Thoughts on Specialized Transition Elite

[callmeclyde]

New to tri. Last competitive sport...college football, so these last couple of months have been quite a change!! I got a pretty good deal on a Transition Elite, rode it and really liked it. Any thoughts on the bike??

[chrisesposito]

One of the bike shops I frequent is run by an ex-pro triathlete (Tom Price) and he had one in his shop window for a while. I asked him about it one day and he said he thought it was a good entry-level dual use road / tri bike. I have a vague memory of a $1200 or so price tag.

[Jaybird]

I just bought one and got a smoking deal on it. If you don't have 3-4 grand or more to throw down on a bike, than it is perfect. Mine has great components (Ultegra/105) and rides great. My tri season is over (Nebraska...shiver) and never got to use it for a race. I rode a friend's bike (bottom end Giant w/aero bar) this year and the Trans Elite blows it away. This was my first year and had an awesome time.

[Triguy]

The Specialized looks nice, even better in person. My main concern would be the sloping top tube. Tri bikes are made to get are from the front of them to the back, no easier way to do that than to run it along a surface. By making the top tube not horizontal it is therefore the Specialized top tube is disturbing one of the easiest places to keep constant in airflow. I realize it is Specialized's "thing" to do sloping geometry but why do deep tubes and seat cut outs when you negate it with something else?

[Elvish Legion]

One of the bike shops I frequent is run by an ex-pro triathlete (Tom Price) and he had one in his shop window for a while. I asked him about it one day and he said he thought it was a good entry-level dual use road / tri bike. I have a vague memory of a $1200 or so price tag.


I think you may be confusing the multisport....the elite is a full tri bike, where as the multi is roadie with aeros

[chrisesposito]

I think you may be confusing the multisport....the elite is a full tri bike, where as the multi is roadie with aeros

After reading more about the model in question here and elsewhere, you are probably right.

unfortunately it appears that the LBS I mentioned where I saw the multipsort may have gone out of business - `For Lease' signs and notices for undelivered UPS packages have started to appear on the windows. Maybe he is just moving...

[Elvish Legion]

After reading more about the model in question here and elsewhere, you are probably right.

unfortunately it appears that the LBS I mentioned where I saw the multipsort may have gone out of business - `For Lease' signs and notices for undelivered UPS packages have started to appear on the windows. Maybe he is just moving...
I have the multisport, its nice but I want a full tri bike..I'd say if thats all you do, get the elite, should be like 1800 or so?

[cjbruin]

The Specialized looks nice, even better in person. My main concern would be the sloping top tube. Tri bikes are made to get are from the front of them to the back, no easier way to do that than to run it along a surface. By making the top tube not horizontal it is therefore the Specialized top tube is disturbing one of the easiest places to keep constant in airflow. I realize it is Specialized's "thing" to do sloping geometry but why do deep tubes and seat cut outs when you negate it with something else?

Huh? I'm not sure what you are trying to say in your third sentence...did you mean "air" instead of "are".

I don't think you are correct about the sloping tubes affects on air flow.

[jennings780]

Specialized makes nice bikes.
I think the transition elite looks like a nice bike. It is true tri bike geometry and 105 components are fine. You may want to upgrade the Alex wheels at some point. I have an Allez Elite and I have trouble keeping my Alex ALX330 wheels true. My LBS said that they have a lot of problems with them.

[Triguy]

Yes I meant air. And I'm pretty sure every bike coming out of the wind tunnel this year is on my side (trek ttx, time, cervelo) because none of them have a sloping top tube. I would probably put money down that Specialized Transitions never saw a wind tunnel.

[Triguy]

Alright, I'm not trying to come off like a dick, but I did some research to back up my claims. John Cobb took compact frames into a wind tunnel a while back, they did indeed show up slightly the lesser to traditional frames under normal riding conditions. Second Triathlete magazine reported on this bike a while back saying that it never did indeed see a tunnel.

I am not saying a tri bike has to do everything to be aerodynamic, I myself am having a tri bike built out of unaero tubes, but like I said it seems odd to go through the effort to make some things aerodynamic only to negate those benefits with something else. If you want to use deep aero tubes, a seat tube cutout and an integrated post; which are probably the big three aerodynamic raves right now take the bike to a wind tunnel and fine tune the rest.

[bvfrompc]

Alright, I'm not trying to come off like a dick, but I did some research to back up my claims. John Cobb took compact frames into a wind tunnel a while back, they did indeed show up slightly the lesser to traditional frames under normal riding conditions. Second Triathlete magazine reported on this bike a while back saying that it never did indeed see a tunnel.

I am not saying a tri bike has to do everything to be aerodynamic, I myself am having a tri bike built out of unaero tubes, but like I said it seems odd to go through the effort to make some things aerodynamic only to negate those benefits with something else. If you want to use deep aero tubes, a seat tube cutout and an integrated post; which are probably the big three aerodynamic raves right now take the bike to a wind tunnel and fine tune the rest.


And in the big picture, it won't really matter to the beginning triathlete, but its fun to decide which bike to buy on a 20 second difference for the top athletes over 40k.

[jennings780]

Being on a specialized doesn't seem to slow Peter Reid down any.
Also, the wind resistance of the bike frame itself makes very little difference - even to an elite athlete. I recently read that bike frame wind resistance is 0.8% of overall resistance while cycling.

[Dieter]

As an engineer I have done a few windtunnel tests in the past, though no clients of ours have requested tests on bikes yet. I will see if I can dig up some numbers, but I would be surprised if it wasn't bigger than 0.8%.