Slyway Team Highracer

Monday, September 6, 2010 18:51

Slyway is an Italian manufacturer and must be held a little weirdo in a land that is so strongly involved to road cycling and even more road bikes. However Slyway has turned this into their advantage. Their Team highracer has some of the same attributes that define a nice upright road bike: it is build to be ridden, it is agile, practical and stylish.

The Build

Actually Slyway makes only one frame at the moment and builds all of their bikes around it. This is a good decision as it is often better to aim focus on developing one frame than a full line of them. Team frame is stiff, well made and offers good adjustment for different size of riders. You can say the same about the seat though tall riders (from ca. 190 cm and taller) may find the adjustments insufficient.

Probably the best innovation in the bike is the seats bottom fixing to the frame. Instead of making the seat adjustable only from one end Slyway has made it possible on both ends. This ads a nice possibility to alter the seat height and seat-to-bb position. Handlebars and stem are also well made though a bit heavy concerning the bike in whole.

The bike is build with 650 c size wheels but can be also had with more familiar 28″ (700 c/622 mm) wheel size used by upright road cycles. We tested bikes with both wheel setups. The 700 c wheeled bike required the use of special front brake as the normal road brake will not fit between the fork and the main frame. Naturally with 650 c wheels this problem does not exist. The rest of the bike was top of the line Sram Force components and dura-ace clincher wheels. With this setup the bike weighted ca. 9,5 kg which is a little more than the manufacturer claims.

The Ride

The bike rides as it should be riding meaning it is stable in every speed, easy and precise to steer and relatively fast. It may not have the performance advantage due to ultimate body position found on some lowracers but it is a bike for an active bike rider or an athlete that can put some pressure on the pedals if needed. For sprinters it is also delight to find the bike is very stiff. The stiffness can also mean rough ride on bad surface but that is a feature you have to accept when talking about performance road bikes in general. A small tip for everyone struggling with this mather.

Use as wide tyres as your bike accepts with decent pressure.
Get quality tyres. They are usually designed to have a low rolling resistance even with smaller pressure and still without unwanted punctures.

As everyone are after all interested in knowing some real speed figures we would estimate the bike is about 3-6 km/h faster than an upright road bike with same specs. In racing use when the speeds rise Slyway gets faster compared to the upright counterpart and in the same time the speed difference to the ultimate lowracers gets bigger favour to the latter. Speed is always very difficult subject. It should be remembered that a rider is what makes a bike fast not the design. In theory it is very easy to design a bike that goes 60 km/h with xx watts but in the end it always depends on the rider. Slyway is a bike designed for the rider. I think that says it very nicely.

Slyway has also well thought places for drinking bottles and you can easily attach different kinds of saddle- and accessories bags on the seat. On a longer journey you can equip the bike with the type of bags made famous by the Dutch company radical design.

The Conclusion

In the end Slyway is a very good recumbent bike. It shines in pictures but also on the road. It looks fresh and straightforward and performs as it should. It is an expensive bike and the delivery takes months rather than weeks. Still if a recumbent industry would settle on in producing only one model it might not be the Slyway Team highracer but it would be something very close to it.

Slyway Team highracer as tested: