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First Ride: New Felt FR racer with disc, power meter options
- Updated: August 1, 2016
Home » News » First Ride: New Felt FR racer with disc, power meter options
Felt’s new range of race-tuned, all-around road bikes is pumped full of progressive features like disc brake options, frames that are optimized for SRAM’s wireless eTap drivetrain, power meters that come stock on select builds, and room for 28-millimeter tires. The FR Series combines these smart details with aggressive race geometry and size specific layups for an enlightened performance machine.
The FR Series is based off Felt’s previous race platform – the F Series – and offers the same quick and responsive ride that we’ve come to expect from top-end race bikes: stiff when sprinting out of corners and compliant over bumpy tarmac. But how do these new FR bikes create this balanced ride? Probably the most shocking change to Felt’s flagship rim brake bike is the rear brake relocation from the seat stays to below the bottom bracket. The bridgeless design both reduces weight and allows the seatstays to flex vertically for vibration absorption. Add this to the ample clearance for 28-millimeter tires that also work to smooth out the ride and Felt’s FR race bikes are noticeably more comfortable than the previous F Series.
The new FR design also repositions the seatstays so they join the top tube by wrapping around, outboard of the seat tube. Felt says this improves torsional stiffness up to 30% because the bike’s seatstays twist less as you hammer on the pedals. While we’re no heavyweight sprinter throwing down 2,000-watt efforts, we didn’t feel the bike twisting or experience any sway in the rear triangle when sprinting during our test ride. The wide, 86.5-millimeter BB386 bottom bracket also felt impressively stiff and responsive during these sprints and left us eager to get the bike into the lab for some stiffness testing.
As for the rest of the bike, Felt uses the same size-specific carbon layup protocol it has used since it first started producing carbon race bikes. Each frame size is tuned differently by using unique carbon blends applied in different areas of the bike, to provide a consistent ride quality across all sizes. But Felt does go one step further this time around, using size-specific lower headset bearings to enhance ride quality and optimize stiffness. Additionally, the FR was designed …
continue reading in source velonews.competitor.com
