Felt Footprint
 

I've been doing moderately serious training now on my Langster for a year now, and I wasn't particularly thinking of upgrading (particularly since I just bought brand new wheels) until I more or less randomly stumbled on the new Felt Footprint and had a golem moment.

I'd given up looking for a lighter full carbon single-speed road bike with actual brakes (or at least brakes that I didn't have to drill myself and ziptie to the frame), but it appears that Felt has been thinking of me (and possibly me alone, given the blank looks I just got in various bike shops here in NJ). Yes, I may be weird for wanting to spend this much on a single speed that will never see the track, and will likely never be ridden fixed, but hey - who's normal anyway.

Actually finding/buying one may pose a challenge though, since I would rather not order it sight unseen but no-one seems to have one (or has even heard of it). Has anyone seen one in real life? In particular, does anyone know if it has 120mm rear spacing? I would want to use my new wheels rather than stock, and the Felt website is a little light on this particular information.

Me want.

Dave

Kilo TT

I have never heard of this bike until just now. I will say, however, that it probably has 120mm rear spacing.

Hipster alert:

Chainguide: Aluminum Guard to protect skinny jeans

Accessories: Felt BEERNuts Axle Nut Tool: Chrome-Moly 15mm tool to remove axle nuts for fixing flat tire & w/ bottle opener for liquid refreshment while fixing flat tire.

I think Trek makes a belt drive SS that's full carbon with brakes. I never understood it, but whatever, if you've got the cash why not?

I was hoping that Felt had kept something very close to a TK2 (Aside from being carbon. And having road angles. Nothing like a TK2 then, but the same price), but with actual brakes, and some ****** from marketing had written this particular section based on some coke-addled market research. If I tried to wear skinny jeans my wife would probably divorce me, and I'm not sure that a combined axle tool/bottle opener says hipster more than it says "I'm a hardened alcoholic that can't afford a car - please help me". All I was going to add was my orange deep-V's, white tires and color matched chain, chrome seat and green moustache bars. And maybe add the gold chainring and somewhere to put my latte, glasses and Dr. Who scarf. That doesn't make me a hipster, you're just not cool enough to get me. Fascist.

Anyway, sarcasm aside, if some anonymous voice on the Internet thinks the bike is "Hipster" clearly I must not buy it (sarcasm is a hard thing to put down), but I am open to suggestions on non-hipster full carbon frames with real brake routing, Ive just not seen anything that fits the bill for what I want to do better than this.

Dave

Excellent suggestion (I believe that you are referring to the District Carbon) with 2 major drawbacks...

1) I would rather like to use my new wheels (which are not in fact the orange deep-v's mentioned above, but are almost as lovely in my opinion). I'd either have to figure out a whole new drivetrain or find a belt drive freewheel that fitted. They may well do that (not the world's greatest expert on belt-drives), but...
2) It retails at over $3,600. People may well say that a fool and my money are easily parted, but even I have my limits. The Felt is less than half that and sort of do-able, assuming I wanted to drink cheap beer for a while. The trek would mean a divorce. And then I would be riding half a bike.

Dave

Yeah, I knew I remembered it being outlandishly expensive, I even remember saying you'd have to be an idiot to purchase a $3500 SS that isn't a track machine. But I figured I'd throw out the option since you were asking. Also, I feel like they must be selling these for next to nothing considering their isn't a market for them at all and they probably need to get rid of all of them to make room for bikes that sane people purchase.

You do know that the belt drive piece can be put on other wheels....

Y'all think those are expensive; care to guess what this costs ?

http://www.feltbicycles.com/Resource...1_SMALL(2).jpg

Over 10k I guess.

Well over 10K.

Sure, but the difference is, that's meant to be raced seriously, the Trek SS is essentially a cruising around/training bike (at the very best), so dropping that much money on a bike that you'll be riding around leisurely seems pretty ridiculous.

I know, I checked the price on felt's website before posting that. 12k.

IDK, the Trek District Carbon is about the same price as a Mavic IO. Is it any more ridiculous to buy the Trek than to buy the IO for use on the street ? Certainly I wouldn't, because I'm a penny pinching old coot living off social security, but some folks have the means and desire for such trappings. It's certainly a lot cheaper than other hobbies like motorcycles and cars. And don't tell me that everyone that buys a $10K+ geared racing bike is a serious racer, either.

Unless you feel like offering a very long term zero interest loan, I think that problem (2) supersedes problem (1) by some considerable margin.

Dave

Why would you choose this? There's much better/ more innovated roadies for that price range....

And no I do not give a damn that it's Di2.

If this is going to turn into a thread of things I cannot possibly afford, it's going to get bloody long...

Dave

I don't think the Felt Footprint is very light...
website says 18.7 pounds.
is your langster steel or aluminum?
if it's aluminum i think you'd get a better value just upgrading with lighter components
and are you riding it SS now? if so, what's the problem?
i know people that ride without rear brakes SS.
or just ride it fixed.
or get someone to drill a rear brake.
bottom line: i wouldn't consider that much of an upgrade at all, just an extravagance.

My langster is aluminium. I ride it SS now. I am aware that people ride with one brake, and I am aware that people ride with no brakes. I could get a frame and drill it, and I could spend time putting together components for my existing frame. I could wear skinny jeans and smoke filterless French cigarettes. My preference isn't to do those things though - I don't like riding fixed and I do like 2 brakes. I like clean brake lines and no zip ties. I *really* like the carrot cake you get at Wegman's. I don't even like skinny jeans on girls.

Part of this is the triumph of hope over experience that new gear will make any appreciable difference to the art of making the bike go forwards. Part of this is undoubtedly a child-like sense of wonder when buying a shiny new bike, combined with the fact that I have finally found a bike that matches my weird preferences more or less exactly. Since I am now both biking to work and training on it 25-50 miles/day, I'm going to allow myself the extravagance - I know many people who have spent a lot more to ride a lot less. I do have a pathological need to validate every major purchase with strangers on the interwebs though, so I was hoping that I might run into someone who owned one/had ridden one/had seen one.

It's proving difficult to gauge how much of an upgrade it might be unless I can find someone who has been on one though. 18.7 pounds is a pretty big leap from where my langster is right now.

Dave

Stock bike. Got it.

For that it looks like the only real carbon singlespeed bikes are the District and the Footprint.

Both look solid.

This new guy seems cool, let's keep him.

edit:

How about you just buy any carbon road frame you want, and get a White Ind Eccentric rear hub. That's prolly the cheapest option as full carbon frames can be had for relatively cheap on eBay.

I'm somewhat handicapped from the fact I know of no other SS/fixed riders in the area, meaning I have to work a lot of this out without real-world assistance - I managed to get into the SS thing without any peer pressure whatsoever. I'm not sure that it's so much that it has to be "stock" as that I want a nice frameset with horizontal dropouts and 2 brakes, and I don't hate the convenience of not having to figure everything out myself (particularly since I am still learning a lot of this, and I seem to find a new size/thread/complication every damn time I try something new).

Dave

I *just*, and I mean *just* (as in a week ago) picked up my new wheels. I probably would have considered this a while ago (had I known the option existed), but I do like what I have wheel-wise now. Where where you a month ago before I registered on the forums? Your customer service sucks.

Dave

See, the first thing I would do with a district carbon would be to ditch the belt drive and run it as a fixed gear since I am not a fan of belt drive.