Yes, it's taken years for certain very simple and needed design changes to make their way to market, but better late than never. Profile Design will no doubt have fancy-schmancy products to show at Interbike but here—with exactly one month to go before the start of the bike industry's biggest worldwide trade show—we've seen, tasted and smelled two products that will have a significant impact on how tri bikes are spec'd and ridden.
Both products are from Profile Design. The first is a base bar, and the Stoker 26 may seem like a ho-hum addition to the already sufficiently serviced base bar market. Not so. The Stoker 26 is so-named because it's diameter is 26.0mm throughout the entire bar until the last few centimeters, which are swaged down to a point where the bar's inside diameter is 19mm. This is so a plug-in brake lever will fit properly into the end of the bar.
Most base bars, and most road race bars as well, have a diameter of 26.0 at the clamp—that is, where the stem bolts onto the bar—and then the bar tapers to 25.4mm immediately after "leaving" the clamp area. Why is the Stoker 26 such an important entre into the market? Because most clip-ons are built to clamp onto the 26.0mm diameter, which means they must attach to the base bar right next to the stem. Now you can bolt your clip-ons to the base bar wherever you want to along its horizontal section.
Oddly enough, an example of the utility of the Stoker 26 is apparent when using a competitor's clip-on. One of the industry's most popular designs is Syntace's Streamliner, but its clip-on extensions are very close to each other. It is therefore impossible to "choke up" on these extensions while climbing a hill, because you can't fit your hands around the bars midway out the extensions—the bars are too close to each other. With the Stoker 26 you can place your Streamliners a bit away from the stem if you want, and there's no other base bar that'll allow you to do that.
This is also a welcome feature for use with Profile Design's own Aerolite clip-on. This aero bar has extensions that are adjustable in-and-out, and this adjustment mode also allows the rider to change the angle of the "hand hold" position. Should the rider choose a particularly angular, more horizontal, hand-hold—such as is the case with Profile Design's Jammer GT—the clip-ons must be mounted away from the stem. With this base bar you can do that.
Profile's other exciting new entre is its new brake lever. It's the QS2, and is the follow up to the original Quickstop (the naming of which might've been an exercise of wishful thinking in the case of the original model). The QS2 represents a redesign, and it's properly designed. What is revolutionary about this brake lever? For one thing, at $50 retail it's the price. Finally a much needed improvement on the extremely basic technology inherent in the Dia Compe #188 has arrived at a palatable price. Yes, Syntace's Space Controls are nice, but they're also in the $90 per pair neighborhood. Second, we finally have a pursuit bar brake lever that has a return spring!
At this point I must pile on Dia Compe a bit. Twelve years ago I saw the #188 in Germany, stuck in the ends of $200 "city bikes" (these levers were plugged into the ends of upright commuter handlebars with levers pointed inwards). These levers sold, at that time, for about $2 or $3 per pair (if that) to an OEM. I ordered a truckload or two for QR's tri bikes, and every other tri manufacturer followed suit, simply because they were the only lever that would go in the ends of a pursuit bar with cables that routed straight back adjacent to the bar. I might add that the price did not remain that low as Dia Compe presumably realized what they had, and what sort of price the complete tri bikes were selling for.
For twelve years Dia Compe has owned this market with a design it had long since paid for with its sales to commuter bike makers. Thanks to a lucky windfall this cheap design enjoyed a much longer life than it deserved, and these levers were used by more top pro cyclists than were the components of any other company save Campagnolo. Several Tours de France were won by riders using these levers in the time trials. Dia Compe backed into an industry through no fault of its own, and the time trial brake lever market was its oyster.
Yet it never followed up on this. It new how to make a better lever, had the tooling, had the vendors, had the sales contacts, had the market, and had the input from its customers. Now, because of what I can only take as Dia Compe's apparent indifference to this market, Profile Design is poised to wrest this product category for itself.
We've been told to expect these bars and levers to be in stores by the Fall.
