$1,810.07

The Argon 18 E-119 Tri bike is the summation of everything Argon 18 has learned about cheating the wind and riding fast.  The design blows their previous top bike, the E-118 Next  out of the water.  It will knock your socks off.

Argon 18 is a big believer in balance.  The bike can’t just be aero in a headwind, but it also has to work in all the sidewind yaw angles.  It needs to be light without compromising stiffness.  It has to hold a straight line easily, but turn well. 

They are able to do this across the size range by both tweaking the stack and reach numbers.  You’ll find a 78-degree seat angle and 72-degree head angle across the line, but each successive size has a longer top tube and taller head tube.  Even with these, they keep a low bottom bracket, 75mm of drop, across the run, and short chainstays, 405mm, to make sure the rear wheel is close to the frame and the drivetrain stiff.

Fit is essential.  The seatpost has a rail running across the top, allowing the saddle clamp to slide +/- 28mm to allow you to really dial in the seat position.  Up front, while the bars are in a fixed stem, you can customize everything else.  They call it ONEness 3.0.  The base bar can be flipped over to provide +/- 25mm of drop.  The armrests can be moved up or back by 4cm.  There is 12cm of width adjustment to the rests.  The extensions can sit flush on the base bar or have up to 10cm of rise.  They can also be tilted +/- fifteen degrees.  The extensions come as a long ski-bend, but can be customized for angle and length.  The tips of the skis can be cut down for shifter pods, or cut off completely to give you straight bars with a max length of 285mm.

The handlebars fit onto the top of the bayonet-style fork, which, while it looks complicated, is held to the frame by a single pinch bolt.  The fork hides an internal cam brake that is actuated by a cable hidden in the bayonet. 

The rear brake is also hidden in the frame.  It sits atop the seatstays.  The seatstays are a better position than under the bottom bracket.  Easier to access for adjustment and the frame flexes less up high, making brake rub highly unlikely.  Here, too, a custom cam moves the arms.  In both cases, the max rim width is 28mm and the max tire width is 25mm. 

The bike runs all the cables internally.  Shifting can be either by electronic or mechanical derailleurs.  If the former, there’s an included seatpost mount for the battery.  That is, if you prefer double-ring shifting.  You can run a single large ring as well and remove the front derailleur hanger.  The derailleur chainstay area is designed to work with round or oval chainrings as small as 34-teeth and as large as 55. 

The bike is sleek. But if you want hydration and tools hanging on the bike when you ride, you can utilize the two conventional bottle bosses and the third set behind the stem.  You can also upgrade to the accessories you see on the E119+.  The one change you’ll need to make is replacing the seatpost.

Wheel changes are a part of life.  Argon 18 recognizes this and has designed the rear dropouts as verticals, rather than rearward facing horizontals.  The dropouts are carbon, but the derailleur hanger is forged aluminum for durability, and replaceable if you bend it.

The Argon 18 E-119 Tri is the shape of fast.