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FEATURES: CERVÉLO'S PROJECT CALIFORNIA READY TO ROCK AND ROLL
Richard Cunningham
May 28, 2010
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Meet the R5ca – perhaps the lightest carbon frame that a ProTour sprinter like Cervélo's Brett Lancaster would dare compete on. The Aussie sprinter who won stage 2 of the Tour of California raced the new R5 in the final stage where he put over a pound of steel into the seat tube (to make UCI legal weight) and ran the bike hard over the hilly circuit. Brett was all smiles about the R5ca frame's stiffness and especially over the bike's handling in the tricky high-speed corners that defined the final stage. Brett was on hand at Cervélo's Project California launch shortly after the race, where a select group was treated to a tour of its two-year-old research and development facility located in Southern California – the birthplace of the R5ca.
Cervélo hails from Toronto, Canada, but its once-secret carbon fiber development works is in Garden Grove, California. Vroomen White Design is a small facility, but anyone who dreams of making carbon fiber frames would weep after a walk around the inside of the building. Nothing has been spared – Cervélo bought computerized plotters to cut the carbon pre-preg sheets, the latest design software, machining centers to produce molds on site, and can make everything from the molded rubber bladders used to pressurize the molded parts, to the smallest cable fitting.
The $9800 R5ca frameset includes a 267-gram fork, the Rotor crankset, headset, and a zero-offset seatpost.
Testing, however, has been the primary focus at the Project California facility, because the only way to build a lightweight frameset is to minimize every gram of carbon. To this end, Cervelo uses standard fatigue and destruction protocols, as well as a number of its own testing methods derived from reverse engineering actual loads generated by pro cycle racers. Cervelo's co-founder Phil White insisted that Project California is primarily a research and development operation which allows Cervélo to build and test composite parts from the rough prototype stage, all the way into limited production. Knowledge gained from the experience will then be translated into mass production at their Asian manufacturing plants.
Cervelo Co-founder Phil White with the R5ca frame.
ABOUT THE R5ca
Cervelo has bucked tradition from the beginning, so it should come as no surprise that the R5ca frame has some unusual features. For instance, inside the bottom bracket area, two molded-in rectangular channels boost rigidity-and the massively oversized structure is offset to the left to add even more stiffness-enhancing volume. The R5's tapered head tube and steerer tube use the standard, 1 1/8-inch upper bearing, but the lower is a mid-sized, 1 3/8-inch bearing to minimize weight. Cervélo insists that a longer head tube is stronger, so the front of the frame is tourist-tall by comparison to what a typical ProTour racer uses. The disparity of the R5's massive downtube, head tube, chainstays and bottom bracket is accented by the frame's slender, tapering top tube and pencil-thin wishbone seat stays.
Using Cervelo's R3 frame for a baseline, Project California boosted the stiffness of the R5 a claimed, 40-percent. At 688-grams in a 56 centimeter size, one would expect the R5ca to barely pass industry test standards, but it tops the tough new European standards by a minimum of 20 percent. Cervélo says that the R5 beats impact standards by 150-percent and doubles the bottom bracket fatigue baseline. Heady stuff for only one and a half pounds of carbon fiber.
The large
chainstays and an offset BB30 bottom bracket shell seem massively
oversized for a lightweight frame. Cervélo even makes the
smoother-than-standard cable guide. Rotor Bike Components is a Team Cervélo co-sponsor and their crankset
and BB30 bottom bracket will be sold with the R5ca frameset.
Cervelo, in an attempt to break from industry wide misleading frame sizing methods, has instigated a simple measuring standard: "stack-and-reach." Stack is the vertical distance from the bottom bracket center to a horizontal line that intersects the centerline at the top of the head tube. Reach is the horizontal distance from the intersection of the stack line to the top of the head tube centerline. The theory is that, as frames grow smaller, the head tube should creep closer to the rider in equal proportion – which, for the most part, has not been the case.
Cervélo continues to break ground by stating that there is no scientific reason for producing a female-specific frame. After searching two massive databases used by the military to establish proportions of men and women, Cervélo found that the variables between men and women are the same-and that the presumed need for female-specific frame geometry was in error-a product of small riders who do not fit on poorly proportioned frames. Cervélo's broad base of female and male racers all ride stock frame sizes. (R5ca frames are molded in six sizes from extra small (48 cm) to over 60 centimeters)
Cervelo's R5ca employs a slacker, 72-degree seat angle to eliminate the heavier and unnecessary offset seatpost. The net saddle position is the same as an offset post with a 73-degree angle.
A taller head tube is an R5ca feature and it houses a slim, tapered steerer setup that with a mid-sized 1 3/8 inch lower bearing.
The principal composite guy at the center is Donald Guichard –who came from aerospace and into the bike biz back when GT was making TT frames for the Olympics. Anthony Bradley, his manufacturing manager is equally qualifies, so there is no shortage of know-how at Project California. So far, the only product to emerge form Cervelo's Project California is the R5ca, and plans are that this frame series will be manufactured exclusively there at the Vroomen White Design center. The notion is that the staff can be cranking out frames between stints when they are not pressed into service building experimental stuff. We expect to see some crazy stuff popping out of their molds once the crew there gets a handle on the R5 production.
The projected retail price for the frame kit including all the extra bits is $9800 and those of you who want to elevate the bar in the peloton and can afford the extravagance, get your credit card out now because Phil White anticipates that Cervélo's 300 R5ca's will sell out well before their 2011 model year arrives.
For more information visit www.cervelo.com |
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