Dave’s FTC

Some years ago I came up with my Folding Road Concept (FRC) design, and  I have built quite a few versions since. But Dave asked me if the same idea could be executed with a custom triathlon build; and thus we have the Folding Triathlon Concept :-

Dave worked with a local fitter to come up with his tri position – the resulting steep seat angle and long toptube wasn’t going to be possible with a production frame. It was also a bit of a challenge to come up with a viable FTC design that would fit in the travel case. The length of the mainframe is such that there would not be room for anything on the rear of the seattube, so I had to do something different for both the seatstay coupler and the front derailleur. For the folding stays, the brake needed to be mounted on the seatstays, rather than under the chainstay as I might do on a TT/Tri bike normally. We decided to do a dropped seatstay, and for the coupler I created a curved cradle to match the seattube profile, with a single 5mm bolt to hold things together.

For the front derailleur I brazed two bosses to the frame, then fabricated a mount that bolted on and held the derailleur. This allows the derailleur to be easily swung out of the way for packing, but ensures it returns to it’s set position accurately each time.

Most of the TT/Tri frames I build have an ovalised, integrated seatmast. This wasn’t going to be possible with the requirements to pack into the travel case. So I made an ovalised seattube and a matched ovalised titanium seatpost to fit it – allowing both straight-forward adjustment and easy removal for packing.

Dave wanted a fairly low basebar, with a stack up to the aerobar. This meant we could use a short headtube, which has a Chris King Inset headset to accept the Wing TT aero fork.

The frame features two additional ‘fairing’ pieces – one behind the headtube, and the other at the seattube/toptube junction. The latter not only helps reinforce that junction, but provides a hidden channel for the rear brake cable – there is an internal guide tube inside to send the cable into the toptube.

Dave opted for Di2 shifting, which is perfect for a travel bike as it means the handlebars can just be ‘unplugged’ for packing. The TriRig brakes also allow for easy removal of the cable clamp, so we end up with only the rear brake cable keeping the basebar and frame together.

And then the paint – Dave took me literally with ‘you can have whatever you want’ and got creative! The team at Colorworks did an incredible execution, with everything painted to match down to the brake covers.

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