Storck vision light review.

fat bloke

Dunno if anyone's interested but having just bought a new bike, I thought I'd post up my impressions of it.

Here it is in it normal use:




And here's a gratuitous carbon shod shot






I bought this as a winter bike because I had to retire my other winter steed. So I was sort of resigned to a grim entry level aluminium yoke on which I could grind out wet and sh1tty winter miles, white-knuckled cheap bars, joyless clunky, heavy, stodgy ride, and recalcitrant groupset... it was not an enthusiastic spend, shall we say.

Then I secured this aluminium framed, carbon forked Storck, 105 groupset, no idea what it was like, but it looked pretty good and....

it's frickin awesome!:D

I absolutely love it. Honest to God. My previous, and somewhat decadent, winter bike was an old steel frame Colnago, and I loved that too, I particularly marveled at how it soaked up sh1t roads, there was no handle bar buzz or discomfort and roads that I knew well, and knew to be sh1t, were much more pleasant to ride. I attributed all this to the steel frame of course and I scoffed inwardly at anyone unfortunate enough to be lumbered with an aluminium steed :rolleyes:. Well I'm just back from a weekend in Clare and a couple of spins down there and the Storck was just magnificent. I couldn't fault it in any way. Properly crap roads, of all sorts, from heavy gravel, to potholes and patches, to that sort of cheese grater bone-shaker surface. I was going around the place thinking that Clare County Council had done mighty work upgrading the road network cos they seemed to be so much improved .

Now to be fair, I am riding it with a smart pair of dura ace wheels, and though it's Storck's entry level machine, it's not priced to compete with sora equipped trek 1.0's and the like, but I can't over state how much I'm enjoying riding this bike, I really can't, and even stuff like the 105 groupset - if you changed the stickers around and wrote dura ace on them, I'd be sh1teing on about how great dura ace was, and how you can really tell the difference blah blah blah - you can in your hole tell the difference, or at least I can't, and I've been using new DA 7900 on my posh bike for a year and a half.

It's not super stiff, I'd read that Storck's could be, but maybe that's the carbon frames they're talking about, it's actually nicely compliant, it's also very direct and "pointy" in the steering and handling, but overall the stand out feature is the ride quality. It's comfortable and sure-footed and confidence inspiring. I'd have no hesitation recommending one to anyone.

And maybe I'm preaching to the converted, maybe all new entry level bikes are fab. My neighbour recently bought a canyon roadlite as a winter and general use "hack" and he absolutely loves it too. It's a pity they're different sizes or I could A/B them and get some sort of perspective.

Lumen

That's a lot of seatpost for a horizontal TT. Is it the right size?

fat bloke

Well. I'm just getting used to it myself actually, but that's the geometry direct from bikefittingireland.com. I had the saddle much higher that that even myself would you believe, so it' s a big change for me.

Dunno how much of the euphoria is me finally riding a bike with the "correct" sizing but... be it physics or ergonomics, I'm enjoying it so far.

denlaw

nice looking bike , i'll admit , i might as well be looking up a cats arse when it comes to bikes ..

fat bloke

denlaw wrote: »

nice looking bike , i'll admit , i might as well be looking up a cats arse when it comes to bikes ..

Well please tell me it looks better than one of those

lennymc

how are you finding the compact gearing on the storck fat bloke?

fat bloke

lennymc wrote: »

how are you finding the compact gearing on the storck fat bloke?

Ah grand. I've had compacts before and I had one on the Colnago and I like spinning gears anyway. As usual, you spend a bit more time hopping up and down on the front chainrings but I've put a fairly flat block 11:23 on the back and I like the combination so far. Low gears are plenty low enough and I haven't run out of teeth at the top end yet either!