badbiker

I own this bike and I did the STP last year and it never broke down or got a flat tire. It was so smooth and what a nice ride. I have 3 bikes and this bike handles like no other.

fabe

I bought the latest frameset with a stealthy Black on Black paint scheme and built it up with my older DA 7900 groupset (with a 6800 crankset). The build in the photo is 7.0kg with 40mm/60mm carbon tubular wheels.

With an alloy seatpost, ride is very buzzy.. which is why the ALR5 and ALR6 come with carbon seatpost.
I have since swapped out the alu post with a carbon post. and the ride improved a lot.
The front end is confidence inspiring on technical descents. Climbing is efficient.

It is indeed a good frameset from TREK. Anyway, rumour is that most of the big brand name aluminum hydrofoamed frames are product in the same factory in Taiwan according to the required required design and specifications from different brands. I didn't go for the CAAD12 as I already have 2 other steel frames with traditional horizontal toptubes. So I settled with the ALR. No regrets. it is truly an alu bike which is on par with a lot of carbon offering in ride and handling.

PS: Pardon the low quality photo... Haven't got time to shoot some nicer shots of the bike.

ToiletSiphon

For all those who posted pictures of their brand new ALR, how is it holding up after a while? Does it looks like a tough and durable frame? Just got rid of a cracked CF frame and I want something fun and inexpensive that will last me for a while!

HTupolev

My frame looks about the same as when I got it, minus some hard-to-remove grime that I allowed to get in a few spots and a couple of small chips in the powder coat due to an embarrassing incident involving a pedal wrench.

That said, the frame also only has a couple thousand miles on it, so a failure would be pretty pathetic... hard to put much use on a frame when you're juggling seven bikes.
Good problem to have, I guess.

kc0bbq

I have an ALR 6 with the matte dark gray finish and the finish has proven to be surprisingly durable. I don't baby it, but haven't had a single scratch. It doesn't get all of my miles, but it has ~3500 or so. It spends time on a roof rack exposed to whatever gets tossed up by other cars and there's not a single visible scratch or ding. The Madone it replaced had its paint pretty beat up under the same conditions.


My only complaint is that it spent the winter on a CycleOps trainer and it was really tough to get back off because of the shape of the chainstay around the dropout.


The stock wheels took a pretty big rock to the brake track and bent a bit, but the wheels are pretty mediocre to begin with.

ToiletSiphon

How do you like it compared to your old Madone? Feel any difference in stiffness or comfort?

kc0bbq

It's not the best comparison between the two bikes, my Madone was undersized (intentionally), so it was a bit twitchy and was a 3.1 and was a bit flexy in some spots. The Emonda is more or less the "correct" size for me, I wanted a bit more subdued handling because I was having trouble dealing with some post-crash jitters descending and in fast corners.

That's not to say the Emonda handles poorly, it just handles differently.

The Emonda is definitely stiffer around the bb, and with the stock wheels was probably transmitting more road noise, but not much. I've got Zipp 404s on the bike right now with 25mm tires and the lower pressure with the 25mm tires smooths out the last bit of buzz. I could watch the Madone flex at the bottom bracket. The excellent fork and seat post on the ALR5 and 6 do a great job of muting some of the stiffness.

I've got very detailed fitting information from a fitting I did with a physical therapist, so my bikes are all set up relative to those numbers and that makes comparing comfort tough. I'm probably most comfortable for my longest rides on the Emonda just because it's at kind of a sweet spot in gearing (compact, 11-28) for some of the short, steep hills around here but with some ability to get low and out of the wind.