Home > Bike Types > Road Bike

BFS2017: Stealth internal hydraulic routing on Sarto Lampo aero road prototype & more…

10 Comments
Support us! Bikerumor may earn a small commission from affiliate links in this article. Learn More

Clean, custom solutions have been the hallmark of Italian carbon frame builder Sarto Antonio for as long as we can remember seeing them. But in Berlin this past weekend they pulled the cover back on a prototype version of their aero road Lampo that takes integrated design to new levels. Built up with the long-awaited, forthcoming hydraulic shifting, hydraulic disc brake Rotor Uno groupset, the bike gets completely internal routing from tip to tail, with hydraulic lines popping out just ahead of each brake caliper and derailleur. Take a closer look at how they do it after the jump…

Lampo Disc prototype

The base frameset for the integrated prototype is fittingly the fastest in their road line up – the aero Lampo. With dropped seatstays and boundary air-breaking ridges on both the frame and fork, the Lampo is already available in versions for direct mount rim brakes or flat mount discs. Even with that bike’s standard integrated bar/stem combo, internal routing and a hidden wedge-style seatpost clamp, Sarto thought they could do better.

To get more aero, Sarto actually dropped the one piece bar & stem for a slightly more conventional approach. Their solution is a two-piece stem that first bolts to the steerer tube, leaving openings from above to allow access to route the hydraulic lines. Thankfully, like electronic setups, Rotor’s UNO hydraulic shift lines can navigate pretty tight bends without any degradation of performance.

The stem then has a clamshell design, where the upper half fits over the top of the steerer tube extension and bar, clamping down to secure the handlebar with a single bolt from below and covering up the hydro lines routed inside the bar and then inside the stem.

(Note: Look closely at the gap between the headtube and the integrated headset cap/spacer and you can make out the 3 hydraulic lines just to the right of the Italian tricolor.)

Not surprisingly Sarto wasn’t interested in taking the stem off of this working prototype to show us how it worked, but they were happy to talk us through it. While it seems simple to get everything inside, steering becomes an issue. With electronic shifting it is simple enough to allow big enough holes inside to allow the steerer tube to rotate within the headtube without pinching the wire, but routing two hydro brake lines and two hydro shift lines is all together more complicated.

The front brake is simple – routed through the center of the steerer, it goes into the fork leg without having to worry about rotation.

The other 3 (which again you can see above) need to rotate with the stem and into the frame which doesn’t rotate. What Sarto did here was essentially build a double-walled headtube. In essence, the tapered steerer has a 1.125″ upper headset bearing that sits inside of the overall headtube width, and back almost 1cm from the front of the outer headtube. That way the 3 hydraulic lines stay outside of the steerer tube and headset (look closely, and you can see the small gap of light between the hydro lines and the headset above) and can freely rotate with the stem in the space between the outer surface of the frame’s headtube and the inner structural upper headset bearing support. Thus, the hydraulic lines have plenty of room to make the transition to being routed inside of the large downtube.

Out back those small hydraulic lines pop out just above each derailleur for simple routing and very little hose in the wind. On the non-driveside you get the same thing with the brake likes coming out inside of the fork leg and chainstay to transition smoothly to the brake calipers. We won’t focus too much on the fact that the Rotor levers appear connected to Shimano calipers and rotors. We’ve yet to see the Magura-developed Rotor Uno disc brake calipers in a flat mount configuration, and it seems that Sarto hasn’t been able to get a hold of a set yet either, so this bike is more of a proof-of-concept than something rideable.

On top of the internal routing design, Sarto are testing out a new seatpost design. The standard bike also uses a D-shaped aero post, but gets a hidden wedge-style post clamp accessed from the underside of the toptube. This bike had something more like a seatmast that rests on top of the seat cluster and is held in place by an internal expander. The rational here seems to be to provide a more stable base, resistant to slipping, with fine height adjustment available through the use of a variable height spacer stack.

The integrated internal hydraulic solution isn’t quite ready for production (you can’t just go out and buy the Rotor Uno group yet anyway, and we are waiting for an update on that one), but Sarto says that they are happy with the operation of the concept, and just need to work on it a bit more to refine it before it will be available.

Lampo

While the integrated disc brake prototype is an excellent show piece, the standard current version of the Lampo is no slouch either.

This orange and pale green rim brake Campagnolo EPS build is a fine example of the level of finish you get out of a custom carbon bike from the Italian workshop.

SartoAntonio.com

Subscribe
Notify of
guest

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

10 Comments
Oldest
Newest Most Voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
MICHAEL C WAGNER
MICHAEL C WAGNER
7 years ago

Those Sarto bikes are pretty nice. That integration is super clean and I don’t even like disc brakes on road bikes.

arp
arp
7 years ago

slick

Adilos Nave
Adilos Nave
7 years ago

Their designs are stunning but there is a lost opportunity on the standard brake model in that the celeste block of color on the seat-tube should be lower to match up with the bidon cage. The cage could then have been painted the same celeste with the down-tube cage being painted orange like the rest of the frame. I’m pretty sure if you pony up the $6k+ these frames cost they’d be happy to do this for you!

The hydraulic cable routing is nicely done but OHMIGOD, that would take a lot of patience.

lop
lop
7 years ago

As a one-time mechanic, this sounds like a personal nightmare. But as a lover of the aesthetic, this is appreciated and perhaps even overdue. With electronic (especially wireless) shifting and hydraulic hoses that can bend any-which-way without affecting brake quality, there’s really no reason not to do this.

TomM
TomM
7 years ago
Reply to  lop

Right on. I think I’d need to pay a highly skilled wrench to handle some of the duties I currently do myself. But overall, this is the sort of thing I have been waiting for. I’m personally thinking a very integrated and clean bike like this with SRAM Red eTap would be nice.

JBikes
JBikes
7 years ago
Reply to  lop

Done properly I think it could be very easy to work on. In reality, the internal hoses could be effectively permanent (maybe even going with ss tubing). accessible fitting would allow for small flex line connections – like a car.
It may be a small weight penalty but may not be enough to really matter given other areas for savings. Wireless is easy to work on

typevertigo
typevertigo
7 years ago
Reply to  JBikes

Agreed. It’s likely down to a matter of sizing the hydraulic hoses yet leaving enough slack so they don’t kink and jam up the fluid inside.

Otherwise, the hoses can stay inside because all the maintenance required involves bleeding the fluid. I believe I remember Rotor claiming that for Uno’s shifting components, the system can go quite a while before absolutely needing to be bled.

RED
RED
7 years ago

Since when is too much “hose in the wind” a problem?… 😉

blah blah blah
blah blah blah
7 years ago
Reply to  RED

dont think it is a problem\, its just that it looks so good

Tim
Tim
7 years ago

In a word: lust

Subscribe Now

Sign up to receive BikeRumor content direct to your inbox.

Subscribe Now

Sign up to receive BikeRumor content direct to your inbox.