After putting in quite a few hard miles on test mules, Performance Bike has released their Scattante CFX Black disc brake cyclocross bike.
Ben Turits, PB’s Product Manager that led this model through production, gave it a pretty aggressive geometry with 74° seat angle to put you over the pedals and a stable 72º head angle with oversized tapered headtube. The frame has ample tire clearance, letting you run larger tires on non-UCI events and keep mud from bunching up.
Spec is pretty impressive for the price. It’s rolling on Stan’s NoTubes ZTR Alpha 340 wheels with Hutchinson Bulldog tires, Avid mechanical brakes and a full SRAM Force group. Little touches like an included K-Edge chain catcher and FSA cockpit with Prologo saddle make it a solid deal. Video and more pics after the break…
Part of the development was real world testing, and one of their sales guys used it for Jeremiah Bishop’s Alpine Loop Gran Fondo with road tires, as well as some off road riding and racing throughout the past year.
Post mount brakes keep things simple, and full external housing makes it easy to swap to hydraulic brakes as they come available.
Everyone may be doing a matte black carbon frame these days, and that’s because it looks good. It’s also going to keep looking good compared to a painted frame after continually being subjected to mud and crud. Better shown in the video, the bottom bracket and tall chainstays make for a pretty large, presumably stiff lower section.
It retails for $2,499 at PerformanceBike.com. We know you’re asking, so here’s the deal: The frame started life with a catalog tubeset, then they changed the bottom bracket from PFBB30 back to standard/GXP threaded external cups. Other modifications were a tall, rectangular box section chainstay to improve stiffness both through size and giving it a larger contact patch when mounting to the bottom bracket. They went to a different factory for the fork to get a stiffer model.
