Originally Posted by
carpediemracing
I know that all the aero in the world won't help if you're sitting wrong but I figure you got that bit figured out. A good position is worth a lot of aero dollars. In my previous life I fitted a guy using a Look Ergo stem on his steel winter beater bike and he went on to win some huge international Masters stage race in South America somewhere - he had a disk, trispoke, and aero bars, but otherwise the bike was a piece of junk. Another guy I fit was ranked top 10 in the country for duathletes (bike leg) - his aero equipment consisted of a HED disk wheel, a trispoke, and TT bars (on an otherwise stock lugged and glued Giant carbon bike with 105).
Anyway, on the bike side of things...
Slice is limited to the SI cranks - max 175mm crank from what I can tell, although the SRMs are cheaper for SI, at least on eBay. Not an issue if you use 170-175 but if you like long cranks and don't want to use the adapters...
The Felt looks pretty sweet - standard brake and BB, internal cables (4 or 5% according to Felt), that chainstay brake (another 4 or 5%), the fork in front of the headtube thing (another 4 or 5%, a la Look KG something or another from 10 years ago, more recently seen on BMC's TT bikes).
There is a fork out there that fairs the front brake - saw some Interbike pics of it. I have to imagine that is more significant than protecting the rear brake from air (after it hits all sorts of stuff getting there). I don't recall the fork. I think fairing the front brake is more important than the fork shrouding the headtube business simply because the brake is so complex but the headtube is already sort of "aerodynamicized" by having appropriate tubing behind it. You can tape your number there in a fairing kind of way if it's too round for your liking.
Finally Zinn or someone discussed the fork with the two sets of blades (double bladed?) on Velonews somewhere. Cadel Evans uses one. Apparently it reduces the amount of air being kicked up by the front wheel (and being thrown forward - against your direction of travel). Sort of similar to aero gains found by diverting wheelwell air in cars - it's not the air that the car is hitting, it's air that the vehicle itself is moving around. Reduce the wheel's air resistance and you reduce yours.
So, if I was a TT bike, I'd want me to have the double fork blades, the faired front brake, internal cables, shielded rear brake, rear wheel tucked in, and the standard narrow aero tube profile for all the tubes.
And then the disk wheel, the 808 or tri front wheel, nice aero bars, a solid big ring, and my rider to have shoe covers, aero helmet with glasses, Lance buzzcut...
Oh and a camelbak (mounted high up on your back to fair your head a bit) as installing a bottle will ruin all that aero you just bought. And use tape to hold your number on (and/or Super 77 adhesive).
not a TT guy but I wish I was,
cdr