- What's up, Trainiacs?
That is Tim Don's specialized Shiv,
Now we went over to the wind tunnel
and we talked with the engineer
who actually spent four years
designing this Shiv,
about why it is the way it is,
and believe me you it looks really good in person.
We'll admit it,
not the best photo taker,
but in person, damn it looks nice.
(energetic music)
- Hey, I'm Keith Kimble.
I'm lead engineer for the new Shiv disk.
I'm a senior engineer here at Specialized,
and this is been my life,
for the past three--
don't want to admit--
but maybe four years.
So, I'm going to talk to you about
some of the cool features that we put in this bike
that makes it one of the best
triathlon bikes in the world.
First, the obvious one, is we've got the disc brakes here.
That allows for much better control
of the bike,
a stiffer front-end with the through axils,
and a lot more confidence,
especially with the historically poor performing
triathlon rim brakes.
Up front, we have the super adjustable cockpit.
It can slide almost infinitely
in terms of reach.
We have many lateral positions
for fit,
rotation in the arm cuffs,
and not shown here,
but also angle for the arms.
One of the coolest features of this bike
is the folding handlebar system.
This system can fold all the way to parallel
with the fork in order to allow for easy travel.
That feature also allows us to accommodate
many different fit ranges,
so here we have a certain pad to hood drop,
at the zero degree,
but these bars can also be rotated minus twenty,
and plus twenty degree to allow for your desired
pad to base bar drop.
Moving back on the bike,
nutrition is obviously very key for triathlons,
so we have a removable bento box.
This bento box here can now handle your gels,
or any nutrition that you might need,
and also allows for further storage
inside the down tube.
It's easily removable,
so in a race you don't have to worry
about unpacking your gel system,
and it snaps into place like that.
Then moving to the rear of the bike,
we've got the hydration Fuelcell,
probably the most identifiable feature
of this bike,
but not only is it a place for nutrition and water,
but it's also an aerodynamic feature.
This airfoil shape here is a continuation
of the seat tube and seat post,
that allows us to really improve aerodynamics
in a crosswind.
Another identifiable feature for this bike,
is the extreme drop in the seat stays.
This allows us to minimize the frontal profile,
and really reduce the drag.
It also provides a nice tucking
of the disc brake system,
which allows us to offer disc brakes
at minimal aero penalty.
The seat stay and chain stay junction here,
having this elbow in here
gives us a much longer arm
to really tune the stiffness,
and tune the comfort of this bike,
so through lay up optimization,
and tuning of the features of
this chain stay, seat stay junction,
we can really offer a stiff rear end,
that is also easy to live with.
The fork is really
a by-product of our commitment
to disc brakes, so never before
have you been able to take a fork
from through axle all the way to top tube.
Before you used to always need to terminate
the fork blade at the lower crown,
but you can see here on this medium size frame,
we get a full dropout to top tune length forward blade,
and we have the depth that we want
to really harness the crosswinds.
This increase in surface area really contributes
to the bike's sailing effect,
and the good handling in crosswinds.
So in the front end you'll notice that we have
a nosecone here.
This additional nosecone allows us to manage
the internal cable routing,
and hydration through the front of the bike,
and also extends the forward airflow,
for great aerodynamics.
This concept here, is also allowed
due to the move to disc brakes,
so the front end here is a dual-crown design
which is extremely stiff.
This extremely stiff dual-crown design,
allows us to really improve the strength of the front-end,
and we were able to get to a bearing spacing
on the head tube that we've never been able
to achieve before.
This 67 millimeter head tube height,
for size small,
allows us to drop the front end very low,
so we can get lower positions
than we've traditionally been able to do.
Another key attribute of this bike
is its adaptability,
so we've designed it with ideal placements in mind,
for all your hydration and nutrition,
but we also wanted to make sure
it's easy for the user to tune to their system.
So, in addition to having all the internal storage
that we offer,
we also maintain rivets on the top tube,
to allow you to add a bento, if necessary.
We also maintain a standard water bottle system
on the seat tube.
These allow a user to customize the bike
to their nutrition needs,
and hopefully put down the best time
with the best nutrition plan
for that particular rider.
The folding handle bar system
was the biggest mechanical challenge,
from a development point of view.
The internal hydration system here
was something that we reached outside
of our expertise
to really execute properly,
and required a lot, a lot of collaboration
with our suppliers in order to achieve
a functionality that we felt was acceptable
for our consumers.
So, those are the main features of this bike,
and we think it's gonna be
one of the fastest bikes on Kona.
So people are just now starting to get their bikes.
It's been a long way for a lot of people.
It's been a long way for me.
We're starting to get the feedback,
and seeing everyone super excited to finally get their bike
is really a rewarding situation to be in.
You know, we launched it with our professional athletes,
in Kona first, and you know,
we had a lot of time between then and now
to really learn from those athletes.
We made some improvements,
and we made sure that the product
that the consumer is now getting,
just, you know this last week,
is absolutely dialed.
So we're excited, and we think
that work really paid of.
It feels really good.
You know the reason I came to specialized
was to work on product like this.
You know I wanted to work on product
that really connected to customers,
and to people,
so that I could be walking down the street
and see someone had a bike that I designed,
and you know, they spent their hard-earned money
to make a decision to purchase that bike,
believed in what I believed in,
and what everyone else here believed in.
So when you finally have that experience,
that's when you know you worked on something special.
- So that Trainiacs, is the all-new specialized Shiv.
Around the 500 athletes that purchased,
like the first run of it,
are starting to get it now , and all of these
with Tri academy athletes are getting their very own Shiv.
Now don't get me wrong,
and don't think that this means that I am abandoning Ventum.
Still loves me some Ventum,
but that doesn't mean that I can't appreciate other bikes,
and I appreciate that bike.
It looks good.
All right, Trainiacs, if you aren't already subscribed,
hit the subscribe button below,
and if you're already subscribed,
check out some of the other videos
of what we've done over here,
while we're at the Zwift Tri Academy.
Later.