Bike Check

Sam Pickman

Photography by Andy Chasteen

Artist Melissa Cowper-Smith uses plant fibers grown on-site to make paper and encaustic paintings, blending  agriculture and creativity.

Sam Pickman - Bike Check

Sam Pickman, Allied Cycle Works director of product and engineering, showed off the all-new Allied ALFA on Saturday, July 29, to a crowd of local cycling enthusiasts at the Rapha Bentonville Clubhouse. The bike officially launched two days later. This is the first update to the ALFA since it launched the Allied brand in 2017.
Below is what Pickman shared about the development of the Northwest Arkansas bike manufacturer’s latest offering:

THE CONCEPT: This one concept that I kept on going back to for all my favorite cars was the sort of daily driver supercar. The car that you can live with every day, but still has all the performance characteristics of a track car. And that’s when it kind of hit me, that’s what we want in a bike. We want a bike that you can live with every day that has balanced performance. That gives you the lightweight, handling and aerodynamics.

THE AESTHETIC: I think the classic road bike is the most beautiful.

THE WEIGHT: We prioritized aerodynamics but did not keep our eye off the weight. You can get this thing under 15 pounds.

AERODYNAMIC TESTING: We did in-field aerodynamic testing on this bike. With a little sensor on the bike, we measured wind speed and tilts. We were actually able to verify in the field that this bike is faster than its predecessor by close to one minute over 40k.

EVERYDAY DRIVER: All the little things the stem, the seatpost, the threaded bottom bracket — are all meant to be serviceable, reliable and durable.

THE PURPOSE: This is really meant for road riding, and will excel sort of on that performance side of road riding. So, fast group rides, road racing, road riding. It does have tire clearance up to 32, so you can ride on some sort of tame dirt, maybe not so much around here, but around most of the country you could probably get away with it.

THE CARBON LAYUP: On this bike, in particular, we paid a crazy amount of attention to how the inside of this bike looks. So that’s the carbon layup, the bladders we’re using, the tooling, etc. We’re doing something really unique in the front of this bike. Every single one of the ALFAs that we make, we are CNC-ing a piece of foam to the exact shape of the interior of the head tube. So there’s absolutely no wrinkles, a perfect shape, and that shape going into the tool. So that’s kind of our approach when we’re making a bike is to absolutely take no compromise, we’re trying to make the best bikes. So it ends up maybe being a little more expensive to make. But it’s always in that pursuit.

And in terms of the materials, we’re using the same materials that aerospace uses in the United States. The same people that are providing for Boeing, we’re buying the same exact stuff, we’re just sort of piggybacking off of their technology. When you buy a bike from overseas, they actually make their own material in-house. They do it to be vertically integrated, but making material is complicated. And they don’t have to pass any sort of regulatory standards or anything. They’re just sort of mixing it themselves. Ours has to pass the most rigorous tests and standards. So you’re basically getting the finest ingredients when you’re buying one of our bikes.

THE ALFA-SPECIFIC SEATPOST: I think any time we decide to make something ourselves, that decision is not taken lightly. Obviously, there’s a lot more complexity on our end. Making stuff is hard. But if we feel like we can really add value with that part, then we decide to do it. And if we feel like it helps us in our pursuit to make the best, then we do it. And that was true with the seatpost. Obviously the D-shape gives you aerodynamic benefits, it has that aero profile, but if you cut off the back you’re able to actually get flex out of the post. The head of the post is, I think, the best on the market. Most seatposts, when you loosen it, everything just kind of, like, comes apart and you don’t know where you started or where you were at with your saddle adjustment. On this one, you can plant the sides first and then adjust the tilt. You can adjust them independently. We also used a combination of titanium, aluminum and carbon. Again, just in that pursuit of trying to make the finest part.

Learn more at alliedcycleworks.com