SOC15: Masi revamps Evoluzione race bike, plus beautiful new steel touring and carbon fondo bikes

Written by Tyler Benedict Apr 28, 2015 8:31 a.m. ET

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

Masi’s planning a bit of a renaissance with four new models, two steel and two carbon, each with a bit different intended use.

Above is the Giromondo (Italian for globe trotter) is first touring bike from Masi. It gets a tall headtube, long sloping top tube and shorter seat tube. The top- and down tubes are double butted, seat tube is triple butted 4130 chromoly. Those tubes will be painted an Avocado Green color, not this bright yellow.

Get ready to roll out…

It has spoke holders on the chainstay, plenty of rack and fender mounts, and three water bottle mounts. Spec is a full Shimano Deore group with Microshift bar end shifters. It’s able to run 27.5″ wheels and tires if you want to make it a monster cross, but it’ll squeeze in 29×1.9 tires, too. $1,300 complete, available this fall.

The Speciale Rando bike has a classic low-trail front end that’s made for loaded touring with packs on the fork without messing up the handling. Tubes are 4130 with a double butted top- and downtube and triple butted seat tube.

It’ll come with 32c Clement LGG tires and a Shimano Tiagra 4700 group. Pricing TBD.

The Masi Evoluzione has been their top level racing frame for years. While it’s notched plenty of good results for them, it’s also become a bit long in the tooth. The 2016 Evoluzione rethinks the entire frame to get lighter, more comfortable and deliver better power transfer.

To do that, they minimized top tube, seat tube and seat stays quite a bit to improve the ride quality…

…but chainstays were bumped a whopping 60%. The size and shaping on them and the downtube boost stiffness on the bottom half of the bike.

They switched from PFBB30 to a PF86 to reduce creaking issues, and they’ll come standard with an Enduro angular contact bearing bottom bracket.

Went to direct mount brakes to improve tire clearance up top and on the fork, too, and they’re stiffer. That opened up clearance for 28mm tires, keeping them about one standard size larger than what the tour pro guys are racing.

Frame ports allow full internal routing and convertible between mech and elec, or just close them off for wireless.

Two levels of frame will be offered. Level 1 is a claimed 920g (56) with hanger. The level 2 frame adds TeXtreme and drops to 810g. The fork will also get two versions, the level 2 with TeXtreme, also. Both use an alloy front derailleur hanger to maintain the stiffness needed for electronic drivetrains.

Out late summer or early fall. All will have Ritchey cockpits and DT Swiss wheels, spec will range from 105 up to Dura-Ace, with Ultegra mech and Di2 models in between. The top two get the TeXtreme frames.

The Masi Vivo is a new disc brake endurance/ fondo bike coming in the fall.

It’ll have the flat mount brakes and thru axles front and rear, 12mm at both ends.

Same BB86 as the Evoluzione…

…and the same internal routing for anything and everything. A cover will close off access to the ports under the BB, which provides much easier access to everything and plenty of room to maneuver cables and wires.

Frame is about 1010g, and builds will run from Sora to Tiagra to the new 105 with hydraulic brakes. Tire clearance will fit up to 32, but they’re spec’ing a 28 Clement Strada LGG on Stan’s NoTubes rims.

MasiBikes.com

Tyler Benedict

11,200 articles

Tyler Benedict is the Founder of Bikerumor.com. He has been writing about the latest bikes, components, and cycling technology for almost two decades. Prior to that, Tyler launched and built multiple sports nutrition brands and consumer goods companies, mostly as an excuse to travel to killer riding locations throughout North America.

Based in North Carolina, Tyler loves family adventure travel and is always on the lookout for the next shiny new part to make his bikes faster and lighter.

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

19 Comments

Oldest

Newest Most Voted

Inline Feedbacks

View all comments

8 years ago

First word of article……..just saying.

Brent

8 years ago

There is no way that Rando has a low-trail front end with that little fork rake. It LOOKS like a typical 43-45mm offset fork. There’s going to be way too much wheel flop. But on the plus side, they’re using the next hot industry buzzword.

Grouch

8 years ago

Microsoft is making shifters now? How am I going to shift when I get the blue screen of death?

Peter

8 years ago

“Spec is a full Shimano Deore group with Microsoft bar end shifters.” Don’t know if we’re supposed to be happy with this Microsoft thing.

pilf

8 years ago

Yep, no way is that “rando” bike low-trail. Did Masi tell the BR people that, or did you arrive at that conclusion on their own?

Author

Tyler Benedict

8 years ago

All – Damn autocorrect!

Brent – One of the Masi folks is looking into and will hopefully leave a comment about the fork and trail on the rando bike.

Pilf – The information came from the folks at their booth.

JasonK

8 years ago

Trail…I don’t think that word means what you think it means.

Trail is the distance from the steering axis to the contact patch at ground level. You can think of it as the degree to which the contact patch “trails” the steering axis.

Less trail means *less* fork rake and less stability. More trail means *more* fork rake and more stability. Increasing the fork rake moves the contact patch closer to the steering axis, reducing the self-centering effect and increasing agility.

Masi’s fork with just a little rake certainly would create a high-trail front end, not a low-trail one. It’s not exactly “classic” to have a low-trail, low-stability loaded touring bike…usually loaded touring bikes have lots of trail for lots of stability.

I expect Masi’s PR flack intended to convey “classic, stable front end,” but didn’t fully understand what trail is.

Brent: a low trail front end reduces wheel flop. Increasing the fork rake would reduce the trail further, making the bike less stable but also further reducing wheel flop.

N.B.: What we call “trail” in the bike world is called “caster” in the motorcycle (and car) world.

JasonK

8 years ago

Oh, crap! I got it backwards too! I meant to write that less trail means *more* fork rake and less stability; more trail means less fork rake and more stability.

The rest of my post is consistent with this correction, FWIW.

My kingdom for an edit button!

8 years ago

The bikes are prototypes, not production bikes..

We have been testing a few different geometry’s and the orange bike is not exactly low trail as it measures 54mm trail, good eyes. Production will be slightly less but nothing to extreme. The goal to keep the bike comfortable in most riding condition weather loaded on the front or not.

8 years ago

yikes!

whether*

Chris L

8 years ago

I like that they put a basket on the Giromondo. Baskets are seriously under rated when it comes to carrying stuff. So much easier than packing panniers. That said, I wonder how well that bike handles with that front end geometry. Either way, kudos to Masi for hopping on the bandwagon to build more useful real-world bikes instead of racer wannabe poser bikes.

Mike S

8 years ago

the two steel bikes look great and I’m glad to see Masi trying to make bikes that work for non-road racers. On the Rando bike a trail of around 40-45mm would make it work the way it’s supposed to. Stable with a front load and more precise steering. Having three low trail bikes I disagree with the comment that low trail means less stable. Low trail bikes with a small front load are more stable.

The adventure bike looks great, hopefully they will be available as framesets.

Andrew Squirrel

8 years ago

“We have been testing a few different geometry’s and the orange bike is not exactly low trail as it measures 54mm trail, good eyes. Production will be slightly less but nothing to extreme. The goal to keep the bike comfortable in most riding condition weather loaded on the front or not.”

Why not just drop the “low-trail” buzz word and just publish the trail for us to decide how we should be loading it?

JasonK

8 years ago

Mike, you can disagree all you like, but the fact is that low trail means less self-centering moment in the steering geometry, which reduces the bike’s dynamic stability.

I get the impression that you’re thinking of “less stable” as a subjective attribute like “twitchy.” That’s not how I’m using the phrase. Dynamic stability is quantifiable and not subject to opinion. I’m using the term in its quantitative sense: a bike with less trail has lower dynamic stability.

If a low-trail touring bike feels good to you, that’s great…ride what you like.

MikeC

8 years ago

Rando bike with integrated brake/shifters? Grant and Jan will not be amused…

benh

8 years ago

Fork rake is also one component of trail; the other big one is head tube angle. It’s hard to say from the picture but it looks like it has an fairly steep head tube angle, which reduces trail. ceteris paribus, it also reduces wheel flop, which is generally regarded as nice; however it reduces the space to load the fork behind the axle, and loading forward of the axle tends to increase flop. So when loaded, it probably all evens out.

However, the main advantage of doing it this way around (fairly standard fork rake, steel HTA) rather than going for a normal HTA and a high-rake fork is that it would be easy to change to other forks without losing the designed geometry. I’ve made a frame this way and was pleased with it. Otherwise you’re tied to the fork the frame was built for, which might be an issue for some. A separate concern is that it is hard to make a high rake and compliant disc fork.

Agree that 54mm is a bit high to be described as ‘low trail’, though people’s ideals of what constitutes low trail tend to be based on 650b frames, which tend to have lower trail. 10mm less trail and this would be legitimately low trail, so they’re not too far off.

8 years ago

I really like the look of that Rando bike. It looks like it’s pictured with a 105 group, and not the Tiagra group mentioned in the write-up, so this must be an early prototype. Does that mean this is far from production?