We make more than one line of ROAD bikes. We came up with these head tube lengths working with our professional athletes over the years from Chris Horner to Tyler Farrar for our F-series.

Have you looked at the Z series or perhaps the AR line up? The head tubes are longer on those models.

Adding 2cm to the head tube would make the F-series un-rideable for David Millar, Chris Sutton, Christian VDV, and Dave Koesel.

-SD

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www.feltracing.com

So under the outer weave is where you would then get the different carbon layups/weaves depending on location and purpose?

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"Let's plunge ourselves into the roar of time, the whirl of accident; may pain and pleasure, success and failure, shift as they will -- it's only action that can make a man."

Yes, of course, this is how almost all of the frames are made. There are some patches using 3k weave that are used for impact resistance and for areas that have molded holes like the cable guides. There are varying materials and lay up orientation depending on the stresses and purpose of each. unidirectional fibers can be laid up in 15 degree, 30 degree, 45 degree and 60 degree plies in single laminate or sandwich laminates. This development of each lay up for each size is what sets Felt and a few other brands apart. The engineering of each of these frames, the design of every gram, type (ton), orientation and order the plies are laid up are optimized and controled by our staff. We are not using an off the shelf recipe for a frame as it would be impossible to optimize it for each frame design (F, AR, Z, etc...) and to dial in the ride quality is something that FEA and VISTAGY's FiberSIM Composite CAD Software cannot do. As many magazines have learned STW is only one element of a great bike.

-SD

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www.feltracing.com

Thats weird, because in this photo VDV is riding the bigger headtubed Z series: http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=htt ... 9,r:14,s:0

And Horner rides a 58 Madone with 30mm of spacers. Tyler's bike also has a fat spacer stack as do most of the old Garmin bikes featured on CyclingNews. Why design a frame around 30 pro riders that the team no longer sponsors and leave consumers with something that could possible be unusable or at the very least undesirable? Its a great looking frame and sounds like its great at that price, but I don't see many people wanting to run 30 to 40mm of spacers and a 90mm stem like I would have to do for it to fit. It just doesn't make sense.

Kwalker
Compared to Cervelo S/R series and Cannondale CAAD/SS, the Felt F series is only 10mm shorter in the HT on the small sizes, 15mm on the larger sizes, and 20mm on the middle of the road sizes. I don't think that is that big of a deal. If it won't fit you, then don't they aren't the brand that fits you. However if you ride aggressively on a C-Dale or Cervelo without any spacers and want to drop a bit further down, then the Felt would fit that bill and also allow you to run 15mm of spacers while having a similar setup to the other bikes. I don't think it is that big of a deal to be honest.

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"Sacred to the god Aesculapius"

We didn't design the F-series for 30 riders that we no longer sponsor. The F-series has remained pretty much unchanged since Jim tigged some frames together for Nutra-Fig.

I understand that SOME consumers don't want to use headset spacers. This is why we offer 4 different lines of road bikes. If you would like more head tube hieght, we offer a bike for you. CVV never used the Z1, it was too upright. Guys like Wiggo and Millar ran -17 degree stems on their F-series bikes to get the front end lower. It isn't that Garmin told us to make the head tubes this height, 20 years of sales history have. We would leave more customers behind if the F-series geometry and head tube lengths were revised to match the AR than we'd keep.

There is no question that one-size-doesn't-fit-all. I can agree the F-series may not be for you. It isn't for everyone.


-SD

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www.feltracing.com

felt is going to lose a huge amount of sales because of the head tube issue. trek/parlee do it right. they offer the same frame with two different head tube lengths. most italian/belgian carbon frames all have tall head tubes. i don't think pinarello would redesign the dogma for millar

btw. the z series frame looks like a mtb frame. ugly.....

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Current Rides:

2010 SWorks SL3/DI2

Not only does our F-series not fit everyone, our bicycles don't appeal to everyone. We've got room to improve, no doubt, but it will have to come step by step. A new Z-series does sound like a good idea...

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www.feltracing.com

The stack on the F Series is not that out of wack compared to others on the market. It is within in 10mm of almost every other manufacture out there. So basically to get the same stack as many others, you would have to ad one cm of spacer. No big deal.

2cm shorter than most manu's in medium size runs..

too short in my estimation, and i dont want to ride an aero frame to get the right height..

great looking bikes that probably ride fantastic too..

Same here. Especially since the AR series was notoriously less stiff and worse handling than the F series. I'm really attracted to the FC's specs at that price point- it would make a great, solid race bike, but the geo is just too damn short. I ride a 56-57ish TT depending on the HTA and STA. My current ride has a 73.5 STA and a 72.5 STA with a 56.5 TT and 185 HT. So, if I wanted the 56 I could run a 120 stem, which I would prefer to my current 130, but I'd have to run at least 40mm of spacers. So I could size up to a 58, but that would leave me with about a 90mm stem and still 20mm of spacers. I also run a fairly low setup for most people, especially my saddle to bar drop so its hard to believe I'm some weird minority that wants a comfort frame. Maybe next year.

KWalker - The bike doesn't fit you.

Get over it.

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Bike Pure

You are talking about headtube length, not stack. Most manufactures that I know the stack of off the top of my head are within 1cm. Headtube length and stack are totally two different things. It all depends on where the bottom bracket is located in relation to the the top of the head tube.

Take Cervelo's super popular R3 for instance. The stack is 580. The Felt FC/F1SL stack is 569. So basically 1cm just like I stated. Most are within 1cm of the F1.

I'm very pleased to say that I just took my 2011 Felt AR3 out for its second decent ride and I'm thrilled with the machine. I can only compare to my old 2007 TCR C1 but the bike feels so centered, stiff in the right ways and dead silent in any wind conditions.

As far as the WW factor goes, the glossy list complete bike at 7.26kg. After adding Ultegra pedals, swapping tyres for conti 4000s and swapping the cassette for a Red 11/23 u did a dodgy kitchen scale weigh which came in about 7.49kg. Accounting for the part changes (I looked them up in the listings) the original weight should have been spot on spec at 7.26.

On the subject of head tube and stack height - so far the only fit adjustment I've made is to drop the bars to the lowest setting, no spacers. Feels perfectly comfortable to me. This is on a 56 frame; I'm 178cm.

Superdave, thanks for all the info that you provided that helped me decide on this bike. I do have one last question: Do you happen to know the raw weight of the bars and stem? I'm yet to do my bike fit and would like to know the weight in case I need/decide to swap either them out.

felt 1.3 42cm bar 320g
felt 1.1 90mm stem 159g

As measured on my kitchen scales last night when i swapped them for a KCNC/Ritchey superlogic II incidently!