Earlier this week when we covered the new BMC Timemachine Road we thought we had wrapped up our BMC coverage for the week… that is until BMC decided to slip a revised TT bike in under the radar. Meet the new BMC Timemachine Disc. And while this may look like the BMC Timemachine we shared 18 months ago – its obvious that BMC put some pretty serious research into disc brake integration before they were ready to release it in the wild.
The BMC Timemachine Disc
It would have been easy for BMC to just plug the mounts for the rim brakes and add some calipers and call it a day. But instead BMC did some in-depth research into what happens when you mount calipers to the front fork and (not)surprisingly you get some messy airflow.
But there is a solution – like on their roadmachine you can add a cover and clean up that mess.
And thats exactly what BMC did. The new Timemachine Disc features caliper covers front and rear.
The bad news is that at least for the moment BMC has not shared how aero this new machine is. But we suspect over the next few months there will be some detailed aero analysis comparing triathlon\TT disc frames.
Beyond the disc brakes – the Timemachine shares much with the original 2017 Timemachine. There are two cockpit options available. The V-Cockpit offers optimal aerodynamic performance for taller pad stack dimensions, while the forward-offset promotes vertical compliance.
The patented V-Cockpit minimizes aerodynamic losses resulting from taller pad stack configurations. The system is capable of optimizing pad stack in the range of 590mm – 705mm
The Flat-Cockpit offers the maximum aerodynamic advantage, letting riders attain the lowest possible pad stack configurations. The Flat-Cockpit is intended for TT or minimum stack usage. For time trial athletes subject to UCI rules and regulations, the V-Cockpit may exceed standard cockpit measurement guidelines.
The Flat-Cockpit is capable of optimizing pad stack in the range of 530mm – 670mm. The Flat-Cockpit base bar can be mounted in two positions, pointing downward or upward. The driving parameter to choose your position is the base bar altitude – depending on the combination of your discipline, riding style, and pad height. The difference on base bar altitude is 80mm between the two positions.
At the rear of the bike is the dual-mount seatpost. The seatpost has two mounting positions, with multiple hardware mounts – totaling 124mm of possible fore-aft adjustment and a 71.5° – 80.8° effective seattube.
Four mounting holes allow 62mm adjustment per post and 120mm of range with overlap.
The forward mounting option enables the use of a storage box.
Up front the space that used to hold the Brake Booster in the rim brake version is now designed to hold a SRAM Blip Box for eTap builds.
For fueling options inside the triangle there are both a seat tube bottle mount and a two-position downtube bottle mount. And up top is a top tube fuel storage mount.
Builds
At launch the BMC Timemachine Disc will be only available as a frameset which includes the V-Cockpit with Profile T4+ carbon extensions.
Also included is 5 stickersets.
The frameset will set you back $5,499.
Our Thoughts
What we really like about this new bike is how the manufacturers are starting to figure out how to hide disc brakes. Quintana Roo did a good job of this on the rear caliper of their PRSix Disc and earlier this week we saw Ceepo’s new Shadow-R which uses a custom fork to hide the front caliper (and pretty much everything else). But we think BMC uses one of the simplest solutions to this problem without requiring a complete revision of their bike. Disc brakes are definitely here to stay so the more innovation we see here the better. Stay tuned for a deeper review once we get some one on one time with the new Timemachine Disc and keep tuned to AeroGeeks.com for the latest from Eurobike and the Tour!