We Put 17 000 Of Upgrades Into A Specialized Allez

Based on the polls that you the audience voted in, we ended up buying a Specialized Ale, the cheapest road bike that Specialized make. It's a great example of an entry-level bike in every way, except for the price. We paid a thousand pounds for it in a local bike shop, and then we upgraded it sensibly with some quite nice parts. You might have seen the video. But what would happen if we used really nice parts, like the most expensive stuff we could possibly find? In today's episode, we're going to find out. I called some distributors and asked if we could borrow some really expensive components, and most of them said no. But some of them said yes! These are Princeton Carbon Works Wake 6560s with Tactic hubs. They're carbon. Deep. They have this funny wavy pattern which apparently is faster, and apparently matters to some people. And they have premium hubs. These hubs on their own cost more than a thousand pounds. Ludicrous money. Most importantly, these wheels cost £4,900. Yeah. I want to keep this a secret from Jimmy. Surprise him with the bike. So I've roped in the help of Nick from Backyard Bike Shop around the corner. You're right. Last time I rode a set of these wheels was at the Pinarello Dogma F launch. And that bike felt amazing. They didn't let us switch the wheels. And we have a feeling that a lot of the reason the bike felt so good was because of these. These are better, actually. Better hubs. Ooh. And we just want to say a big thank you to ISON, the distributor of Princeton in the UK. The contact that we have there. These are his personal wheels that he's lending us. We will try our best not to break them. Sorry, George. Jimmy doesn't know this, but this is his Dura-Ace that he's supposed to be building onto one of his bikes. I'm just going to tell him that it came from somewhere else. Because we need it for the video, so he won't mind. It's in good condition as well. For now. It's pretty cool. The RRP of this is £3,579, or about $4,400. I'm trusting you not to tell him, all right? How much have you ridden this bike? Five times max. Well, the lower hit it brings, but that's not good. I'll show you a better angle. Follow me. Look at that. That's it. Brain's collapsed. It's not supposed to be open. That collapses or seizes up, you start riding, your bike doesn't turn properly, and it's just notching around. That's a safety concern. That's like brake pads, chain, things that like, there's certain stuff you can get away with slightly worn. Yeah, that's all good. We've got a titanium crank from 5Dev and a Dura-Ace chainring spider, so we can fit the chainrings from the groupset. All of this comes to about £1,500, or $2,000. And to fit this, obviously we need a bottom bracket. So here's a titanium £390 bottom bracket with Enduro bearings. I'm sure Nick has lots to say about these. This is 5Dev's new bottom bracket. I've only seen it on the internet, but not in real life. It's got some Enduro bearings, XT-15 bearings in it. So that comes with a lifetime warranty. It's just machined so incredibly well. I like the idea of it as well, because, I mean, the purple, you wouldn't know. After it goes on the bike, you're the only person that knows that it's there. Somebody else won't know. I'm getting more and more and more excited about the idea of that. I'm going to do stuff where people don't know, but you know. Do you know what I mean? I'm not trying to impress other people. You just want to like, yeah. Which I think is completely the opposite to a lot of stuff where people want to impress everybody else, especially unspecialized. But yeah, I like this. No area of this bike is being overlooked. These are Silco bottle cages that cost £70 each. It feels very light. Should we weigh it? This is with the bolts. 37 grams. Do you want to know the wildest thing about these bottle cages? They don't come with the bolts. You have to buy them separately for 20 quid. Luckily, we have them. The second bottle cage I've robbed and put on one of my bikes in my garage. I'll get it back. I'll bring it back. We are in trouble. This is karma. This is karma for stealing Jimmy's groupset. And the universe is fighting back. There's no holes, so it's not Di2 compatible, this frame. So we're gonna have to find something else. Oh, we can't use the chainring spider. We have stuff like this all the time in the bike shop where you just don't think of everything because you see frame after frame. And then we had one last week where the bottom bracket was 73mm or 68mm. Because we don't deal with mountain bikes, you just don't see them often. And I ordered the wrong chain set. So back to the drone board. What do you have in here? Oh, SRAM Red. Old SRAM Red. This is SRAM Red. And I think the original price on it is £4,400. Even better than Jimmy's Dura-Ace. And when tied in with those cranks, it's gonna be really, really, really expensive. Look at that. Powermeter as well included. Shimano front mech. Shimano SRAM in a hybrid combination. Oh no, it's got a Raizon. I mean, you could have at least cleaned it before you put it away. So after almost an hour of looking, we have found a groupset which will work, which is very expensive. The new SRAM Red. I think all of it's here. I guess this is a selling point for wireless groupsets. I can go to almost any bike. I'm putting a wireless groupset on my classic steel frame. People are gonna be very angry about it, but it's going on. Sadly, we can't use our really expensive Dura-Ace chainring adapter anymore for the 5Dev cranks. But on the plus side, these chainrings are really expensive and have a powermeter built into them. And they fit directly onto the other crankset. After I undo all 1,000 of these bolts. Why do they take so many turns to get out? This is the beauty of this groupset. It's just so easy to do. Literally, stick the hose through, attach it to the brake, stick the other hose through, attach it to the brake, press a few buttons, everything works. I mean, I'm hoping, I assume everybody's gonna go wireless. Come back down at NAMM, it's only a matter of time before Shimano follows them. And then life's gonna be really easy. Because it's essentially cabling bikes and hosing things that take the most time and the most effort. Where now, you can just do it fairly quick. Especially with this one, the rear one just goes straight through the frame, comes out the bottom. But I've kept all the hose, so I'll just reconnect that and pull it through. What about the patents involved? Yes, there's always patents, but everybody gets around it. I think the Shryam one had something to do with one battery that works on both. Also, patents expire. I might be wrong with that one, but there's a time frame for some stuff. But I mean, clever people working at these companies, they'll figure it out, or they'll figure out a way around it. But it has made life a lot easier. Because if you imagine that the older DIT would have had to have a junction box in here, cable from there to there, a cable from here to the battery, a cable from here up to there, and then to the levers. Now all I have to do is connect that up to the brake caliper. We haven't attached it yet, but that's just two bolts. Nick, how many tripods are in this room? Nine, isn't it? One. One, two, three, four, five. Six, seven, eight. Eight. Technically that's one there, nine as well. Nine in one room, yet we are using a silica bottle cage to prop the camera up. It's whatever works. And yes, I'm still doing these bolts. Oh, that actually looks sick. Made in Usa. Where's that? A little bit more expensive than tubeless. We have some Revolut TPU inner tubes. Look how weird that is. These are super light. 25 grams. Long lasting. Recyclable. It just says recyclable. Look. They're super light. The ones I've ridden in the past have felt amazing to ride. And even better, when we do inevitably puncture them, they're going to cost £24 every single time to replace. It's perfect for this build. I've got a piece of advice when it comes to TPU inner tubes. In my experience, you have to get exactly the right size for your tyre. With a standard butyl tube, you can always get out of a pinch situation when your inner tube doesn't quite fit because your tyre's too big, but it will expand to fill the gap. With TPU inner tubes, that is not the case. If it's one millimetre out, then you end up with lots of little tiny holes all over the inner tube and you get a flat again. So that's been my experience with them. Make sure you check exactly the right size of your tyre and exactly the right size of the tube. Size. Vittoria's are very nice tyres. Italian company. And their top-end tyre, the Corsa Pro, is £90. Perfect for this build. These are 28 millimetres, have a cotton sidewall, and they're tan, so they look cool. I seem to destroy all of the tyres that we have in the studio, so these already have a puncture in. It's all we had, right? Another thing worth noting here about the TPU tubes. They are probably the lighter solution, depending on how much sealant you put in your tubeless, but they're not the fastest solution. Latex tubes or tubeless takes that crown, butyl being the slowest. Bear that in mind if you feel compelled to try them. It's more of a ride-feel thing, and perhaps if you were racing a hill-climb event, something like that. But even then, I guess you'd be riding tubs for the absolute lighter solution. However, they are harder to get hold of these days. For this experiment, though, they're gonna feel great. Which is what matters to me. For the saddle. We have a Fizik Argo Adaptive, which has featured a few times in videos now. Both me and Jimmy don't really like it, but it is really expensive. It's 260 quid. We're gonna put this on. Nick is now gone. It's up to me to finish this build. And thankfully, the finishing kit has just arrived. Thanks to Saddleback for sending us this at very short notice. A quick reminder, all of the non-consumable stuff is being sent back to the distributors after this video. Including this. That is lush. What we have here is an Enve SES Aero Road Stem. This is 100mm long, and a bit like the Specialized Comp Stem, it comes with shims. Just two, so you can change the angle of the stem. Quite a cool feature. Less cool when you realise that this stem costs £330. An Enve Compact Road Integrated Handlebar. There is drillings for internal routing if you want to use them. Same in the back here. They're 38cm wide. They feel very, very light. They have little... I'll find out when I do the bar tape. They have ends, instead of having to use the bar ends that come with your bar tape. So they make it nice and neat. These cost £440. And finally, an Enve Seatpost. Inline seatpost. They do two versions. One with setback, one which is straight through. And it is carbon and very nice and costs £330. Finally, something I wasn't expecting. Some Enve bar tape. This is £35. So, yeah. Marginal gain. Price gain. These little bar end things, pretty neat. And if you need to fit a Di2 end of bar junction box thing, you can cut the bars. They put a marker for it. What have you done? I wanted you to have a nice bike to ride. And I know you really liked the LA before. We did a video. So I've done this. Oh, it's me. Oh, it's you still. What the hell? So this is 155 cranks. They're absolutely weird. And also fantastic. I feel like I'm using my legs in a completely different way. I'll be honest, it rides a lot better than I thought it was going to. I thought it was going to be one of those like, oh yeah, it's good, but it should be. It's actually fantastic. Does it feel better than the last set of upgrades? It absolutely does. I didn't, I thought it'd be like a tiny bit. It feels so premium. Obviously it should. Because what, it's like £13,000 or something rather of upgrades. But wowee, this is so good. The cranks are so short. I raced 165s for ages on a fixed gear bike as well. And these are just over a centimetre smaller. They feel very, very tiny. I'm sure there are benefits, just maybe not for me. These are, these are Jimmy size cranks. That's so funny. It's like a little clown bike. Regardless of how fast you're going, it's fun. It's exciting. It's got energy. It's got va-va-voom. Is anything on this bike French? It's not, is it? Je ne sais quoi. Je ne sais que va-voom. A lot of you will have seen, we did a video before on this bike where we upgraded it with sensible-ish parts and it felt like a new bike. It really was good. The difference here, I think if you upgraded one of these parts each, if you just used, just upgraded the wheels, you're not going to notice a difference. If you just upgraded the tyres, you're not going to notice a difference. It's because we've done everything at the same time that it does feel a cut above and it's noticeable. But is it worth the money? Absolutely not. New SRAM RIDE levers, best in the business. Sad that they don't come on Force or Rival yet. I'm assuming that will happen and then I will buy those. But at the price point of red, I don't see it being worth it yet. But they are fantastic and it genuinely is one finger breaking. What I will mention though is that they are very, very long. So if you're a person who struggles with a long bike position and you don't want extra centimetres added on, these are not the levers for you. They're over a centimetre longer than the old ones. What I think is amazing about uber short cranks is I can get myself so aero and my legs are not getting in the way. I can't hear you, it's too windy. So I'm going to run through all of the parts that we have added and their costs. And the list is a lot longer than I thought it was going to be. So I'm just going to blast through it. Otherwise we're going to be here all year. The Toria tyres, £180. The wheels, £4,900. The pedals are £769. The saddle, £260. The cages are £140. The bolts for the cages are £40. The seatpost, £330. The bars, £440. The Garmin, £630. The computer mount, £80. That's what I just said. The tape, £35. The stem, £330. The cranks, £1,100. The bottom bracket, £500. The tubes, £48. The groupset, £3,000. And the chainrings for the £1,100 cranks, £800. Which gives us a total of £13,582, which at the current exchange rate is $17,613, or 16,179 euros. So how about we go and weigh it and see how much that money is worth in terms of weight savings. I think Francis said that the price of the BB was a bit cheaper earlier on, but it's actually in the UK, £500, as per what the distributor told me. How much did you say it was? £400? Can't remember. Some other figure. It's £500. Let's weigh it. 8.75 kilos. What was it before? We can't remember that either, can we? 10.87 kilos. I can't even remember what the other one weighed. Well, you don't notice it when you ride it. It rides absolutely fantastically. But £13,500 worth of upgrades on the frame, which is... Well, I don't know. Can you even buy that frame on its own? No. So that is effectively a £14,500 bike, because you'd have to buy that complete bike to then build this. What do you think? What I'm very happy of is that we didn't spend nearly any money on this. And all of it is going back to the respective owners of the parts, apart from the frame, which is ours. £13,500! This is part three of a video series. And what have we learned? We bought the Specialized Allez, completely stock. It was a fantastic bike, but the price was a little bit higher. £1,000 for what you get. We then upgraded it with about £2,000 worth of parts. £1,300 of that was the wheelset, which was the Ultegra wheelset from Shimano. Those upgrades were amazing. The bike rode extremely well. We then basically added £10,000 more on top of what we did, and it's only got a very little bit better. Don't make me tap the sign! Diminishing returns.