Italian custom bike builder TRed is back with a modern update to their flagship Aracnide custom road bike, this time in fully-integrated top-shelf titanium. Their premium custom road bike has long been offered in ti, steel & carbon. And now celebrating the eminent and long-awaited finish to a tough 2020 year, T°Red’s third generation ti bike delivers their cleanest setup yet, along with a limited Venti edition built up with the same unique 2×12 speed setup favored by their factory racing team.
TRed Aracnide A03 Venti, fully-integrated custom titanium road bike
At first glance much of the new TRed Aracnide A03RD looks just like the first generation disc brake ti Aracnide we saw back at NAHBS in 2016. Custom titanium, dropped seatstays, and a tapered front end.
But in those years, T°Red has refined their custom bike production with a unique parametric design system that easily adapts their geometry to each rider’s body proportions based on laser-scanning your body. The made-in-Italy bike itself has evolved quite a bit, too – now welded from US-made titanium tubing and Italian CNC’d details.
What remains is a versatile disc brake road racing bike with a bit of sleek modern update.
At the front is a new ti headtube CNC machined from 6Al4V ti to use an integrated DCR headset. The fully integrated internal cable solution was developed by Deda Elementi to hide cables inside a smaller diameter upper headset cup, which allows TRed to keep their tapered look to the front end.
Still the DCR system is compatible with mechanical or electronic shift setups, and even mechanical or hydraulic brakes. It routes shift & brake lines into the downtube, and the front brake into a new carbon Toot T20 fork developed with Dedacciai
And for buyers who don’t want to route cables inside, you can still go with traditional external routing.
Combine the DCR headset with a Deda one-piece Alanera cockpit (which TRed was first to debut) and you get a clean looking front end to your new ti road bike. It’s not the first titanium road bike that we’ve seen get a cable-free Deda cockpit, but it is certainly a more sleek look.
Special Venti edition of the new Aracnide A03
What makes this drivetrain unique is that it combines a current SRAM Force eTap AXS shift setup, with more conventional road gearing. Some road cyclists weren’t thrilled with the idea of SRAM AXS opting for smaller chainring combinations to work with tiny rear cogs in the SRAM 10-28 cassette. The smaller gears together end up being lighter (while maintaining the same effective gear ratios). But smaller cogs mean tighter turns for the chain, and increased drivetrain drag… even if that is at such a small scale for most cyclists to not notice the difference.
The choice of the T°Red Factory Racing team is a Rotor Aldhu set of crankarms, paired to a Power2Max power meter spider, and finished off with aero Rotor chainring sets in a 52-36T or 54-42T combination.
A CeramicSpeed OSPW upgrade to the SRAM Force AXS rear derailleur cuts drag a bit further and works with slightly larger cassettes.
The TRed Aracnide Venti’s braking choice is a bit unconventional as well – opting to stick with SRAM’s more traditionally shaped rim brake levers, paired to Yokozuna JuinTech cable actuated 4-piston hydraulic disc brake calipers with 160mm Ashima rotors.
TRed’s SRAM + Campagnolo drivetrain choice?
What might be most especially unique about this custom 12-speed drivetrain setup lies in that cassette. TRed officially offers three cassettes for the limited edition build (11-29, 11-32, or 12-29), promising all one-piece cassettes under 180g grams made by Recon.
An interesting thing there is that those Recon cassettes are likely targeted at Campagnolo users based on those very-Campy gearing spreads and 12-speed spacing.
So does this reiterate what many have suspected – that Campagnolo 12 cassettes can be used with SRAM AXS rear derailleurs if set up properly?
TRed Aracnide A03 Venti – Pricing & availability
The limited Venti edition of the new TRed A03 Titanium will only be made available for the next twenty days (+/- since we are the first to get the full details on the bike). And the complete bike as shown, with custom sizing developed just for you, will sell for 9920€ – including Italian made Toot 51mm deep tubeless carbon wheels, Deda cockpit & Vittoria Corsa Graphene 2 tires.
The new A03 frameset can also be ordered starting today on its own for any other build option, with complete bikes with mechanical shifting starting at 6890€. Of note… anyone who has already ordered a TRed Aracnide and is awaiting their build slot, will have the option to upgrade to the new A03 build, at no extra charge.
