cannondale six13

very responsive, quick bike, light, and nice technology, but seem to give a harsh ride even with the carbon. The reason for this IMHO is that rear chain/seat stays are still aluminum and transfers lot of the road imperfections and causing vibration when on bad roads. The main triangle has carbon but its limited to the middle sections of the main tubes and glued to aluminum lugs. This aid with weight reduction, but not with decrease vibrations.

Team replica - very nice bike!

G'day,

test rode the 6-13 when in the market for a new bike. Extremely lightweight bike...nice & stiff, no noticable BB flex...climbs well cos of the weight...still a little harsh for my liking on the body, although a vast improvement over previous frames. In Aus it comes standard with Ksyriums which don't help the 'harshness' of the ride, given that they are very stiff wheels. Reasonably priced, well finished frame,

Hitchy

So has the idea of carbon'ing the front triangle instead of the rear resulted in what they wanted?

jasong said:

So has the idea of carbon'ing the front triangle instead of the rear resulted in what they wanted?

I am not sure if it help with reducing harshness, but it did reduce overall weight. I feel that carboning the rear stays does a moderate improvement on how the bike would transfer the vibration and other than that I dont think its perfect machine, but its a good one. You may want to look into Orbea, Specialized, Musser, Giant, Masi, Basso, Trek and Look which offer the rear triangle in carbon.

Sure; having the rear in carbon is much more popular. I thought I had read in Bicycling or some mag that they had felt all along that putting carbon in the back was illogical. So when Cannondale 'finally' put it in the front, it was a very interesting idea. I didn't think the idea here was weight savings, since there are sub kilo frames that won't give this 'perfect' ride characteristic the Six13 was supposed to have.

dfvcad said:

look into Orbea, Specialized, Musser, Giant, Masi, Basso, Trek and Look which offer the rear triangle in carbon.

Cannondale contends that they have test data showing that their "s"-bend aluminum seatstays absorb as much or more vibration as a carbon rear triangle. Did they accomplish what they set-out to? Yeah! They increased the "cool factor" and all kinds of riders just have to have a Six13 now. Mission accomplished!

It's so expensive to be cool in this sport!

meehs said:

increased the "cool factor" and all kinds of riders just have to have a Six13 now. Mission accomplished!

So is the six13 a smooth ride like trek or specialized full carbon frames?