Bill Davidson Ultimate Truth Aero TT / Triathlon Frameset: 56cm - 650c - Steel - Vintage 1990's Custom By Mark Bulgier

Super obscure & high tech aero race frame from the early 1990's, handbuilt by Mark Bulgier in Seattle.  This one probably belongs in a museum or with an aero bicycle collector.  I can't even begin to describe this sufficiently, so here are words directly from Mark!

"Ultimate Truths were all custom made one at a time, with several very time-consuming features, and I made them all myself from start to finish, so the numbers were very low.  A dozen or two maybe.  This one looks like it was probably for a triathlete (or duathlete), with the braze-ons under the TT being for the drinking "straw" going to the water bag behind the saddle.  I think the single braze-on on the wishbone monostay is where the water bag hooked at the bottom.  Date range is early '90s.  I left there in summer '94, and I don't think they made any after I left.    I made a couple frames with the composite aero fairings in the late '80s, but they looked different — remember "funny bikes"? Sloping toptubes, tiny front wheels.  About 1990 would be the oldest of this type, that got called the Ultimate Truth.  The name "Ultimate Truth" of course refers to the old saying that Time Trial is "the Race of Truth", because it's just you out there against the wind, no excuses!  That applies to the Bike leg of a triathlon as well.

The fairing behind the head tube has a steel center, which is drilled out to save weight and to give the composite more surfaces to hook into.  The composite is glass microballoons in an epoxy matrix, similar to fiberglass except the glass is in the form of tiny hollow spheres.  So it's like whipping bubbles into the epoxy, for light weight, only the bubbles are made of a high-strength glass.  The microballoons are too small to see by eye, so it looks like powder, but incredibly light.  I mixed in about as much glass as I could, into as little epoxy as necessary to get it to hold together.  The glass is what gives it its strength, so you try to minimize the epoxy matrix.  I didn't weigh before and after, so I can't tell you how much weight the fairing adds, but it's minuscule.  I don't know if it really speeds you up, but it sure as heck doesn't slow you down.

The aero tubes are True Temper, heat-treated CrMo, which I modified near the bottom bracket to make the frame stiffer against pedaling loads.  Unlike a lot of aero frames with flat airfoil tubing, these are decently stiff.  I made a few of them with track dropouts and they got used for Pursuit and Kilo.  The Kilo timetrial start is extremely violent since it's only a minute-long event (if you're good), so the start is super important and the frame needs to be stiff to resist that intense effort off the line.  

If you take the seatpost out you'll see it is held in place by a rigid "pusher plate" that is a nice snug fit on the post, so the force from those two screws in the back isn't localized, it's spread over the whole back of the post.  Much better than the frames that just have the setscrews digging in to the post directly, gouging up the post and making small adjustments difficult.  (The setscrews want to go back into the previous divots.) The post is held super securely, without much torque needed on the screws.  I mention this because you can't see that detail with the seatpost in, and some people have experienced problems with frames done "the bad way".

Dave Nicholson won gold on one of those bikes, two years in a row, in the Team Time Trial at National Championships, '91 and '92 I believe.  Their time in his first TTT win was a new USA record at the time, maybe still is? Under two hours for 100 km.  He was on the US TTT team that got ninth at World Championships in '91 (best ever placing by an American team), and Velo News editorialized that it looked to them like it was Dave who took the longest pulls — contrary to Lance Armstrong's version of the story, which (surprise, surprise) had Lance as the hero.  Dave made the '92 Olympic Team, but broke his leg on a training ride in Barcelona the day before the TTT, hit by a car, so he didn't get to race.  Gail Viola rode one to win the National Championship in Pro Duathlon (the Run-Bike-Run sport), in '91.  She got ninth at Worlds.  There was at least one National time trial record set on an Ultimate Truth in the Juniors, sorry I don't remember the rider's name. That kid's time was fast enough to medal in the Seniors, but then sadly he dropped out of the sport for some reason.  A number of other medals were won on them in Masters age-group racing."

Condition

Excellent raced and unrestored condition.  The original paint shows history's battle scars, but is glossy and vibrant.  It is straight, and only has one quite minor dent on the non-driveside top tube to the right of the detail.  The driveside chainstay is quite marred up from chain suck/slap.  Headset is smooth.  Photos show the condition accurately.

Details

• Wheel size: 650c
• Top tube: 56cm
• Seat tube: 54cm (center to very top)
• Headtube: 130mm
• Chainstays: 369mm
• Rear spacing: 130mm
• Seatpost: 25.0mm