As one American mag once memorably said about Pace “The town of Yorkshire is now famous for more than just its puddings” but Yorkshire’s square tubed aficionados have been spending even longer at the drawing board and lathe than usual to tempt us with exclusive news of a whole slew of new hardware.Anyone closely sniffing Team rider Richard Thackary’s silver RC 200 hardtail will have noticed – well OK only if they’re really, really anal about such stuff – extra external machining of the main tubes as well as machining along the upper and lower surfaces of the seatstays and chainstays, and internal cable routing rather than external cable guides.
Anyone who’s been skulking round the Pace factory or taking in the German trade shows will have seen a silver hardtail with the seattube taken out and replaced with a carbon tube sleeved and bonded into sweetly CNC’d mounts at seat cluster and bottom bracket. All this extra lathing and composite seat tube cunning is now incorporated together in the RC300 hardtail. The extra machining obviously leaves extra aluminium on the floor at Pace for “substantially” lower weight (no official figures yet as they built the bike straight up for test duty) but it also takes some of the sting out of the notoriously direct frames. The carbon seat tube also provides subtly damped vertical compliance with no loss of lateral stiffness and knocks off some more weight.
When we were there they’d only built one example but were machining the extra butting into tubesets for six more which we’ve already been promised a first ride on as soon as they’re ready. As for price, Pace say the extra work that goes into the frame will mean an increase over the existing (and still continuing) RC200 F8 (£895), so expect something approaching – if not over – the four figure mark.
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