Can We Make A £500 Bike Faster Than A £10,000 Superbike?

We found the best bike we could for £450 and now – we’re attempting to make it faster than a £10,000 superbike. Will a £200 budget be enough to do the trick?

00:00 Can we make a budget bike faster than a superbike?
00:20 Our £500 Boardman and top spec £10,000 Orbea
01:24 Baseline run on the Boardman
02:58 What modifications are we doing to the Boardman?
04:46 Baseline run on the Orbea
06:09 Bike modification issues…
07:18 Second Boardman run
08:35 Controlled-environment testing in wind tunnel
09:20 The results!
11:13 What’s the takeaway?

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this is the best new bike I could find for 450 quid and we are going to attempt to make it as fast if not faster than this incredible lightweight £10,000 super bike and we’re going to do that with a budget of just 200 quid let’s [Music] go so the best bike I could find for 450 quid now we’ve featured this in other videos so if you want to see it in more detail check those out but the headline stats you need to be aware of are that it was actually reduced down from 650 quids so bargain it’s a bardman 8.6 SLR with an aluminium frame carbon Fork Shimano Claris 8-speed gears Rim brakes and it weighs 10.4 kilos which is quite a lot quite heavy this on the other hand is a top speec or Bay or and it’s in Tor of France race level spec which means full carbon fiber frame Shimano dur Ace 12 speed electronic shifting hydraulic disc brakes carbon fiber wheels and it weighs just 6.7 kg which makes it UCI illegal previously on gcn WE raced the two of them against each other and the Ora won quite convincingly so let’s spend some cash and try and make this one as fast or faster than this one before we do though I’m going to get a baseline run on the uh on on the Boardman before we modify it all right let’s go I’ll beat myself beep beep beep beep beep [Music] right plan is to ride the same test loop with the different configurations and hold the same power so I’m a to hold 200 WS now I’ve chosen this Loop to try and make it a fair test because it’s got some f sections some downhill sections and some big Hills that are steep like this so a bit of everything and well conventional wisdom says that because of the big weight difference you know over 3 kilos that on the Hills the oyor is always going to have the advantage but the big question is can we close that gap on the flats and the downhills [Music] in percentage terms I’m not sure how much faster we’ll make it for 200 quid but I’ll put my neck on the line and I’ll say 15% let’s [Music] see right run one done I’m now going to take the orb out and repeat the same loop at the same power and while I do that I’m going to give Alex the budget bike and he’s going to modify it within a budget of 200 big ones how did we spend oh it is very heavy the 200 big ones well we bought some new tires which were 51 each because we shopped around online pelli pz race tlr SS then we also got some latex dinner tubes £7 each we haven’t gone tubless because if you have a 450 I forgot my wo because because if you have a 450b bike you don’t want to be faffing around setting up tubless tires we also got quite literally The crucial part for this upgrade some um clipon airrow bars which we shopped around and found these used second hand on Facebook Marketplace for just £60 which means if you add up £60 plus the Tires Plus the energy we’re on our 200 budget which might seem like quite a lot for a bike not quite you forgot on one crucial element what we’re going to wax wax the chain with some drip on super secret we’re we’re also going to wax the chain with some Sil Silka super secret drip on chain wax which we actually already had lying around but if you had to buy it would cost £25 which means that’s actually our £00 gone it is a lot of money for a bike that’s £501 can you just stop questioning my maths stop questioning my maths look it’s a lot of money for a cheap bike but put it into the context of the expensive bike is a drop in the ocean I’m going to upgrade the stuff O’s going to actually get on and ride the bike we’ll see you all in a bit run two beep beep beep beep let’s go oh God this is mad like immediately riding the these two bikes back to back this one just feels so nice like it’s so light it’s just oh it has to be faster one of the most noticeable things is the smoothness this is so much more comfortable and smoother to ride I think that’s in part down to the carbon frame but the biggest reason the tires I mean compared to the stock ones that are on the Boardman these are 30 mil and they measure 31 when I get the veras on them and it’s just just feels so much [Music] [Applause] [Music] nicer going into the last kilometer and it is close on the time here oh [Music] these are the worst tires I’ve ever had to fit in my entire life they’re so tight on these rims and um to top it off I’ve just done the second one no that’s both of the tires punctured now I was about to say the second one was punctured but as I’m speaking to you ah the other one’s gone down literally kill me now or at least going to be back in a minute people are going to think this is a joke but genuinely I’m having a real time here all right run two completed no everything’s you’ve put holes in my tubes aren’t you nothing works ah even this one’s going down how it’s going it’s going it’s going I can see it a that was music to my ear that’s it 1 hour three in achieves two people and we’re ready to hit the road moded bike let’s do it [Music] Alex Alex is the world’s worst mechanic Craig LOM didn’t have this problem so the good news is that the fast part of the course where I could use the tri bars to most effect I had use of the tri bars the bad news is now I’ve got this big dangly TR bar cuz Alex didn’t tighten it up properly well this experiment hasn’t gone as well as I would have hoped in that well the triar disaster and we still got vitile Cubes but that means we’re well under our 200 quid budget and uh well we’re still up on time at the moment 4K left to go [Music] run three done that’s not all though before we give the results of our runs in the real world we also did some testing in the controlled environment of a wind tunnel thanks to our unofficial gcn wind tunnel Tester the bike tailor if you’re after a completely custom bike or some testing of your own Steven the bike tailor is your man check him out now the wind tunnel results suggested that the tri bars made the Boardman 7 to 15 % faster depending on whether you were in the hoods or the drops now at 40 km an hour that equated to a 19 to 38 W saving which is massive and at 30 km an hour that represents a 10 to 15 watt saving which is still loads right I’ve got the results good cuz I’ve been waiting ages in this car par well anyway the right first up the bardman right yeah that did it in 33 36 okay so it was a 16 km Loop right okay so that’s our Baseline that’s our Baseline now the Ora that did it in 32 59 how much difference is that I forgot the first one 37 seconds 37 okay so the £1,000 bar like 37 seconds quicker yeah you’d have hoped it would pounds per second it’s pretty pricey right yeah is so this with the questionable modifications that Alex pton star mechanic made did it in I me is quicker or slower of course it’s got it’s got to be quicker 31 42 look at that so that’s why you quicker way quicker and what’s nuts is it it well thankfully for the first 8 km I did have both Tri bars that’s for the singular bar and that was the fastest part of the course where it was flat and downhill the second half was uphill so the tri Bars were of less use thank goodness and I still actually did manage to use a sort of mono bar setup but actually I think if the other bar had actually been properly in place probably would have been even quicker by some few seconds um but yeah overall it shows you what a huge difference Tri bars make well I think not only is it um we’ve made upgrades of the bike but the tri bars are upgrading your body position which is clearly the biggest form of drag acting to slow you down yeah so um what’s the takeaway like message here overall well well the first thing is that yeah if we put the TR bars on that that would be even quicker still like added on that would be quicker than that with trib on obviously so we’re not going to do it yeah um but the other thing to realize is that you can’t just take TR bars and put them on your bike and use them in a race because the UCI has no jurisdiction here no the whole point is it does have jurisdiction hence why you can’t use them in a race but no jurisdiction here yeah so but if you want to just pole around and just ride roads and take K and live your life um and not enter UCI races then go for it B some fire bars that’s actually a really good takeaway point from this but there’s far more to it than just speed like that really nice expensive super bike has got all sorts of other bits of electric gears I think we can summarize this quite simply which is that some people to use a car analogy like buying old Nissans and then whacking big chock off turbos on them and doing a stage four remap mate now doing that might make it quicker than a Porsche but it’s still a Nissan I like that analogy it’s really good there you go right well I hope you enjoyed this video and Alex’s superb mechanics SKS if you have give a thumbs up and make sure you subscribe for some maintenance videos where he displays his superb mechanic skills week in week out you absolutely chopped me on the bus there love you