This is one cool road bike, no doubt about it. Capitalizing on their experience and success with carbon fiber road and mountain bikes, TREK has taken a step beyond traditional bike design, fully taking advantage of all that carbon has to offer. The result is a road bike that is as striking as it is controversial.

You may be aware that TREK is the manufacturer of probably the most nearly-perfect ultimate road frameset in the world...the OCLV 5500. At 2.41 pounds, it's way-light. It's also way-comfortable with its full-carbon frameset doing a phenomenal job of damping vibration and road bumps, and it climbs like a bat-out-of-you-know-where. And finally, it's become 100% accepted all over the place...go to any race or century ride, and you'll find them propelling zillions of riders to extraordinary feats. In short, the OCLV 5500 (same frame as found on the 5000, 5200 and 5220 bicycles) has made the transition in just seven short years from new, exciting and risky to proven, reliable and a "safe" purchase for even the most conservative rider.

Soon you’ll be adding the Y-Foil to that list.

Instead of using conventional round tubes made of extremely unconventional materials, the Y-Foil utilizes carbon-fiber's ability to be made into dramatic, aerodynamic shapes without the weight penalties associated with other materials. And, when combined with Rolf wheels, you end up with an ultimate, wind-cheating design for a reasonable price.

But how does it ride???

More different than you can imagine, more familiar than you'd expect. And no, I don't always talk that way, but that's what this bike is doing to me.

When you first start out, you get the unmistakable feeling that your seat is bouncing around a bit, obviously an effect of the beam-style seat connection. What you're getting is a certain amount of suspension in this area, and since this is not something normally found on a road bike, it feels a bit strange. No, it feels very strange! And, because the rear is acting like this and the front is like a "normal" bike, one gets the immediate feeling that it's "harsh" in the front end. Such is not the case.

After no more than three miles, all feeling that the seat was moving around disappeared. I liken this phenomenon to how it feels the first time you try a "floating" pedal design... it seems like your feet are swimming around excessively, but by the end of the day, you don't notice it at all. You settle down and enjoy the ride. And I do mean enjoy the ride!

On decent road surfaces, you find the rear of the bike exceedingly comfortable, perhaps so much so that you notice more road hash coming up through the front fork than you'd expect. The reality is that the front end of the bike is just like most other high-performance carbon fiber front ends...very predictable, stable and great at damping vibration.

But get onto a bumpier road (the top part of Jefferson in Redwood City/Woodside in this case) and all aspects of the Y-Foil really shine. This bike is incredibly smooth and predictable over nasty surfaces!!! Both the fork and frame work together to give you an unbelievable ride with a combination of comfort, control and responsiveness that I have not encountered anyplace else.

On the flats (Canada Road) it cooks. You just kinda hunker down and watch your speed climb. No doubt some of this is from the Rolf wheels but this bike still feels faster than my 5500 does with the same wheels. And cornering is a pleasure, this bike feeling exceptionally sure-footed and predictable.

OK, so how about The Hill (King's Mtn)? OK, how about it? If anyone knows this hill, it's me, since I ride it twice a week, every Tuesday and Thursday morning. I know all the timing points, I know what shape I'm in (or not in) and I know this road like no other. And the Y-Foil climbs just fine! My time this morning was 11 seconds off my time two days earlier, and some of this might be attributable to the fact that it was colder today so I had to wear leg warmers...and some of it might just simply be getting used to a new bike.

Climbing from a seated position, this bike feels as fast and efficient as my 5500 (and that's saying a lot!).  And the extraordinary lateral rigidity makes out-of-the-saddle efforts something to look forward to.

As for descending...what can I say except that it's FAST! King's Mtn has two straight sections where you can gather a bit of speed, and there's no doubt that I was carrying about 1-1.5 mph more speed into the bottom of these sections than I normally do (and that difference is coming from the frame only, since my 5500 also has Rolf wheels). I was doing 39.5mph at the bottom of the wide straight section, where my speed would normally be in the 37-38mph range. High-speed handling wasn't a problem either, as the bike felt very much like my 5500.

And finally, the return home, on the exact same roads where earlier I'd felt the seat was moving around too much and perhaps the front end was a bit stiff, and I was scratching my head trying to figure out how the bike had transformed in just over an hour, since I no longer noticed those traits at all!

To sum things up here...you will like this bike. And after the first couple of miles, you will love this bike! But it might not win you over on a typical test ride, because there's just so much going on that's new here, and this is not an ordinary machine. Just like your first time with clipless pedals or maybe aero bars, it will take a short while to learn what it's all about. But once you do, this may quickly become a part of you that you won't let go of. --Mike-- 5/05/98

1. A son who will break the wind for the entire 100 miles, and 

2. The Y-Foil. It is soooo comfortable, that even those rough delta roads were not a problem. At every rest stop it got the most attention ( the Rolf wheels with the blue paint was everyone's favorite). I'm looking forward to the next opportunity to put some more miles on it.

Thanks to Steve and his crew for putting it together right as I had absolutely no problems, on a brand new bike, on my first century ride.

Stan Thomas

P.S. Love your work on the web site.

Because this great machine has been discontinued! 

Briefly, the Y-Foil road bike was doomed to extinction when the UCI ruled that all bikes must have seat tubes, period. Didn't matter if it was for time trial or massed-start use...no longer allowed. Still legal for Tri use, and still a great bike for general road use (sport bike for centuries etc)...but a difficult bike to market, since one of its main intended usages was killed off.

From the beginning, it was meant to be a conventional, but very aerodynamic, road bike...not a Tri-specific machine. It's appeal was to be as broad-based as possible and, as a relatively high-end bike, much of its acceptance was to come from the racing crowd, which has great influence on what the rest of us buy. Once it became useless to a good chunk of the racing crowd (due to the UCI ruling), it became something of an albatross from a marketing standpoint.

Had it been done as a tri-specific bike with steep seat angle etc., I have a feeling it would have been hugely popular with that crowd. Tooling costs, however, are so high for a bike made like that (OCLV) that it wasn't something they could just snap their fingers and do, and the decision was made to pursuit a much-less-expensive aluminum tri bike (the Hilo series).

Bye-bye Y-Foil...we'll certainly miss you. Clearly, this has been one of the great "crossover" bikes (dual-purpose standard road bike/Tri-bike) ever. If you're interested in one, you probably have very little time, as final production from TREK was in 1999. We anticipated this and brought in as many as were practical, but many sizes are either already gone or very low. All remaining inventory is on sale, so there is, at least, a silver lining!
 

Last updated 08/24/06