Here, at long last, is my Outside column about the Wife Oil:
After receiving the bike from Classic Cycle back in July, I took to those Internets to learn as much about Foil history as possible. Nothing is more difficult in 2024 than sifting the facts from all the opinions and myths and half-truths, but after years of just assuming this was a bike designed for aero-dweebs and tri-freaks I was surprised to unearth ancient forum posts claiming the bike had been designed not to be ridden in a mankini but rather to accept a suspension fork and to be ridden by the pros in the Spring Classics.
So I turned to Trek. They were kind enough to connect me with engineer Jim Colegrove, who worked on the Y-Foil and gave me the full backstory:
Anyway, there’s more in the column, but on one hand the bike is an answer to a question nobody was really asking other than Trek (that being “How do we make a Y-shaped road bike”) and on the other hand it’s a real success story in that they did end up making a new (or new-ish) type of road bike that performs quite well and has some actual quantifiable advantages (even if those come with one or two relatively minor disadvantages). Also, here we are almost 30 years later, and if you’d bought a Y-Foil back then you’d really have no problem keeping it going today since despite its radical frame design it takes standard components that are still more or less readily available today.
Whether you’d still be able to reach the bars of your Y-Foil 30 years later is another story, but thanks to the magic of quill stems you can always get a longer one and ride it that way until you finally come to your senses and buy a Rivendell.
Of course, I already have multiple Rivendae, so I don’t mind contorting myself on a race bike from time to time for some cheap thrills, and as a vintage hot rod the Ferl has really grown on me:
Here’s that pinched suspension-corrected front end that makes the bike look like it’s wearing a corset:
When I asked the engineer if there’s anything he would have done differently in retrospect, he said he wouldn’t have gone with the suspension correction. Apparently it was a matter of some debate at the time, but as I mention in the column they really did think road bike suspension was going to be the next big thing and they didn’t want to miss out on it.
Another thing he mentioned is that Trek was clever about using the same frame components across different models, and the “seatstays” (such as they are) and I believe the chainstays are the same ones that are on the 5500 (you know, the US Postal bike), only bonded to a rear dropout with a more acute angle:
Now that I know that I can’t unsee the bike as a squashed 5500.
As for the parts Paul from Classic Cycle George Plimpton chose for the bike, the Zero Gravity brakes are finicky to adjust and have lousy tire clearance, but they look cool and they draw the eye away from the overly tall fork crown:
Yes, that’s still the dirt from my gravel ride in Vermont back in August.
The wheels are not Plimpton spec–these are the Rolfs that came with the LeMond–but they’re much better suited to day-to-day riding than the Tri Spokes he favored, and had I been using those on this particular blustery day I’d have been blown clear across the Hudson:
The saddle happens to be one that was long favored by a certain Trek-sponsored rider, and I find it quite comfortable. The mechanical look of the Salsa seatpost’s clamp also complements the brakes:
The superlative performance of the 9-speed Dura-Ace hardly warrants mentioning, though surprisingly one of my favorite things about the bike is the bars:
I remember when these bars were hot shit, though I never actually had a pair because it always seemed crazy to me to pay extra for carbon bars of all things. As you can see, the shape of them is a bit unusual, and while I tend to be leery of unusually shaped bars in this case I find them quite comfortable. I was also worried about bar slippage, but Paul included some carbon assembly paste and it hasn’t been an issue:
I also really like the rubbery tape, which I believe is this stuff:
It’s rubbery, but in a good way.
As for the bike’s Plimptonian provenance, I’ve been noticing that this blogging platform now offers an AI image generator, and while feel about that sort of thing in the same way I do about e-bikes and electronic shifting, I figured I might as well give it a whirl by asking it to make me an image of George Plimpton riding a Y-Foil:
Here’s what it came up with:
Clearly the technology still has a ways to go.