Speaker: I've decided to build a TT bike on a budget. I want to see if I can build a rapid
TT machine without spending the earth. Something that will have comparable performance to a
TT Superbike that costs thousands and thousands of pounds or dollars or euros or yen. Why
though? Well, I love time trialing. I'm really passionate about it. It's the ultimate race
of truths. Just rider against the clock. Although I'm in a privileged position now where I get
to ride amazing equipment, this hasn't always been the case and I don't want high cost to
be a barrier for entry to others. So let's crack on.
I've got a lot of ideas of things I should be focusing on to maximize performance. Over
the years, I've spent a lot of time trying to maximize my own performance, mainly because
the engine hasn't always been up to scratch, so I've had to get the most out of the bike.
This has given me a great idea of the things that I should be focusing on and that are
most important and things that aren't as important. For example, ceramic bearings. They're really
cool but they're really decadent purchase, and they can make a slight improvement to
your drive train efficiency but there are much more important things that we should
be focusing on that give you a far more bang for your buck.
First, the first piece of the puzzle, we're going to need a frame. I've scoured eBay,
Craigslist, Gumtree, all those places in search of a used frame, something that's a bargain.That's
what I'm looking for. After lots of searching, I've found this. I'll wheel it in. It's a
Cervélo. You can't see, I need to lift up. It's a Cervélo P1, and I absolutely love
it. A classic aluminum TT bike from 2009. I think what I'll do is I'll put it up on
the wall behind me, take the old bear down and I'll show you about it and tell you why
I picked it and what I'm going to do to it. Here it is, my P1. I absolutely love it. Full
aluminum frame, proper threaded, bottom bracket under there, nice. It's got Ultegra 10 speed
on it, mechanical and these beautiful, teardrop aerofoil tube shapes on the down tube and
the seat tube. These are proper 3:1 aerofoil profiles and the UCI actually banned tubes
that taper to a point like this. That's why our more modern bikes you see flat back tube
profiles as a design compromise but these, proper aerofoils.
We've spent just over 400 quid on this bike on eBay, but I reckon if you spend longer
shopping around, you could drop on and get yourself a bit more of a bargain, something
around £300 for a bike of the same kind of spec. I wanted this particular bike, and there's
a number of reasons for that. Firstly, Cervélo P1, awesome. I remember when it first came
out in 2009 and I really wanted one. I thought it looked amazing and to make matters worse,
well one of my mates had one and I was really jealous, but I couldn't afford one at the
time because I was just a poor student, but now I can and I've got one.
The next thing is I did my research and this bike is pretty much bang on with the original
spec it came with back in 2009, which suggests it hasn't been used much at all. There are
a few signs on it that suggest it's in really good condition, has had light use. The bottom
bracket is original, the chain almost looks original as well, the cassette is original
as well. These wheels are one of the best clues. There's very little rim wear. There
is a little bit as you'd expect but very little. Those rims are in excellent condition. Although
there are few little marks on the frame here and there, that's just dirt. There's a little
one just up here and there's one just there but the frame is in excellent condition as
well. I love the paint job on this bike as well.
It's pretty much in GCN colors, isn't it? The nice red, silver and white. Also, a good
fact for you. The P1 shares its name with a famous nightclub in Munich [unintelligible
00:04:32] discotheque in München. Now another thing you could do, and this is something
that I considered doing, was just buying a frameset on its own. There are quite a few
for sale on eBay, but a big motto of mine is anything for an easy life. By getting a
complete bike, it costs you a bit more money and there's parts on it there you might not
want to particularly use in your build, but it can save you a lot of hassle down the line.
Where I'm talking about things like seat post clamps and mech hangers. If these are broken,
dodgy, or missing with a frameset, they can be really difficult to source because pretty
much every single bike has its own individual one. This can end up costing you quite a bit
of unforeseen money down the line. To eliminate that, I've got a complete bike in good condition.
Then I'm in control of my own destiny. I can pick and choose the parts on this that I want
to keep and the parts that I want to put away and maybe put in my bits box or try and just
sell them on separately if I don't need them and they're in good condition.
There are plenty of components on this bike that I want to keep for my build. The bottom
bracket, that's in excellent condition. I've given it spins, no play in there, bearings
are running smooth. That cassette is in really good condition. The chain is in really good
condition as well. The rare mech, fine. These shifters, they work fine as well. The front
mech, not sure about that yet. We'll see. What am I going to do this bike to make it
as fast as possible without spending a huge amount of money? That's hopefully going to
form the basis of a few videos over the next few weeks.
Then once lockdown is over and I can go outside, I'm going to field test it head to head on
my local time trial course versus my Orbea Ordu TT superbike. Ride at the same power
and ride both bikes back to back and just see what the time difference is for the two
bikes. I can't wait to test it. In the meantime, I'm going to crack on and make this bike as
quick as possible. First thing I'm going to need is some wheels. I've been shopping around
and stalking quite a lot of sets on eBay. Check this out.
These arrived in the post today. I'm going to crack them open. I managed to get a good
deal on these. I paid a bit more for my frame than I could have done if I'd spent longer
shopping around on eBay. That's been balanced out by the wheels because I paid £100 for
these. Oh, wrecking the place. These are the wheels. They're the ones in that box down
there. These are Swiss Side Hadron 485s. They are an aluminium box-section wheel with a
carbon aerodynamic flange on the top. One of the reasons why I was able to get so cheap
is they are used. They have seen quite a lot of wear.
I can feel there's wear on the brake track. Slightly concave but there's still plenty
of use left in this, more than enough for what I am planning. If you're just using them
for time trials, it'd be fine. Let's check the freehub. [wheel spinning] Sounds good.
It needs a bit of grease in there, but I can sort that. What I want with these wheels,
and the reason why I can't use these ones is because what I'm actually going to do is
build a disc wheel. I think that's what I'm going to try to do in the next video. I'm
going to build my own disc wheel onto the back for the rear wheel. Then the front one,
I just want a deeper one for better aerodynamics than this shallow box section that's on this
one. One of the most important areas that I'm going
to need to optimize on this bike is the cockpit. I've done a lot of time trialing. I've spent
a lot of time in wind tunnels and doing aero testing. I've come to a position that's pretty
good. I'm confident to try and replicate that position on this bike. I'll know that'll make
me more aerodynamic. One of the things I want to try and do is get my elbows higher than
they'll currently allow me on this bike. Then bring my hands up. At the moment, this bike's
like this, but I want it to be more like this. It's a bit like what they call like a praying
mantis position. Thinking behind it is that your hands are
like punching a hole through the air. Then your head is going through that hole that
your hands have already punched. Whereas it tends to be quite effective and a lot more
aerodynamic for a lot of people when they test it and then they go on to do faster times
in races. I'm willing to bet that it works. It's worked for me. That's what we're going
to try and go for. To do this, I'm going to have to try and play around with this or maybe
swap out some different parts. I'm going to get on eBay, get scouring, see what I can
find to replace that. I'm also going to go through my bits box.
This base bar as well will not do. It's a perfectly good vision base bar but it's quite
wide. We've seen a trend for base bars to get narrower. That's like a 42 base bar. You're
not really in the base bar in time trials. I don't really need that.
I want that to become shorter, more like a 36. Then that's less frontal area on the bike,
will make quite a big difference. We'll do that. Then also this brake and these cables.
If I can simplify that, that can make the bike more aero as well. There's brakes you
can get that are more aerodynamic than the standard caliper. I'm going to see if I can
get one of those. Also, I mentioned about potentially going
one by at the front. That would also have the advantage of removing one of these massive
cable housings out of the front of the bike. In terms of whenever you think about aerodynamics
and making a bike more aero, the leading edges and the front of the bike are always the things
that have much more impact than things further back. Because when you get further back, the
airflow is already disturbed. Here, you've got well mostly clean air getting disturbed
by these leading edges and this big cable. That's not ideal. It's probably only like
a watt. Every little helps when you haven't got many watts to play with.
Something else that I'm going to change on the bike, chainset. Maybe not the chainset.
The FSA Gossamer cranks, they're fine. The chainrings themselves are quite small. They're
just a compact 50-34. Which if I was riding a normal bike and going somewhere hilly, that'd
be ideal. For time trials, I want a bigger gear because this can make the drive train
more efficient. It means that I can really keep on pedaling hard when I'm going on descents
on some fast courses. Other things I'm going to do to optimize the tires. We'll get some
faster lower rolling resistance tires on there. That's a really cost-effective performance
upgrade. Latex in the tubes in them as well. I'm going to strip the chain off and wax it
for the ultimate drive train gain. That's not going to cost me much money. I'm going
to strip the whole bike as well and relub it and get it all running nice and making
sure everything's tip top. One thing I was wondering about is should I custom paint it
or try to custom paint it? I've got no idea what I'd do. I've never custom painted a bike
before. I do quite like this color scheme. I think what we'll do is have a poll in the
app. There'll be a link so that you can click through to the poll in the app and vote on
it. Should I custom paint this Cervélo P1? I really like these GCN colors but I don't
know. We'll let you guys decide. If you do think I should custom paint it,
let us know in the comments like what you think I should custom paint it as or like
what colors or how or whatever, any advice. One of the things I'm hoping to do with this
project is to show that you don't have to spend loads of money to get a really fast
bike. Also, although bike frames do make a difference aerodynamically, what makes the
most difference is your position. The main thing is trying to get the position right
on this bike. For now, what I'm going to do is give it a good clean, which is why it's
going to be in my apartment, isn't it? Fortunately, I've made a video on how to do that. I'll
probably just watch my video and then go do it.
In the meantime, I hope you've enjoyed this video. If you've got ideas for things that
you think I should do to make this bike faster, let us know in the comments section down below.
Because although I do have a plan in my head and I do have ideas of what I'm going to do,
I'm still flexible. If you've got any good ideas, I want to hear them. If you like what
we do, then give us a follow. Also, if you've enjoyed this video, give it a like. If you'd
like to support the channel, shop.globalcyclingnetwork. You know you do. You get hoodies, and sweatshirts,
and mugs, and all that jazz. All the good stuff. See you next time.
[beep] I tell you what as well. This bottle cage
is coming off. That is not staying on there. Don't need to drink in a time trial.
[music] [00:14:12] [END OF AUDIO]