I bought this bike new from Steve Delaire last December, received it in January, but just recently finally got it dialed in, and with so few around, figured I’d do a report on it. I bought it as a project to tinker with (lowracers have a way of turning into projects, anyway), at a time when I needed a distraction, but didn’t plan on spending this long getting it the way I wanted it. I knew I was having lung surgery when I bought it, but had no idea it would be April before I finished chemo.
I am truly impressed with the basic bike, but like many Performer and China Mascot bikes, it was definitely rough around the edges. The frame is a combination of carbon fiber and aluminum. The straight tubes are carbon, but every curve is aluminum, with the carbon tubes epoxied in, The tubes aren’t totally carbon fiber, either. They’re very thin aluminum tubing, wrapped in carbon fiber. It all makes for a bike that’s not as light as a pure carbon fiber bike, but I suspect it’s extremely strong. I haven’t seen a weight limit for it. It’s ride is excellent, the best I’ve seen for a bike with a 451 front wheel.
It’s not as low as a Baron or Fujin or TiCa, so I guess you’d have to call it a quasi-lowracer. The rear brake mounts on a clamp which can be moved, so you can use any rear wheel from 559 to 700c. I tried a 559 on it just to see how it felt. It was a bit lower, and I liked the small amount of additional recline, but I ended up going back to the 700c.
The boom on the bike is adjustable; the seat doesn’t adjust forward or back. The seat that came with it was the standard frp (fiberglass reinforced plastic) Performer/China Mascot seat. Besides being heavy, it was much too big for me, and I replaced it with a medium size CCK seat, back before they got so expensive. That instantly made the bike two pounds lighter (24.5 pounds rather than 26.5), and fit me much better. The rear mount for the seat has a slot that lets the seat adjust a couple of inches, but it wouldn’t let the seat recline as much as I wanted, so I made a simple non-adjustable bracket, and used it to get the seat more reclined.
The original handlebar looked worthless for a lowracer, so I got Steve to replace it with tweener bars, but his were much too wide for me, and I replaced them with the same narrow Bacchetta bars I have on my Corsa. The original tilting riser didn’t work for me either, so I replaced it with a straight riser, and an mtb stem to get the handlebar far enough away from me. It’s a great feeling setup now.
The brake levers which came with it were long pull levers which were a mismatch for the road brakes on it, and gave it awful stopping power, so I replaced them with Avid Speed Dial levers. It came with two double idlers, one under the seat and another above the fork. After much experimentation, I decided I didn’t like both idlers on it (too noisy, and seemed to lose too much power), and ended up only using the idler under the seat, with the chain crossed on it, Bacchetta style. There is chain interference with the fork, but only on very sharp turns, and I just added a strip of velcro to protect the fork.
The wheels which came with it were not heavy, but not very strong either, I suspect (I never did see a brand on them). I trashed the front wheel when I hit a deep grate, and have had an old POS front wheel on it since. I have new a Velocity Uriel wheelset with upgraded spokes ordered for it from Zach.
I rode both this bike and my Corsa in The Texas Time Trials in September. It’s a bit faster than the Corsa, but you have to be stronger than me to really take advantage of the great lowracer aerodynamics. My speed difference on the two bikes is only slight. It is truly a blast to ride, and I expect to start getting a lot more miles on it. Below is from The Texas Time Trials.
