Ridley

Dean RS

The Ridley Dean RS and its predecessor, the Dean, are remarkably similar bikes. However, there are more differences than the use of a regular seat post on the Dean RS. The entire frameset has been built around the idea of making a better triathlon/TT bike.

Ridley makes no secret about the Dean. It's a time trial rig designed for ProTour racers. This may seem like a good thing for you, as they spared no expense in terms of making the bike ultra fast. If there was a change they could make to reduce drag, they made it. It's not just the split fork blades, the split seat stays, the aero edge paint, the reversed front brake, the slicing head tube, the tucked-under rear wheel, aero seat mast, but the position. The Dean may only be comfortably rideable if you've tuned your aero position with the help of a pro and have years and thousands and thousands of miles in the saddle. Not only would you need to be fit, but extremely flexible.

All the aero advances of the Dean are great on their own, but if you can't get low enough, you won't be fast because your back will be in such heart-breaking agony that you'll have no desire to pedal hard. This is where the Dean RS comes in; all those aero advances tweaked to work in a frame built for everyone else.

Not only does the Dean RS have a regular seat post instead of an integrated seat mast, which makes it great for travel, but everywhere you look, the frameset has been tweaked to make it a better rig for most cyclists. Notice the head tube. It's taller than the head tube on the same-sized Dean. Likewise, the top tube is shorter. Admitting to a higher position might not seem Pro, but then again, few of us are professional cyclists. Continuing the changes; the rear wheel isn't faired as closely behind the seat tube as on the Dean, but the tight fit on the Dean is possible because it has rear-facing horizontal dropouts, which can be a little finicky to work with. On the other hand, the Dean RS has traditional vertical dropouts for convenient and quick maintenance.

The two Deans also share the same 4ZA R-Flow full-carbon monocoque fork. The jet foils, aka the split in the legs, reduces drag by 6.4% as it draws turbulent air away from the spokes, which, no matter how aero, will add turbulence when mixed with wind. The Dean RS also shares the R-Surface paint treatment which smoothes out the air flow around the head and seat tubes. This reduces drag by another 3.6%. And like the Dean, it has a rearward facing front brake, which is included with the bike.

The included aero seat post has three clamp positions. If you go with the rear position, the seat angle is 77-degrees, middle, it's 78-degrees, forward is 79-degrees.

The Dean RS frame itself is shaped differently than the Dean because it uses 30- and 24-ton high-modulus carbon-fiber, rather than the 50-, 40-, and 30-ton found in the Dean. Since the material isn't quite as light, they made the tubes smaller to minimize any weight gain. They also kept the aspect ratios the same to keep the frame as aerodynamically slippery as possible. One benefit from the changed shape is that the Dean RS frame is actually lighter than the Dean, with a claimed weight of 1250g for a medium.

The Ridley Dean RS is Red/white/black and comes in five sizes from X-Small to X-Large. It uses a braze-on style front derailleur, and the max chain ring size is 55 teeth. The dropouts are carbon-fiber, and the rear derailleur hanger is replaceable.