Carbon Test Ride #1.

In pursuit of test riding a carbon-framed bicycle, I visited Pedalworks in Dunstable on Wednesday. Brian, the owner, took the time to set me up with a carbon-framed bicycle on a trainer to get a decent fit -- including swapping out for a shorter stem and even a faster set of wheels!  Fantastic service there (though Brian is a bit of a Marmite character!)

The bike I rode was the Trek Domane 4.3 WSD:

Visually, I found this to be quite an attractive bike. And Brian got the fit very close. Out on the road, I felt the reach to be possibly even a little too short -- so perhaps the original stem would have been fine.

In terms of comfort and ride quality -- after all, the whole point of this venture -- I was frankly very underwhelmed. I sought out typical roads in Dunstable with which I am already well familiar on my steel-framed road bikes. I cannot say I noticed an appreciable difference in the feel over potholes or irregular surfaces. It's possible that, with wider higher-volume tyres I might have. But tyres are not the point here and I expected to notice at least some degree of "better" (for want of a technical term!)

Meanwhile, I found the drivechain to be a bit clunky, although the shifting was accurate enough. I don't know what brand this was. I didn't make a point of looking at it, which in retrospect I wish I had done. I do know my Shimano Tiagra is smoother and much quieter, and I've tried the lower end Sora and 2300 systems, so suspect the Trek had something other than Shimano. The STI-style levers felt similar though. I tried to separate out my reactions to the "clunkiness" in order to concentrate on "feel" overall, but it was a little distracting especially at first.

My overriding sense of the frame was an odd one -- perhaps one I could have predicted but which nonetheless surprised me. I've heard people tease fellow riders on carbon bikes about their "expensive plastic" but I'd truly forgotten all about that until about halfway through my test ride. I'd been thinking to myself:  "This is fantastically light and speedy... quite stiff over bumps though... somehow it does have a different 'character' than steel too... now, what does it remind me of?  hmmm.... oh, I know, a plastic credit card!"

And that in a nutshell was my impression of carbon... and not just in an ironic sense of the term: 

Expensive plastic.