It’s hard to put a hole in a bike frame. To be more specific, putting a mount or an opening for a brake hose or a storage compartment within a carbon-fibre tube means you have to reinforce that part. There’s some extra finessing needed on the engineering side. Argon 18 knows the ins and outs of such features. For example, its designers put a storage compartment near the bottom bracket of the E-119 Tri+ Disc bike. Still, Mark Beaumont didn’t want storage on the new Krypton.
You might have thought Beaumont, an endurance and adventure rider who holds the record for circumnavigating the world by bike, would dig the extra spot to stash things. The Edinburgh-based cyclist is also an Argon 18 advisor. “I feel my job with Argon 18 is to be a friend and a challenger—to be outside enough to not agree with everyone—but ultimately to respect their experience,” he says. “They are far better bike designers than I am.”
When Beaumont learned about the proposed storage compartment for the Krypton, he definitely adopted the role of challenger. “I thought it was a bit gadgety. Despite the fittings on the bike for bikepacking and fenders, I wanted the bike to look sleek. I wanted it to look high-performance. I didn’t want it to be like a Christmas tree with lots of stuff hanging off of it. Anything you add on to the bike like that, I want it to age as well as the rest of the bike does. So, this idea of having an integrated tool space—I needed convincing. There were probably six weeks of conversation. The design team came back with a prototype. Eventually, I said, ‘That looks great.’”
Ethestically, the compartment fits with the bike. It works well, too. On the engineering side, there’s also a certain elegance. According to Alexandre Côté, Argon 18 road and gravel product manager, the shape of the down tube actually provides support for the storage compartment opening. Designers only had to add a little bit of extra material for reinforcement.
The road to the new Argon 18 Krypton
The design process of the new Krypton, with its ensuing debates, began in summer 2021. Before that, there was the first generation of the endurance bike. Argon 18 announced the Krypton CS and Krypton GF in August 2017. Two years later, the Krypton Pro came out. It was the top-end bike…
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