West 5 Cycles
Cycling, fixed-gear bike building and life on two wheels onlyArchive for July, 2008
Stealth Pro Carbon iterations from Planet X
I’ve getting a lot of questions lately about my latest build, the Planet X Stealth Pro Carbon Track frame as it is (as far as I know) called the same as the TT/Triathlon frame (i.e Stealth Pro Carbon), yet looks slightly different and with the crucial difference of mine sporting a fork drilled to take a brake, as opposed to the standard issue fork in the track frame set that doesn’t have this modification.
I must say that this is a little confusing, as when you go on Planet X’s website and look under the menu item frames, you see the Stealth Pro Carbon TT/Triathlon version, which retails at a modest £630 for frame, fork and seatpost and comes with gear hanger, braze-ons etc.), whereas if you look under their new track section, you will find the Stealth Pro Carbon Track version, which retails for £735 (frame, track fork and seatpost, no braze-ons and slightly different frame design) and does not have a fork drilled to take a front brake.
Planet X Stealth Pro Carbon TT/Tri frame
Planet X Stealth Pro Carbon Track frame
So what did I do, you may wonder? Well, there is the easy option of buying the track frameset and one of Planet X’s standard road forks and replacing the track fork with one of those – yet, having tried this, I still didn’t think it looked quite right (and pimped up my Pearson Touché with it instead!) so I began wrangling with Planet X for them to sell me the track fork designed to take a road brake. After much toing and froing, they agreed and put some up for sale here, top of the list, which are the ones I have on my bike now.
Planet X Stealth Pro Carbon Track frame with TIME TRIAL forks
So quite a project, but came in at a reasonable price in the end after I managed to shift my track forks on Ebay, to cover for the cost of buying the TT roadforks. Of course there is always an easier way and that is to go have yours specced and built up from scratch, here called the Fixed wheel Pro Carbon TT, which comes in at around a grand for the complete set-up, including wheels, TT bars and the lot.
Whatever you do, is of course up to you, but having ridden mine now for a few weeks I must sing its praises, it is a magnificent bike, very responsive without being nervous and accelerates very rapidly, a true joy to ride – mine only weighs 7kgs, complete with pedals and the On-One alloy track wheels, so for a very competitive price you can not only have a true carbon stealth fixie, but also be having a serious stab at coming in just at UCI race bike weight!
Fixie inspiration: aero pimped
So not all of us are just pootling about on our fixies, we are adamant that we are going fast, everywhere – breaking speed records as we go..almost! Here are some lovely Jetsons-esque fixies get you all into an aerotuck!
Gregory Capelle's Cannondale (with Aerospoke front wheel)
Evan Vanderwall's Bareknuckle (also with Aerospoke!)
Jonas Carlberg's Ford (not completely aero, but certainly pimped to the max!)
Mason Mattocks' Panasonic (or you can just be minimalist, with style!)
Fixie building: good wheel hunting
Now let’s assume you are in the process of building your very own fixie and to make it all the more special, a good pair of wheels would really make the difference. Where to find them and what options do you have, and should you really spend a fortune or could you get away with less?
What’s annoying when hunting for good wheels is that there is an absolute overflow of roadwheels out there to suit virtually any and every budget, so you have a lot of choice. Not quite the same when you are hunting for fixie and single-speed wheels and if you want all fixed, your only choice is track wheels. They, unfortunately, do not grow on trees and many are just that, track wheels for people racing on velodromes so can be very expensive and assuming you are not up for gluing your own tubs, the choice isn’t much to write home about either.
So what to do, where to look? First you have to ask yourself whether you are purely out for some wheels and Read the rest of this entry »
