Pimpin

Yes it's a Trek. But what is so amazing about this bike is, aside from it looking just insanely fast, the technology that went into it is hopefully entirely industry design changing. The 2 main parts that have large bearings, the headset and bottom bracket, have always had some sort of pressing or threading to fix the bearings. Trek bypassed this by forming the BB shell and headtube/fork interface to be the actual bearing holders.

So normally, you'd have a headset (such as Chris King) which has all these parts; bearing, cups, crownrace, that all have to be press fitted or hammered on to allow the fork to pivot inside the headtube. The headtube of these new Treks are the cups and crownrace so all you need is 2 sealed bearings, your fork, and frame. That's it. You pop on bearing on the fork, slide the fork into the frame, plop the other bearing down the stem, put the bearing cover on, install however many spacers you want then add the stem. That's all it takes. One 5mm allen wrench does it all. No huge torture device looking headset press, no hammering of crown races. It's amazing.

The bottom bracket is pretty much the same idea, but you'll need a 2 piece crank like all the new ones out. You install 2 bearings on either side of the BB shell, slide in your crank of choice, tighten correctly and that's it. So basically, this whole bike can be put together with a few allen wrenches. The seatpost design is also a great idea. Instead of hacksawing your frame like on Looks or Giants, you have a mast that 2 different sized seatposts fit over, tall or short. So this gives you as much adjustment room as a standard 250mm seatpost. This also gets rid of the possibility for water to wash down into your bottom bracket area. It's a capped mast so the seat tube us just one long closed tube from BB to the top.

Ok, I'm done being all hyped up about this bike. I can't help it though. This is basically what I've been waiting for. I've never wanted to commit to a carbon frame since I never saw an advantage of it aside from weight and looks. But now that Trek has done this, I sure hope everyone else in the industry follows suit. Man, it would be so nice if headset and bottom bracket installation would be a thing of the past. Like I said before, anyone with a few allen wrenches could almost completely build up their own bike.

Anyone got a few extra thousand dollars they wanna donate to poor little old me??