The BMC Teammachine SLR won the Tour de France on its first attempt in 2011. Yes, one Cadel Evans was of course the presiding factor, but as the man himself was only too keen to point out at the Teammachine’s launch in the French Alps recently, ‘the SLR ticked all the boxes for a GC bike: great at descending, good compliance and superb handling.’
Cadel Evans on the final stage of the 2011 Tour de France. Photo: Offside / L’Equipe
That is a recipe that BMC engineers say they have stuck to with this latest incarnation, the first new BMC Teammachine SLR in three years.
The last bike was designed by a super-computer that crunched data on around 34,000 virtual frames before settling on the Teammachine’s design, so you could be forgiven for wondering how BMC could improve upon it given the UCI hasn’t changed its diamond, 3-1 tube ratio frame construction rules.
However, you’d be forgetting two things: disc brakes, and that BMC engineers are rather clever people.
What’s new on the BMC Teammachine SLR?
The headline here is that Teammachine has got disc brakes (there is an updated rim brake bike too, but we’ll come to that later).
It’s a move virtually every company has adopted – disc-o-fy your flagship racer – yet it’s a move that hasn’t always been successful.
Often discs have meant compromises. Yet not, it seems, for the BMC Teammachine SLR.
First, the Teammachine SLR Disc frame only weighs a claimed 25g more than the previous generation rim-brake bike – 815g up from 790g (size 54cm).
The resultant 56cm size bike we tested was right on the 6.8kg money, built up with the latest Shimano Dura-Ace 9170 hydraulic disc Di2 groupset and as yet unreleased DT Swiss clincher wheels (watch this space). High-end spec but not outlandish.
Second, the geometry, which won plaudits across the board for providing sharp, stable handling, is virtually identical to the previous generation.
The introduction of disc brakes hasn’t suddenly meant an elongated wheelbase, lengthy stays or increased fork trail.
BMC engineer Tobias Habegger explained that the main triangle and fork geometry is unchanged, the only difference has been to ‘increase the chainstays by 8mm to 410mm, in order to correct the chainline for the wider hub-spacing’.
That spacing is now the 142x12mm thru-axle design at the rear, a 100x12mm at the front.
Integration
The other name of the game has been integration. BMC demonstrated an aptitude for clean lines with its Roadmachine, released earlier this year, and the Teammachine follows suit.
Top-spec models borrow the 3T carbon bar and BMC alloy stem that neatly handles routing duties thanks to a large underside recess that allows cables to disappear into the headtube from the bars, and travel down the sides of the fork steerer and into the frame (the fork steerer has squared-off sides to alloy the cables to run past it without fouling the steering).
There are some cables on show, however. The bar and stem are not one piece a la Trek or Canyon, so cables exit the bar just before the stem clamp before diving back into the stem and being covered over by a removable plate, but the rationale is the extra adjustability a round bar and traditional clamp affords is worth the partially exposed cables.
The seatpost is the same D-Shape post as before, albeit with a more compliant layup, but the clamping mechanism is new, and very neat.
A bolt comes up through a hole on the underside of the top tube and screws into a wedge-shaped piece of alloy that inserts between seatpost and frame from the top of the top tube.
The ensemble is therefore nicely recessed, but moreover, remove the post and the clamp won’t fall down the seat tube because the bolt holds it to the frame.
It’s rounded off with a polymer cap that sits satisfyingly flush to the frame.
As with the Roadmachine, the overall appearance is supremely clean. Oh, and BMC has also filled in its trademark gusset between seat tube and top tube, again giving the bike a cleaner appearance, and added integrated out-front mounting hardware for bike computers.
The BMC Teammachine is, at time of writing as far as we can make out, the only mass-production road bike that uses a direct mount mech hanger too, taking advantage of Shimano’s latest groupset innovations.
Other interchangeable hangers are available too.
It is also only the second frame we’ve seen, after the Pinarello Dogma F10, to integrate Shimano’s new Di2 junction box/charge port into the down tube.
Disc brakes
The Teammachine’s disc brakes come courtesy of the flat-mount standard, and BMC has pinned its colours firmly to the 160mm front rotor mast.
The fork cannot fit a 140mm because of the flat-mount position, a deliberate move say engineers to keep front braking powerful and safe.
The frame default is for a 140mm rotor, but this could be increased to 160mm with an adaptor mount.
To cope with the extra braking forces the fork has been shored up not with extra material (which would significantly increase weight) but by an overtly asymmetric design; the left leg is so much wider than the right that look from certain angles and the whole thing looks bent.
Again, it’s clever stuff, as the fork weighs just 18g more than the previous rim calliper version, where most manufacturers, says BMC, would tend to see 40-50g increases.
Torsional stiffness is quoted to be the same as before – apparently to preserve the Teammachine’s handling characteristics – but bottom bracket stiffness is up 10%.
This factor is largely down to lay-up shapes and schedules, with the carbon fibre sheets cut and orientated in different ways.
This also brings us back to the original question, how can BMC have improved a bike that was already the best of 34,000 computer generated iterations?
Well, by adding another 18,000 virtual iterations on top by introducing the parameter of disc brakes and by getting the super computer and algorithm to design the tube shape and the lay-up schedule concurrently.
BMC Teammachine SLR: UK Prices
BMC Teammachine SLR02 DISC TWO 18 – £3,300
BMC Teammachine SLR01 FRMS MOD 18 – £3,300
BMC Teammachine SLR01 DISC FRMS MOD 18 – £3,450
BMC Teammachine SLR02 DISC ONE 18 – £4,300
BMC Teammachine SLR01 DISC ONE 18 – £6,400
BMC Teammachine SLR01 ONE 18 – £7,000
BMC Teammachine SLR01 DISC TEAM 18 – £10,000
BMC Teammachine SLR: Euro Prices
So far we only have prices for the top and bottom tiers (below), but expect more to follow, with BMC offering a large range of specs for both disc and rim brake Teammachine’s as well as a frameset
Teammachine SLR01 Team – €8499
Teammachine SLR 01 Team Disc – €11499
Teammachine SLR02 – €2599
Teammachine SLR02 Disc – €3699
See bmc-switzerland.com and evanscycles.com for more information
Click through to page two to read about our first impressions of the BMC Teammachine SLR
BMC Teammachine SLR: First ride review
We tested the BMC Teammachine SLR over two pretty gruelling days in the Alps that saw ascents and descents of the Croix de Fer and Izoard among others. Total 170km and 4,500m climbing.
We’d still want more time aboard the bike before making any concrete pronouncements, so we’ll try keep this section brief.
However, it’s hard, as the bike made a seriously good initial impression.
The BMC Teammachine SLR rode like proper race bike. It was nimble, accelerated with ease, descended assuredly, took corners with acute precision and did a decent turn in the sprints. And it did it all with discs.
No slow handling, no ponderous extra weight, no languid feel. It was sharp and direct in almost all instances, only with a performance edge impossible to find without disc brakes.
There were drawbacks – the brakes weren’t always the quietest and the abilities of the front end in a sprint need some investigating (could it be a tad flexy or was that just the set up with the bars and spacers?) – but as first impressions go we’re not sure the BMC Teammachine SLR could have made a better one.
See the magazine, and back here later, for an upcoming full review.
BMC Teammachine SLR: Rim calliper build
Putting the bike to the test. Photo: BMC / Jeremie Reuiller
It’s a mark of what a good impression the BMC Teammachine SLR Disc created that the rim brake version is now almost a footnote.
That’s unfair of course, because that bike is a virtual clone and as good in pretty much every respect, and better in one.
It’s a clone in that the geometry is identical. Engineer Tobias Habegger told us the chainstays are also 410mm, even though they could have been shorter as the rear spacing is 130mm.
BMC, he says, wanted the bikes ‘to handle identically even if riders swapped between them,’ indicating the team doesn’t see across the board rider uptake for discs in every instance.
Indeed, a chance meeting with Richie Porte at the top of the Izoard, us journalists aboard our disc bikes, he on his rim calliper bike, elicited words to the effect of, ‘Who needs discs?’ (To the effect of because Richie does like a swear word.)
The fork isn’t asymmetric as it doesn’t need to be – the braking forces are less, and evenly spread – but the fork, and frame, gets direct mount brakes, with neat little recesses in the fork blades for the pads to sit.
The rear brake cable enters the headtube, but with another ingenuous touch the entry point has a little ball-and-socket bevel joint, which means the cable end cap can freely twist side to side with the bars at full lock.
The idea is to stop that annoying snapping of end caps associated with cables that enter the frame at perpendicular angles.
Gear cables enter the down tube using a different mounting plate in place of where the Di2 charge port would otherwise go.
An initial ride proved the bike no less adept, save for braking, which just wasn’t in the same league as discs.
The weight, however, was slightly less at a claimed 6.6kg.
