Stromm Cycles track bike launched a bit ago. I’m making an exception to our Kickstarter rules because I know the person behind the project. My personal bike(s) he’s designed and worked on, bringing “gravel” to market. I also appreciate a creative continuing to chase their dreams.
The subject matter, a track bike, isn’t in my wheel house so I’ll defer to the Kickstarter page itself for the details. And, below share what Dave Koesel shared with me in email. Highlights
- Sloping top tube and seat post design creates vortices that keep air attached to rider’s back longer
- Fork and seatstays encourage better airflow over rider’s legs
- Seat tube creates propulsive lift when in the influence of rider’s legs
- Wide fork and seatstay minimize effects of wheel differences – any
well-designed wheel is fast with this frame.
As Dave told me in email…
As soon as I heard the UCI will reconsider their 3:1 rules as well as a few other equipment and position restrictions I got to work on a new track frame.
I participated in the 2022 UCI Master’s World Championship and the USA Cycling Elite National Championships and noted how many riders were using older equipment vs. what I’d seen at the USA Road champs a few months earlier. Track bikes have been fairly static in terms of the engineering; let’s face it, they are pretty simple machines on paper.
Once the rule changes were announced I knew we could make a considerably faster bike. This is when Ben, Stephen and I put our heads together and came up with the idea of making a new bike. We can all use the same size, so we went ahead and opened the tooling to make our size. Now we’re using kickstarter to fund the tooling for the other sizes. We are confident that we have the fastest track bike design and by July will have the fastest track bike available.
We all realize that making a track frame is not going to be a commercially viable business model, the market is too small and quite frankly the development costs aren’t even recovered in the sales even when the volume would be considered successful. We’re largely doing this because athletes headed to Paris deserve to have the fastest possible equipment and because the three of us want to have access to that same free speed.
The reality is that you can’t seem to actually buy an FES and the $25,000 price tag for a Hope or a Felt TA meant the three of us would have to invest $75,000 collectively to have the latest bikes on the market today, but those that were designed before the new UCI rules. We can make a faster bike for less than $75,000 out of pocket. So we did.
Considering what I know about Dave’s work, if you’re racing track, this is the bike to get and support their Kickstarter. The fact that Stromm has opened molds should inform you they’re serious and this isn’t a vanity project or scam. I’ll add, even at my fastest form, Dave dropped me repeatedly during various media event rides.
Super Dave is fast and knows how to make fast bikes. From what I read, arguably the fastest.
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