FELT

This company has made some big changes and, I thought, deserved the "most improved" award for its 2007 tri bike lineup at Interbike. Mind you, the Felt line needed improvement. It was a brand living off its superior ability to spec a bike, and it had not gotten around to working on its frame designs. The frames lacked the features and superior materials and processes showing up in the catalogs of its chief competitors, and its geometries needed some sprucing up as well.

Felt's engineers and designers not only caught up, they surpassed most of their competitors, and its new DA/B2 frame will not need to be tinkered with for at least a couple of seasons.

S32

You'd be forgiven if you thought this is the same S32 as last year. But you'd be wrong. The bike is considerably different, and in important ways.

First, and most noticeably, the seat tube has an S22-like cutout. Not so last year. More importantly, it's got a new geometry, which is a big improvement over that of the previous years, and it's repeated throughout the line. This makes the S32, at $1349, a screaming deal, and the first sub-$1500 tri bike in awhile to have nothing particularly wrong with it.

The frame is made with the #7005 alloy Jim Felt helped pioneer during his days with Easton.  The geometry is full-blown race, and the round seat post actually helps a bit, allowing for more wiggle room in the set-up and positioning than would be the case with an aero post and seat tube complex.  The fork is carbon.

As was the case last year, this is largely a 10-speed 105/Ultegra bike, witih Profile Aerolite clip-ons, Felt’s proprietary saddle, and Shimano WH-R500 wheels. It's got a lot of crank for the money, with an FSA Gossamer Mega-Exo crank. No parts need to be replaced to make it rideable, unless you're in a hilly area, in which case you can try to see if your LBS will swap you out for an FSA Compact Crank with 34/50 chainrings.  This is the least you can spend to get a functional full tri set up out of the box.

One other element of note:  This bike’s geometry in its 650c sizes (48cm, 50cm) is perfect, and other bike makers ought to take notice.  Jim Felt’s work with Paula Newby Fraser in years past has helped him dial in the geometry on these sizes, and this knowledge base transfers up to Felt’s higher-end tri bikes.

S22

Last year’s S22 cost $2500, and this year's bike is better in many ways, yet costs $500 less (MSRP $1999). 

The frame is still made of Jim Felt’s Easton-pioneered #7005 alloy, but with a carbon wishbone seat stay.  With its carbon fork and post, you get carbon fore, mid and aft, for those manic about carbon’s vibration absorption.  The frame's other tubes undergo machining to relieve it of excess weight, and the seat post and tube are integrated into one aero shape.

What makes it a better bike than last year is the new geometry, with steeper seat angle (78-ish, depending on size, versus last year's 76), as well as slightly taller head tubes. Also, the seat post is dual-position, so if the seat angle is now too steep for you, there's a rearward position that ought to suit you.

This bike is spec'd with a Dura Ace rear derailleur and, if you wonder how it can drop $500 in price in a year, there are a few downspecs in the kit. Last year's FSA SLK carbon crankset becomes a Gossamer Mega-Exo, and Easton Vista SL wheels give way to a set of Alex 295R (which may or may not be a downspec depending on whom you talk to).

Last year's Visiontech Carbon PRO Clip-ons are gone, replaced with Profile clip-ons with T2+ extensions and, if I were you, I'd see if I could get my retailer to throw in an upgrade to T2 Cobra extensions. Nothing wrong with what comes on the bike, but I just love the Cobras, and it's a fair upgrade to ask for (all he can say is no).

At this price Felt offers a compelling value. Yes, you can get all-carbon bikes for not much more, but you can't get them with this sort of spot-on geometry.

B2

This is an entirely retooled bike for 2007, and bears absolutely no resemblence in any way to the B2 of a year ago.

It is also a much, much better bike. There was very little I liked about last year's B2, and very little I dislike about this one. One might say that Felt advanced this bike 4 years in the 12 months it spent working on the B2. Of course the old one was 2 years behind. This makes the '07 B2 now two years ahead of a lot of its rivals.

The frame is identical to the DA about which I'll write below, but that's the frame I'm writing about, not the frameset. The DA has one more trick up its sleeve, the Bayonet fork, but unlike Look's K496, this frame can either take the Bayonet or a standard fork. It's honestly a toss-up which is the better way to go, as Easton's EC90 is a terrific fork and that's what comes on this bike. Time will tell whether the Bayonet is proven substantially better than a standard fork. But enough about that, let's get back to what's on the B2.

The drivetrain and kit is similar to what goes on the S22, but with the clip-ons that were on last year's S22, that is, Visiontechs with carbon extensions. The front derailleur is up-spec'd to Ultegra, and the crank is FSA's Krono. Also on this bike is, yes, last year's S22 wheelset, the Easton Vista SL. It's a great kit, on a super duper frame, and it works at $3399.

DA

This bike took a breather for a year, coming back entirely new and what an aggressive rebound. This is the same frame featured above, but with the the Bayonet fork. Does this fork present a substantial technical advantage over the Easton fork? It's too early yet for me to offer an honest appraisal, but it sure is sexy. Also, the fork's blades are visually deeper and more aerodynamic (to the eye) than the Easton, so much so that they skirt the limits of UCI's legality. But if a UCI commissaire did consider them non-conforming, one must ask whether some forks on bikes of similar construction (and used in grand tours) are also legal. In other words, Felt did everything it could to make a slippery fork, and this is an extensively wind tunnel modeled and tested frame and fork.

One note on nomenclature: I've heard this fork referred to as the Bayonet, but it's technical name is the Felt 3.1 UHC (Ultra-Hybrid Carbon Modular) fork. You can see why I prefer Bayonet.

The DA's frame is geometrically correct, which is not at all something I'm prone to warrant when writing about most of the bikes in the tri market. It's not usual that a frame is this advanced in its features and technology, and geometrically appropriate for our sport. The DA has met that challenge.

The frame bears some resemblence to a bike I made upwards of a decade ago, the Redstone. Of course the B2 has all kinds of technical advantages over the Redstone, but there are two elements that bear mentioning. First, there's the faired rear wheel. Second, and much more rare, is the chainstay mounted rear brake. Back in "my day" we couldn't figure out how to use an off-the-shelf brake, so we machined our own rear calipers for use on our bike.

Not so Felt, which ingeniously posited that mounting the brake caliper atop the chainstay, instead of underneath (as we did), would keep the caliper a bit cleaner, and allowed for the use of a caliper made by another company. This means if anything goes wrong with the caliper in the future, just buy one from Shimano, Campy, Tektro, and bolt it on.

The DA only comes one way: full blown. While Felt typically figures out how to get more sex onto your car's bike rack for the least amount of dough, the DA is not spec'd with value in mind. It's full Dura Ace, and that means Dura Ace in freewheel, chain, bottom bracket, that is, in every place the enterprising product manager usually skimps and saves.

The bike comes with Zipp 808 wheels and Vittorria tubies, with a Zipp Vuka base bar and clip-ons. In short, there are plenty of pro athletes at the Hawaiian Ironman who'd love to ride a bike like this, but can't.

The DA sells for an MSRP of $7299. That's a lot of spank for a bike. But, heck, calculate the price of the wheels and aero bars, that's a lot of it right there. So, oddly enough, considering how it's spec'd, the bike's price is right in line, maybe even a bit cheap.

What don't I like about this bike? We're probably about a year away from the parts being modular, and I'm all about modularity. I'm a smorgasboard guy. I want to push my tray up to the frames, pick one, then slide it over to the forks, grab one of those, then ladle some wheels onto my plate. I don't want somebody mandating to me how the thing's going to be built up for racing. On the flip-side, you can't bitch too much about how it is Felt chose to spec this bike.

And, for $3499, you can buy the frameset, with the Bayonet fork, and ladle whatever the hell you want.