A Selle Italia SLR saddle, FSA OS-99 CSI Carbon Stem (actually carbon-wrapped), K-Force handlebars and K-Force seatpost round out the components on the bike. I was a bit disappointed with the flexiness of the cockpit. This was the only component where I thought the bike lost its message, even if my hands appreciated the ride quality. Hawley, the American distributor for Storck, also agrees and ours was the last test bike to use the FSA stem.

Storck is very proud of the engineering that goes into the bike and it’s easy to see why. The clear-coat paint on most of the frame allows you to admire the monocoque construction with 3K carbon fiber. It’s impressive that such a massive looking bike comes out so light: 980g for the frame. This was some cause for concern on my part. The square shape plus increased size of the tubing greatly increases the stiffness, but it also increases the weight. They were able to get some of this weight back using proportional tubing, lighter headset cups, and their dropout design, but I also believe that they had to use less material to maintain the same weight — with a firm squeeze I can get the top tube to flex slightly. Thankfully Storck tests their frames quite strenuously. Storck owns one of the seven Engineering for Bikes (EFBe) testing machines, which simulates long term stresses on the frame to test its durability. You can go on their Web site and watch one of their frames being sickeningly wrenched in every direction by this medieval bike torture device. Randomly selected bikes undergo this EFBe endurance testing and they also test every bike they ship on an alignment table to make sure that it meets their strict tolerances. As I’ll explain later, I also got to do my own unintended durability test.

My only knock against the design, and it is minor, is that the paint job could be sexier. As a photographer, the paint design is important to pulling out the design features of the frame, but the Storck doesn’t provide much help. The front fork is huge, but you can hardly tell with the small Storck logo on the front edge. The Storck logo on the downtube similarly fails to accentuate the lines of the frame. The first group ride I took the bike on a car pulled alongside someone else with solicitations and blue pills. The Storck was clearly the best bike of the bunch — at least it would have been with a better paint job — so if anyone was going to be offered performance-enhancing drugs it should have been me.

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