Building on their top level, full custom road bike, the new Parlee Z-Zero XD disc brake cyclocross bike brings a few changes to the frame design that we hope will carry over to the pavement soon, too.
The XD, or “Cross Disc”, takes full advantage of the new equipment and capabilities Bob Parlee has been adding to his arsenal over the past couple of years. When we visited them for a factory tour, he had just acquired a roll press to make his round tubes. Since then, they’ve added more bladder molding equipment. This bike, from the headtube to the stays to the split wishbone behind the seat tube, is 100% designed and made in house in their Beverly, MA, facility…
Differences from the road bike are the wider chainstays and seatstays, and the rear brake hose now runs through the downtube and chainstay, putting the rear disc brake caliper inside the rear triangle.
It adds clearance for a 40mm tire per their recommendations, but that’s pretty conservative. This matte carbon bike had 33’s on it. So you could get fenders on there with 40mm tires, mounts are placed front and rear.
The fork is also their design, made for them overseas. It’ll have a thru axle and quick release version, and the frame can use either standard in the rear thanks to their modular dropouts introduced last year on the Altum.
Frame weight is 1049 for a bare 55 with seat collar and all hardware except rear axle. Fork is 400g uncut (claimed). They estimate it could get down as low as high 800’s in the smallest frame sizes.
Retail is $7,899 for a custom frameset (HS and small parts), which will be made with either mechanical or electronic posts. Mechanical drivetrains will run external, but they say most customers are building them with electronic. Available in June, taking orders now. Of course, custom paint will set you back a bit more, bit it just might be worth it considering the quality coming out of their basement-level paint shop:
This one was painted as a tribute to Bob’s family heritage of boat building, incorporating nautical themes and maps of the islands around them.
The nautical flags spell out Parlee.
This stem is a prototype of something their working on for release sometime later this year.
