Interbike 2010: All-New 2011 Look 695 Road Bike

Look Cycles has replaced their 595 road bike with an all-new, super integrated 695 road bike.

Featuring Look’s E-Post, ZED2 one-piece crankset, C-Stem and a unique fork, the frame is fully integrated from head to toe.  Despite the full length seatmast and oversized BB, head- and downtubes, the frame weighs in at a scant 900g.  Before you scoff and say “all that integrated stuff just reduces my options”, there are adapters to let you run whatever cranks you want and any normal stem can replace their C-Stem…but after reading through this post, you may not care to.

In order to get the weight down lower than the outgoing 595, Look used a proprietary monocoque construction for the front triangle that’s molded against steel mandrels at the seat tube/seat mast/ top tube juncture, bottom bracket and head tube. This allows them to use higher pressures than can be achieved just with traditional bladder construction. As the external mold is closed around the frame for molding, a bladder presses outward against the mold for the main tubes. But those sections mentioned above are actually being pressed inward against a steel mandrel form rather than relying on a bladder to press them out against the outer mold. The result is that they can use more carbon sheets and compress them down to the same thickness as normal bladder molding, and it pushes out more resin, so it’s lighter overall and stiffer in those high stress areas. Result: denser carbon in key areas with higher strength to weight ratio.

Frame cutaways, specs and more photos and details after the break…

The rear triangle is also monocoque with compressed full carbon dropouts, then it’s bonded into the front triangle.

The integrated seat mast uses their E-Post that sits into the frame and expands out to hold in place. It has built in elastomers to cut vibrations and has 3mm of vertical adjustment before you need to cut down the frame.

Next up, they used a continuous fiber form for the full carbon fork, manufacturing it out of a single piece at one time. This creates a 295g fork that claims to have strength-to-weight ratios off the charts.

The main body is bladder molded with solid carbon dropouts that are pressed solid at 250bar as the rest of the fork is being molded (shown below). The steerer tube is flattened at the front and rear and a threaded sleeve slides down and is pinned into place (the black part above the bearing at the top of the headtube).  To install the fork on the frame, a top cap threads over the sleeve and pulls the fork up into the frame. This replaces the need for a star nut/top cap at the top of the steerer tube. The steerer tube is extra thick to allow for clamping a stem on without having to rely on an insert to reinforce the clamping area.

Further overall weight savings comes from the ZED2 integrated, one-piece crank set. It rolls on BB65 oversized bearings, and the new ZED2  uses new separate pedal thread inserts to a) allow the use of any pedal and b) allow you to quickly adjust from 170, 172.5 or 175mm effective crank arm lengths.

Extra frame reinforcements like these are located throughout to beef things like derailleur mounts and water bottle bosses.

The C-Stem has -9 to +17 degree adjustments, plus a flip flop insert at the front that allows for 10mm of adjustment fore or aft at the handlebar.

It’s available as a frame module only (for now) that includes the frame, fork, headset, stem, post, cranks and chromoly axle Keo pedals. Each frame takes 25 hours to manufacture in Look’s Tunisian factory (North Africa, just across the Mediterranean from their French HQ). Price is $5,500. Complete bikes are something they’re working on, but the module also includes cables, housing and bar tape.  It has internal cable routing guides and mounts for standard cables or Di2, and you can get it in two stiffnesses, SR (Super Rigid) or standard, each with different layups.

The 695 will come in either raw carbon black or this painted white, each with fully color coordinated components (cranks, stem, seatpost, bar tape, etc.  Now, some more pictures to make you wish you had one: