Trigon TTQC29 - First ride review

Despite only recently launching their in-house Trigon brand, the Taiwanese company have been in the carbon-making business for 20 years and have produced frames and components for some of the biggest brands in cycling. We liked their RQC-29 road bike and since taking delivery of the new TTQC29 time trial bike, we've been eager to put it through its paces. Here are our initial thoughts.

Ride & handling: Stiff and fast, with tight handling

At 7.65kg the TTQC29 is light for a time trial bike. More impressively still, it feels properly stiff, not far behind high-end road bikes. As a result, it climbs really well. The radically-shaped Trigon base bar is also more rigid than its thin profile suggests, so there’s no annoying flex during out-of-the-saddle efforts. The fork and head tube deliver tight handling too, especially noticeable during high-speed cornering.

The race-ready 85mm tubular wheels are also made by Trigon. They weigh a claimed 1,851g, more than respectable for their depth, so acceleration isn’t as blunted as on some super-deep hoops. They certainly pay you back once you’ve got them wound up – this is definitely a fast setup. Gusty winds push the wheels about a fair bit but in more typical conditions they feel surprisingly manageable.

There’s no testing like racing, so we rode the Trigon at a 10-mile time trial with the Chippenham Wheelers on their U40 course, clocking 23:38. Clearly we shouldn’t give up the day job, but the TTQC29 was impeccable – stable at nearly 40mph on a descent, accurate in the turns and effective into the taxing headwind that dogged us on the long back section. The bike created a fair bit of interest and that time turned out to be the fastest of the evening.

Trigon aren’t making bold claims for the aerodynamic properties of this bike and there’s no white paper or wind tunnel graph. However, we’re already confident to say that it’s a fast bike. The last 10 watts that separate the good bikes from the great bikes are always intangible and we won’t pretend to be able to sense that difference ourselves. However, the fact that it would probably come down to a wind tunnel test to find the Trigon’s place in the pecking order is already a big compliment.

Frame & equipment: Top-end kit from front to back

The TTQC29 makes no concessions on its mission to be fast. The cockpit offers plenty of adjustment but even with the stem at the top of the stack as pictured, our tester’s 805mm seat height results in a substantial 130mm drop to the arm pads. It isn’t uncomfortable but it’s certainly committed and it puts you in a really flat-backed position that’s clearly rapid.

SRAM Red’s sharp shifting suits the application and is operated by the latest R2C (Return To Centre) shifters. You can multi-shift up to three gears in one go but the lever always returns to point forwards, piercing the air.

It’s all about the marginal gains; the Vision TriMax aero crankset provides another fractional saving, while the build kit is topped off with a Prologo Nago Evo Tri40 saddle. There are no corners cut here. At £5,500 the TTQC29 is a lot of money but the spec, all top-end kit from front to back, means it’s also a lot of bike. We reckon this is definitely worth adding to your shortlist.

This bike will feature in a forthcoming Procycling magazine issue.

Source: BikeRadar.com Road Bikes & Gear