Felt teases a new lightweight and endurance bike ahead of Eurobike
Felt has two new bikes which it’s about to announce at Eurobike Frankfurt this week. Another story coming out of Eurobike was the new driveshaft technology from CeramicSpeed offshoot Driven Technologies Inc.
Both of the new Felt models are said to offer increased front-end integration over the models that they replace, both of which feature external cable routing.
We don’t have many details as yet, with the brand so far just releasing teaser shots. The bikes are heavily logoed to hide their shapes, but from what we can make out and the text that comes with the teasers, one is a replacement for the existing FR lightweight climbing bike - Felt’s tagline is “Climbing Faster”.
The new frame has the classic double diamond design, with the seat stays meeting the seat tube just below the latter’s top. It’s fitted with a handlebar with aero tops and integrated brake hose runs and Felt says that it's an aero frameset, although it looks to be "aero lite", with close-to-round tube profiles.
Felt claims a 700g frame weight for the new FR, although we don't know how that compares to the existing model. It says that the current FR model is the lightest and stiffest it’s ever produced though, so the new FR has a lot to live up to.
Felt offers two levels of the current FR frame, with the higher spec built up with a mix of high mod and TeXtreme spread tow carbon fibres, the latter resulting in a higher carbon-to-resin ratio and hence lower weight than conventional carbon fibre. The current Dura-Ace build has a claimed weight of 6.9kg and breaches the €12,000 mark.
And a new VR endurance bike
The second bike is a new VR, with the tagline “Smooth is Fast”. This bike looks to have a squared-off downtube profile along with deep section bars and a separate chunky stem.
Again, there’s some front-end integration, which looks to come from a Deda Superbox stem, with the brake hoses running through a channel on its underside, then internally into the frame.
The hoses look to be externally run under the bar tops though, rather than using Deda’s full internal routing system. The bars seem to be a new aero profile model from Zipp, judging by the large Z on their tops.
The current model VR is designed as an allroad bike, with clearance for wider tyres for light gravel excursions, and Felt says that the new model extends that to 38mm.
The current model VR has bento box mounts on its top tube, which look to be absent from its replacement.
At the rear, the seat stays are dropped significantly. It’s a feature which improves compliance – which, along with the wide tyre clearance, we’d guess is where the “smooth is fast” bit comes in. The bike’s seat tube appears to be a conventional round profile and looks to accept a standard round Seatpost, but Felt says that there's "an innovative device in the seat tube to tackle high-frequency vibrations".
That’s all that we’ve been able to glean about the new bikes for now, based on what we can see, but stay tuned for an update once the new Felt FR and VR are announced at Eurobike. The official launch of both bikes is slated for February 2024, with Felt saying that the new FR will be available in limited numbers in the second half of that year.
