composites and comes in at 344 grams uncut. It's full carbon from tip to toe and though I'll be the first to acknowledge that a "squeeze test" isn't much of an indication of anything, this fork feels quite stiff in the hand.



So there it is, part 1 of the Parlee Z4. I'll be building this one up tomorrow or the day after and taking it for a short ride (yes, the customer who is about to be the proud owner of this bike knows I'll be riding it and he says he's okay with that so I'd be dumb not to take it for a spin.) If it rides half as good as it looks it will be impressive for sure.

Product review time.

It's all about the contact points, where your hands touch the bars, where your butt interfaces with the saddle, your shoes enveloping your feet and firmly attached to your pedals, and there you are, symbiotically connected to this machine and moving through space and once you've made effective connections to your bike you need to make an effective connection to the ground. Ah, tires, there are so many to choose from. I don't stock a lot of tires here. Well, I do, but not a lot of selection within a single price range or performance category. I try to cover any use and a number of price points but I don't have five different $50 road tires. I've had good luck with tires and bad, you can get a flat on a $90 tire just as easily as you can on a $10 tire, glass seems to not have any concerns for how many hours you had to work to afford the tires on your bike. But the tire you select will change the way your bike rides. Higher thread counts and more supple casings make for smoother rolling tires. The way the rubber wraps around the casing will affect a tire's propensity for sidewall cuts. There are indeed, good tires and bad tires.

I'd been riding Kenda tires on my mountain bike for quite some time and despite their more affordable price tag I'd been thoroughly impressed by their durability and performance. So one day some time ago I picked up the catalogue to check out what Kenda offered in the way of road tires. I found the Kaliente L3R Pros at a reasonable price and I ordered a pair to try them out. Once mounted up I immediately noticed they rode pretty much as nicely as the Vittoria Open Corsas they replaced despite being about half the price. The had a nice round profile and gripped quite well in the corners. I though, "hey, if these are this good, I wonder what their expensive tires ride like." Once again I go back to the catalogue to look for more Kenda tires only to discover that the ones I had just put on my bike were the high end Kenda road tires.

The Kenda Kalientes weigh a mere 195grams, and even though they aren't the highest thread count available they are a respectable 120tpi and manage to ride as smoothly as any tubular I've tried. I've had my first "trial" pair on my city bike for better than 2000kms now and though they are looking a little beat up they look like they have a fair bit of life left in them. The rear tire is only just starting to square off while the front is nearly perfect. The Kalientes have what they call an Iron Cloak layer to aid in the prevention of flats. I'm not one to buy into the voodoo magic layers of any tires being overly effective at preventing flats. Sharp things on the road will eventually find their way into your tire leaving you swearing as you realize this is the one day of the month you've commuted without a spare and a pump with you. That being said, I've only had one flat with these tires and I blame that one wholly on myself. (it was a flat that involved an under inflated front tire, a pot hole, a couple too many beers in my belly, and a race for last call at the Brickhouse, can't blame the tire for any of that.) And all my 2000+kms on these tires have been in the city where tire gnawing glass is found in abundance along the sides of the streets.

How much would you pay for sub 200gram, sticky, well wearing, flat resistant tires? Try $39. Why would I stock anything else?

Elysium Ti

You're not seeing double, there's two of them, nearly identical.



The hanger has a really nice detail. If you look closely (click the picture to enlarge it) you'll see a small weld bead about halfway between the derailleur bolt and the quick release end. This is where Chris welds a CP hanger to a 6/4 dropout, the result being a softer, weaker hanger on a solid and strong dropout. If you get yourself into one of those messes where mud, a stick, small animal decides to wedge itself in between your chain and your derailleur making it decidedly less efficient at moving your bike forward but decidedly more efficient at ripping parts of your bike apart what will happen here is the welded on bit will bend or snap before any damage is done to the actual frame. This is a good thing. And it's a stiffer, stronger setup than most flimsy bolt on derailleur hangers. This is also a good thing.



The Elysium ti, as with all titanium bikes built by Dekerf, uses North American sourced 3/2.5 titanium with custom Paragon dropouts and fittings. The signature wishbone stay styling can be had via an alloy casting as seen here or in a completely new welded titanium version. I have pictures of the new version too somewhere that I will add at a later date.



These should make a couple of people pretty happy. They certainly made me happy in the shop today.

FYI, today's soundtrack for building stellar mountain bikes brought to you by the Constantines. http://www.myspace.com/constantines

Sneak Preview

I'm building up two of these at the shop this week. They are essentially twins, his and hers, different colours though, and very nice. This is just a teaser, more images to come once they are both built.

The Most Important Tool I Own...

This is it, the most important tool I own. It's a fully adjustable bicycle "mannequin" that allows me to mimic pretty much any conventional bike on the market and a good number of unconventional ones. I've said it before, I'll say it again, fit is paramount in getting a bike that makes you happy. This is the biggest reason why I've chosen to sell bikes that get built from a frameset up, because everyone is different. If you go to the shop's web page (www.bicyclesvancouver.com) and read the part on "custom fitting" you'll get an idea of what I'm alluding to here.

This fit bike is not like most in that when combined with the Salsa Size-o-matic stem and the Purely Custom cranks I can truly fine tune a fit to suit most every rider. The Salsa stem will adjust from 55 to 155mm and can simulate any stem rise from -20 to +40 degrees. This stem will also quickly come off the bicycle mannequin and mount up to your own bike should you want to quickly adjust your own front end to find an optimum position without buying half a dozen stems to try and figure it out the hard way.

The cranks adjust from 155 to 185mm which is pretty much beyond what's readily available anyway. It makes sense that when pedaling a mocked up position that the cranks are the same length as what you're used to or plan to use.




Both the seat tube and the top tube are fully adjustable, as is the head tube, but most importantly the seat tube angle is adjustable as well. As the seat tube angle changes it will affect the effective top tube by up to a cm for every degree of seat tube angle change. It's not an insignificant feature of this bike that the seat tube angle is adjustable.

All this and you can sit on the bike and pedal it too to get an idea of how a bike may or may not fit you. Even if you don't buy a bike from me I will happily help you figure out what size of bike you might want. The fee for a professional fitting is pretty small relative to buying a bike that doesn't fit properly and there is no charge for a fitting if you buy a bike from bicycles. In fact, if you want to invest in a fitting but not purchase a bicycle right away I will credit you the full cost of the fitting towards any frame or bicycle you buy from bicycles within 6 months.

This is truly the most important tool in the shop.

ABUS

You may or may not have heard of ABUS locks before. They are to the European bike market what Kryptonite is to North American bike market. One difference though is that all the ABUS locks are made in their own factory in Germany where Kryptonite locks are farmed out to a factory in China. There's probably nothing wrong with farming out your product but I have a greater respect for a company that has made a living producing the products they sell. While ABUS makes the usual compliment or U-locks at various price points and security levels the one lock that stands out is the one pictured above called a Bordo. In the first two pictures you'll see that it is both bigger than the popular Kryptonite mini-U and smaller than it. What's nice about that is it will still fit in your back pocket if you want to travel light but there's enough of a loop to secure more than just your frame once you get where you're going. The rubber holder can either strap on to your frame with the provided straps or you can bolt it on to a water bottle mount through the metal insert that is also included but if you go this route you will displace a bottle cage as it's an "either/or" mount, not a "both" mount. Overall it's a pretty smart design.

Some of you would be correct in remembering a lock made by Specialized called the WedLock that looked a lot like this one. I had one of those too back in the day but it got lost in a move and I'd always wished I could get another. Now I can.

Can You Keep Up With Me

CAN YOU KEEP UP WITH ME? take the test