Thursday, April 25, 2013

New Cannondale Synapse: Now With More Weird Bottom Bracket

   Cannondale introduced the new Synapse recently. This bike is designed for the longer ride, with a more forgiving ride than the SuperSix. The market is people looking for a ride for longer distances, or road races with a rougher ride.

The goods

   One of the neatest features of this bike is the split seat tube at the bottom bracket junction. 

The weirds

   Seems like a great place to hide a spare tube. Anyway this design is meant to spread the load on the bottom bracket shell. A wider base means more stiffness. Compare this to the normal BB, where the shell is considerably wider than the down tube and seat tube:

Normal alloy bottom bracket

   This is upposed to give the bike some great lateral stiffness! You may also notice that the chain stays are flattened, this gives the rear end a bit of flex to absorb the road vibration.
   The last thing is the seat post, which is pretty wild:

27.2 seatpost

   This seatpost is smaller than a standard seatpost, which is 30.9. This more narrow seatpost is supposed to flex more, giving a smoother ride. You may also notice that the clamp is integrated into the frame, which gives a pretty smooth and sleek look. Check one out today!



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