 |
 |
 |
Litespeed C1R
The Litespeed C1R is Litespeed's flagship product. It's the summation of all the company's technological innovations, bike manufacturing experience and intense passion for the sport. Furthermore, the C1R is the concrete demonstration that Litespeed has successfully transitioned from being an exclusive manufacturer of Titanium bikes to being one that can leverage the appropriate technology and materials to get optimum performance out of its products.
At its core the C1R is an Archon, Litespeed's award winning Titanium bike. They took all the great things about the Archon -- a stiff yet light and aerodynamically sculpted frame that slices through air like an arrow, the asymmetric, double-butted chainstay that optimizes power transfer and all the other features that made the Archon one of the top racing bikes ever -- then they went back to the drawing board and thought about how to put all these things together into a carbon fiber body. The result is one of the best carbon bikes in the world today: the Litespeed C1R.
A product of painstaking research and development, uncompromising benchmarking, meticulous design and precision engineering, the Litespeed C1R is no mere run-of-the-mill carbon fiber clone. The C1R's designers patiently studied all the other bikes in the same class out in the market and developed the C1R to offer more features and perform much better than all the rest. They succeeded in producing something totally different from and incredibly superior to anything else that exists out in the market. Every single detail in the C1R was carefully crafted to optimize the bike's performance and distinguish it from competing products. The frame's design and structure all work toward providing a great ride, improved comfort, superior handling, head-turning looks and operational efficiency.
Counter-intuitive to common practice, the C1R's cables are routed on the outside of the frame, making maintenance faster and easier. This design decision was definitely arrived at after considering decades of race experience, and the added benefit is that external cable routing actually results in a lighter bike than internally routed cables. The uniquely styled C1R frame is made out of T60 Nanotech carbon fiber. This material is unique to Litespeed's C-series bikes, and is used by only a handful of other bike manufacturers. T60 Nanotech is a high end carbon fiber material that is lighter yet stronger and more impact-resistant; it is also more effective in reducing road vibration.
Like all other Litespeed bikes, the C1R gets a tremendous boost from Litespeed's Aerologic technology. Every element in the carbon frame is aerodynamically optimized to provide minimal hindrance as the C1R slices through the air at top racing speeds. Hours of wind tunnel testing have yielded a frame design that reduces the average aero wattage by over 20 watts compared to non-aerodynamic designs. This means huge efficiencies in rider energy conversion, and all based solely on the frame design.
The Litespeed C1R takes full advantage of Reactive Pressure Molding (RPM), an advanced molding method. RPM provides precise control over the internal structure and wall thickness of the carbon frame during manufacture. As a result the C1R's ultra modulus 60T nanotube carbon construction provides significant weight reduction, increased stiffness, and improved durability.