Canyon Speedmax CF 9.0 Ltd Review

Last year was my first season in Tri and it went pretty well. Swim went from armbands to a 26.25 1500m open tri, my run stayed in pretty good shape and I went from a truly shocking cyclist to a fairly competent club rider.

I decided I wanted to have a proper go next season and first step was to upgrade my bike.

Realistic choices were between Cervelo P5, Trek Speed Concept, Felt IA & Canyon Speedmax. I was going large!!

After spending hours of looking over data, yaw angles & wind performance I ordered the Canyon as it's the best looking one :)

The Cervelo P5 is an awesome bike. Big drawback is nowadays in transition it'd be too hard to find mine with so many of them about.

The Trek I love, but they are uber pricey (£10k) and those wheels are begging to be changed out. Also not the prettiest bike.

The Felt I am a huge fan of, but looking at delivery times and a possible copyright issue with the framed nutrition, I couldn't see me getting hold of one until May/June which is far too late.

So, I've long been a fan of Canyons and reviews are practically faultless. The kit is second to none and price wise it's probably £3,000 cheaper than any other superbike like-for-like equipment. In fairness the choice was pretty simple.

I'll document the entire process here as I found it hard to get any reviews on any of the buying process with Canyon. it's not a traditional pop-into-your-LBS and buy. This is all online, overseas buying and spending a not insignificant amount of money.

Order Process
I took the plunge just before Christmas and ordered the bike. I immediately received a confirmation email that I would hear again from them once it had been processed. By the new year I was getting a bit itchy to hear something - the price had gone up on their website by £700 - so I tweeted them!

Got a response and made a call into the UK office off the back of it. They confirmed that they had the order and should be moving forward in the next week or two.

Another few days and a few tweets between myself, Canyon and some excited pals and eventually we moved on a stage.

Fitting
I received an email from Canyon requesting some geometry from my existing TT bike. Unfortunately I had sold my Cervelo P2 before ordering so if you go ahead and order one in future check this on their website first. They obviously build and fit their bikes to your existing geometry which is a nice touch. I sent through measurements that they use for their interactive bike size guide and hoped this was enough!

Indeed a couple of days later I received an email confirming I am indeed a short arse and size 'S' for everything!

Payment
A few days later I received an email saying that my credit card had been declined. This was in fairness expected by me as a German company requesting a large enough chunk of cash to buy a family house should raise a few eyebrows over at Barclaycard!!

A quick call into the card company and a call back to Canyon got that resolved and a huge sum was added to my credit card balance that evening!

Delivery
The next day I received 2 emails whilst I was at the pool saying that firstly, my bike had been built and was ready for delivery and then another saying it was on it's way!

The tracking URL was perfect and I watched it make it's way from Germany to my house with regular updates.

All in all, it took about 3 weeks over Christmas and New Year from ordering to delivery of my new bike which was in stock. Not too shabby I'd say!

Build
So, last Wednesday I got home from work and was greeted by this -

To say I was smiling is a slight understatement. I peeked into the box and saw this -

Ohh, now you're talking! The box is immaculately packed and everything wrapped well to ensure no damage to the components. Couldn't help taking the wheels out for a sneaky peak -

808 and Lightweight Autobahn N_I_C_E !!!

And with that, all back in the box. Kids had a play date and Mrs had list of tasks. I wouldn't be able to get to the build for a full 45 mins after getting home #humpfh

An eternity later I unloaded the bike from the box and mounted the frame onto the wooden build guide that's supplied.

The bike comes with a huge manual with step-by-step instructions to build. It took me about 45 mins of VERY careful build and I would say it's fairly easy. that said I haven't ridden it yet so fingers crossed it's all right!!!

Adding the wheels is the most straight forward part. Release air from the tubs, squeeze them into place between the aero brakes and then skewer them.

Adding seat post again is straight forward - connect the Di2 battery connector and tighten the post. You'll need an adjustable torque wrench though as the supplied one is very tall and unless you have a massive seat height you wont be able to tighten the bolt.

The headset is simple to mount. The extensions had been set upside down on mine (picture)! But everything is easy to move and tighten.

Putting the headset cover is the only fiddly job. The cables don't have a lot of play and need to be exactly right to get them in place. The side bolts need an allen key smaller than the one supplied and are quite fiddly to set.

Once that's all done the bike is good to go -

Looking good!

Still waiting to ride her - I've put my FFWD clinchers on for training - but all seems to be fine. I'd say order and build are easy enough for anyone to tackle. I am no master mechanic by any means. There were few small issues - the Di2 could do with it's own instructions (turn it on by rotating the cranks). I spent 10 mins trying to see if the seat post connector was right as I couldn't work out if it was charged or not! Like I say, there are some screws, allen keys needed on your own but nothing the smallest tool kit shouldn't have. The seat post bolt needs a torque wrench if you dont have 30cm or so of post showing. I'd have been happier with black stickers on the 808 as shown on their website - but not enough to send it back :\

Still waiting to get a bike fit and for a debut ride once the weather clears up but if this bike rides half as fast as she looks I'll be smashing it up this year !!