On Saturday evening, beneath the bright light of a Waxing Gibbous, I made history:
Remember in “Raiders of the Lost Ark” how Indiana Jones became the first person in thousands of years to affix the headpiece to the Staff of Ra, and in so doing was able to find the film’s eponymous ark?
Well, thanks to Paul of Classic Cycle I had my own Staff of Ra, and with it I became the first person in over a quarter of a century to unlock the full potential of the Trek Y-Foil:
And here it is on a moonlit shakedown ride:
For years, people have been setting the Y-Foil up as a triathlon bike due to its aero design:
[From here.]
But that’s like trying to stick Pterodactyl wings on a T-rex, and it turns out what really belongs on this bike is a suspension fork, go figure:
So let us go back to the 1998, when Y-Foils roamed the Earth:
And paper magazines were filled with purple prose, like this:
Oy.
Suspension had already conquered the mountain bike market, and by the early-to-mid 1990s shock forks had begun to appear at the front of Paris-Roubaix:
To bike designers, road suspension seemed inevitable, and they were configuring their offerings accordingly:
So when Trek were developing the Y-Foil they decided it had to be compatible with a suspension fork so they wouldn’t miss out on the next big thing. This is why the stock fork has that elongated crown:
This was a race bike, and one Trek would have made available to its sponsored teams–and yes, it’s entirely possible US Postal could have decided to use the Y-Foil at a race like Paris-Roubaix. Between the beam and a suspension fork a rider would float right over those cobbles.
But as Trek were launching the bike, the UCI declared the bike illegal, so in terms of marketing it fell into what engineer Jim Colegrove called a “black hole.” It was an aero bike, but it didn’t have the geometry of a true triathlon bike, or the 650c wheels that were popular at the time. The first year for the Y-Foil was 1998, and in that year’s catalogue it’s just sort of there with no explanation:
A year later they seemed to be pushing it as a triathlon bike:
And after that it was gone.
Trek had intended for the Y-Foil to be a “mic drop” what with its radical design and all, but instead they sort of fumbled with the mic for awhile until it finally fell into an unflushed toilet.
Though the suspension compatibility is mentioned deep in the technical manual, Trek’s marketing materials seem to ignore it, Colegrove doesn’t know if anyone has ever actually put a suspension fork on there, and I’ve certainly never seen a Y-Foil equipped with one myself. So now, 27 years later, I set about configuring the bike the way Trek intended, and until I hear otherwise I’m going to go ahead and assume I’m the first civilian ever to do so. To that end, Paul even sent me the proper wrenches for the scalloped Shimano headset:
Sorry, make that “head parts:”
While I’m admittedly inept, I always find that when working on a bicycle there’s always some sort of unforeseen problem, no matter how ostensibly straightforward the job may be. In this case, it was that the front brake bolt was too long for the skinny brake arch of the Ruby fork:
Furthermore, even before discovering this, I’d been concerned about using the Zero Gravity brakes with this fork. See, these ultralight single-pivot calipers are so sensitive that the cable length must be perfect in order for them to remained aligned with the rim–even raising or lowering the stem a hair is enough to shift them out of alignment. So it seemed to me that the movement of a suspension fork might result in constant rubbing.
Fortunately, I had just received a rather timely package from Samantha at the Old Spokes Home in Burlington, VT:
[They take donations and also have an eBay store.]
She’d read about my Brake Debacle and sent me not one but two beautiful pairs of 9-speed era Shimano Ultegra brakes. So I installed one of the rear brakes on the Ruby fork:
No problem:
I still had another rear, so I went to install that, only to find that the rear stay was too thick for the short nt and bolt. So I used a front brake instead, along with the shorter nut from the rear brake:
I doubt this is the “right” way to do it, but what the hell, it seems to work.
Generally speaking, I don’t really care for suspension. However, when you’re riding a bike like the Wife Oil you’ve got no choice but to let down your inhibitions:
It’s sort of like going to some over-the-top club or restaurant and being served a ridiculous cocktail–sure, you’d never order such a thing, but while you’re there you might as well go with it, and after a few sips you start to surrender. Aesthetically, I’d argue it works in context with the overall insanity of the bike, and I even think it looks better than that weirdly elongated stock fork. As for performance, I’ve only got one cold 20-ish mile ride on it (besides the very brief moonlit shakedown spin), and…so far it’s kind of fun! The bike still handles nicely–being designed for a fork like this it doesn’t do anything wacky to the front end–and so it retains its racy character whilst simultaneously making you feel like you’re lying on a down mattress topper. Of course you can get much the same effect with some higher volume tires, but remember that this was 1998 and nobody thought that way. Check out the rear tire clearance:
That tire is nominally a 25, but if you’re familiar with Gatorskins you know how narrow they run:
By the way, I put that tire on there after discovering this on Friday:
And yes, that was in fact the inner tube bulging out of there, so I was on borrowed time.
Another quirk at the stern of the Y-Foil is how close the brake caliper is to the water bottle, something that did not manifest itself with the much shorter Zero Gravity brake:
In fact it’s so close the cable adjuster actually touches the water bottle:
It’s not an issue in practice, but on a brake with a chunkier adjuster it probably could be:
Clearance up front is similarly tight:
If you wanted to sum up cycling the 1990s with a single image, you could find no better one than this photo of a suspension fork that can barely clear a 25mm tire:
Use a wider tire?
Naaah.
Let’s just keep using the same skinny ones but build a whole crazy contraption around them instead.
Really, between the shock-absorbing beam and the suspension fork, the entire bike is one gigantic workaround.
But once you know and accept this you can fully enjoy the bike in the same way that you can enjoy a soft drink or a fast food burger that arrives at its deliciousness by having way too many questionable ingredients. And the fork seems to work…decently:
Without the manual I have no idea if the fork is supposed to lock out completely, but with the switch in this position it sorta-kinda does:
At one point I was descending with the fork “locked out,” then I came to the bottom of the hill and encountered a stretch of torn up road that was covered with metal construction plates. So I reached down and unlocked the fork and between the fork and the beam I really did kinda float right over it. Granted, I’d have floated right over it on one of my Rivendae, or even the Cervino with its 30mm tubular tires, and I wouldn’t have had to flip a switch, but even so, I’m enjoying the novelty factor:
Though as Paul points out, the elastomers in the fork are temperature sensitive. Sure, it’s fun now, but in a few months it may just feel like it’s full of marshmallows.