Trek Top Fuel 9.9 2019 - Dissected and Analyzed

My Race Bike for 2019

At the beginning of 2018 I got hold of a used Trek Top Fuel 9.9 RSL (2017) sort of by chance. For the first part of the year I raced it in parallel with my Cube SLT (2017) and I was able to compare the two. During previous seasons I've raced a number of different full suspension top-of-the-line bikes so I've built up a good base for reference. The way that the Top Fuel stood out was that it handled roots, rocks and minor obstacles better than any other full susp that I'd ever ridden. This sort of behavior is important for me as I try to minimize my energy usage. The more that I can sit down and just spin the pedals, the more efficient I am. If I have to get off the saddle then I'm wasting energy.

Trek Top Fuel 9.9 2019

This led to me making the decision, for the first time, to race the same model in 2019. I ordered a brand new Trek Top Fuel 9.9, model 2019.

There are some differences between the 2017 and 2019 model: Rock Shox SID fork (still Fox in the rear) and Bontrager Kovee Pro 30 wheelset are the major changes.

Weight and Optimization

Now naturally I couldn't leave the bike as it was. It's fun to optimize, right?

Note that I've focused on optimizing unsprung and rotating weight.

The Wheels

Putting the wheels on the scales first produced a bit of a surprise:

Weight of Kovee Pro 30 wheelset with rim tape and tubeless valves

That's sort of heavy... But I did notice that the rim tape looked sort of massive. I needed to look into that. First I couldn't find a way to get it off but then I noticed that by peeling it gently off from the valve hole I could remove it. The original tubeless valves were not the light kind either.

World's heaviest rim tape?

Let's weigh the wheelset again:

Weight of Kovee Pro 30 wheelset without rim tape and valved

Wow! That's quite the difference! 155 grams lighter! And were below 1500 grams which is respectable for a wheelset with extremely wide rims - 30mm!!!

Let's put on some normal rim tape and light tubeless valves:

Weight of Bontrager Kovee Pro 30 with light rim tape and tubeless valves

Right around 1500 grams. That's good! Again note the extremely wide rims.

Race Wheels - Duke Lucky Jack

I will be doing most races on my Duke Lucky Jack wheelset which weighs in at 1280 grams.

Brakes

Standard SRAM brake discs:

Were replaced by light Ashima ones:

Axles

Standard axles:

SRAM axles without handles:

I realize that these are no massive weight savings but I do them for two reasons:

1. The handles are practical when removing the wheels but they can get stuck on things like rocks or roots and vegetation.
2. They're relatively cheap!

Unoptimized stuff

Some stuff that I did NOT optimize (yet?):

Does anyone want to sponsor me with some light parts? :)

 

Tires

I've opted for Schwalbe Racing Ralph / Racing Ray 2.25 Snakeskin. This is a combo that's good for the kind of stages races that I will do in the mountains this year. They weigh in at just a smidgen over 600 grams. For Swedish marathons I will run lighter tires, specifically Schwalbe Thunder Burt 2.1 Snakeskin in the rear. So that will shed about 100 grams of weight.

Pedals

I got my hands on the new Shimano XTR 9100 pedals. They came in at 314 grams:

Total Weight

The weight with the standard Kovee Pro wheels and wide Schwalbe tires comes in at 9.83 kg. This is race ready with Shimani XTR pedals (310 grams), bottle cage and Garmin out front mount.

With the Duke race wheels and lighter tires the weight will come to approximately:

9.5 KG

Duke Lucky Jack 1290 gram 29" wheel set!

My new race bike for this year; Trek Top Fuel 9.9 RSL, has some nice wheels: DT Swiss XMC1200 Carbon

They look very nice and they are "new style" wide, with all the advantages that gives you. I raced them in Andalucia Bike Race and they performed excellently. But, for a cross-country wheel set, they are a tad bit heavy. When I weighed them with rim tape and tubeless valves, they came in at 1520 gram.

I ordered a new set of wheels through United Cycling as soon as soon as the Trek was in my possession. I wanted something really light and wide.

The new wheels have the Duke Lucky Jack rim and DT Swiss DT240S hubs (Boost).

I was pleasantly surprised at the weight: 1292 gram with rimtape and tubeless valves:

Service your Shimano SPD pedals in 10 minutes

Ever had your Shimano pedals squeak?

This is very easy to fix and in fact you should perform these few small steps that take 10 minutes in order to keep your Shimano pedals working flawlessly. It reduces friction and makes you faster!

Step 1: Use a vice to hold the pedal

Step 2: Unscrew the axle

Note: Left hand side pedal turns "the wrong way"

Step 3: Take out the axle and clean it

Step 4: Pour down axle grease and some wet lube into the pedal body

Step 5: Re-attach the axle to the pedal body

At this point some of the old dirty axle grease should come out. Just wipe it off

Done! Now you have a functioning Shimano pedal!

Mountain Bike Racing with a Power Meter

The power figures presented here are probably exaggerated. I think I may have forgotten to calibrate the Quarq. The rest of the comparisons are still valid however

The Quarq

Recently I bought a Quarq power meter for my MTB. I've done two races now where I've used it. During the races I have glanced down at it from time to time but it's kind of hard reading the information while your bouncing around on singletrack. Sure, if there's  a longer section of gravel road or a climb then you can look down at the power data and get some useful information. However, what is interesting and entertaining (and useful?), is all the data that you have after a race.

Endurance / distributing the power

Yesterday I raced the first race in the Danish Winter cup vitnercuppen.dk. It was a 70 minutes + the lap race and I managed 4 laps in that time (and came in fourth place in the race).

I was happy with the race as I went out hard and was able to keep the power up the whole race... Or that's how it FELT during the race. But normally it would be hard to also PROVE that. Now I have the numbers. First the lap times:

1. 00:19:26
2. 00:19:39
3. 00:20:20
4. 00:20:27

Quite even, a little slower towards the end, but then the track did get gradually more and more muddy.

Let's look at heart rate and power data for the four laps (in the same order as above):

Power was remarkably even throughout the race, the variation between the slowest and fastest lap was 9W, which is 3%.

The data supports the feeling that I had: That I was able to maintain intensity throughout the race.

Left / Right

As the Quarq measures both side I get left/right power. Here's data from the two races that I've done:

I use my right leg more than my left. Which perhaps is normal?

The Stages power meters that I have on my road bike and the stationary Monark bike only measure the left side. That means that I'm actually a bit stronger than the numbers that I get from those two. So that's good...

Comparing races

I now have power data from two different races that I've done using the Quarq. The Griben race which was a race purely on gravel roads. I punctured halfway into the race so the power data is up until then. The second one is the first race of Vintercuppen.dk which I would consider a proppr MTB race. Both are very similar in length (1h14m, 1h20m):

Here are the numbers (first Griben, then Vintercuppen #1):

Average power:            300W          298W

Weighted average power:   314W          314W

Max power:                778W          925W

First half of Griben MTB/CX

Vintercuppen.dk #1

My 2017 Race Bike: Cube AMS 100 C:68 SLT 29 Zeroblack

The bike that I will be racing the 2017 season on is...

Cube AMS 100 C:68 SLT 29 Zeroblack

Wow! That's a long name! Here's Cube's promotional photo:

Cube's page describing the bike

I first got interested in the bike when I read some articles about it last Autumn. The talking point was the weight: 8.9kg! Wow! Even Cube's site states the weight at:

When I finally got the bike delivered (it was almost 2 months late) I checked it out and weighed it (without pedals obviously) and it came to....:



Now that's more than 8.9 kg! Okay, so mine is the 20" frame and perhaps the smaller frames are a bit lighter. But I seriously doubt that they'r half a kilo lighter. Also keep in mind that Cube supplies these bikes with very light tires: Schwalbe Rocket Ron 2.1 Liteskin in front, and Thunder Burt 2.1 Liteskin in the rear (weighing in at about 500 grams and 400 grams respectively)

Losing Weight

The wheels are really light at 1300 grams.

BUT they are not real Boost wheels, they just use adapters. Which is a bit of a disappointment.

I tubeless converted the wheels

Got rid of some very heavy rim tape:

The tires that I mounted are Schwalbe Rocket Ron 2.1 Snakeskin which weigh in at 550 grams each. Most marathon races I will use a Schwalbe Thunder Burt 2.1 Snakeskin at the rear which is 50 grams lighter.

The brake disks are light, but You can save almost 100 grams by going with Ashima. I have purchased a couple of Ashima ones which are going on the bike.

The saddle is all carbon fiber, no padding... and VERY light!

The seat tube is just a regular carbon one... not particularly light

Same for the handle bars... not that light.

I replaced the handle bars with with one from Bike Ahead and saved about 100 grams. Also it looks nicer

The grips are foam grips but HEAVY. I replaced them with my own ones

So I mounted some light pedals, a bottle cage and Garmin mount. And the weight came to...

The Final Verdict

9.42 kg

Remember the original weight was WITHOUT pedals, and with Liteskin Thunder Burt in the rear. So I've saved perhaps some 300-400 grams.

But How Does the Cube Ride?

It's a very nice bike. I've ridden four races on it now and it feels very quick. I was surprised that I felt that I could trust the bike at once lean into turns. It's very quick to react and feels more like a XCO bike than an XCM bike.

When it comes to damping performance my BMC Fourstroke is a lot more subtle and goes better over roots and rocks. I'm not sure if this is because the Fourstroke has the old Fox CDT shocks which have three different settings, the new one has the Fox Stepcast with only two modes. Or if it's because of the different geometries of the two bikes. The Cube is half a kilo lighter than the BMC.

Another difference is that the Cube feels lighter in the front than the BMC Fourstroke does. That's a good thing obviously.

I'm still working on adjusting and trimming in the dampers on the Cube so that part could get better with some more experimenting.

Here's just a bunch of photos of the bike