Omni - F.A.Q.

Frequently Asked Questions

• How much can I fit in the storage box?

The storage box has approximately 350 mL of volume, good for approximately 5 gels or similar volume. It's also large enough to hide a SRAM BlipBox, Shimano Di2 3- or 5-port junction, or a Campagnolo EPS junction box.

• Can I ride Omni on a trainer?

Yes! Omni far surpasses strength and fatigue standards for all ISO standards, including bottom bracket torsion. It's fine to ride on a traditional fixed-wheel trainer, or a direct-drive trainer like the Wahoo Kickr, or of course on rollers.

• Does Omni have a weight limit? Has it been safety tested?

Omni has no rider weight limit. It is incredibly robust, and has passed all ISO testing standards. Moreover, it passed using just a single test sample for the entire battery of tests; normally, up to five samples may be used for various parts of the test! We have more information specifically about this testing here: Omni Safety Testing

• Is Omni easy to pack for travel?

Yes! In fact it was designed to be the easiest bike on the market to pack for travel. The front end works like any standard road bike fork, as there are no proprietary fastening mechanisms, etc. Just two bolts are needed to remove the entire handlebar assembly: one for the headset top cap, and one for the Alpha X wedge clamp bolt. For the brake, just remove the magnetic brake cover (it just snaps off), and take the Omega X wedge out of the brake assembly (also by hand, it will just pop out). The fork can be removed, and the whole cockpit is now loose and has plenty of play to fit in any kind of bike box. No need to make a single adjustment to the brake or remove the brake from the fork. When you reach your destination, you just reassemble in reverse order. Insert fork, reattach cockpit, tighten headset top cap, tighten Alpha X stem clamp, snap brake wedge into place, snap brake cover back on, and you're ready to roll.

• Does Omni feature a steerer lock to prevent the bars or brakes from hitting the frame?

Yes. There's an optional steerer lock bolt that threads into the frame just behind the lower headset bearing. It offers approximately 44 degrees of freedom in either direction. Without the steerer lock, your brake cable ends up acting as the functional steerer lock, as it will get pinched between the frame and the stem fairing. <

• What does Omni weigh?

The Complete Build of Omni in size medium clocks in at approximately 19lbs.

• Why should I choose Omni over some other radical bike design?

Instead of making direct comparisons to specific bikes, we'd encourage you to look at Omni's expansive features, and compare them to any other bike you are considering. Moreover, consider that the price for our frameset is quite competitive when you factor in everything that is included. Moreover, Omni is an objectively fast bike, with a demonstrable aero advantage over the best the market has had to offer until now.

• How long is the seatpost? What is the maximum saddle height?

The seatpost is 500mm long (same for every size), and you can achieve a maximum saddle height of approx 900mm, depending on your saddle stack (at minimum insert, it is 845mm from BB to the rails).

• Is Omni compatible with any other brakes, bars, etc?

Yes! Although its aerodynamic integration is optimized for TriRig components, Omni was designed for maximum compatibility with aftermarket parts. In the case of the brakes, the aero covers would not be compatible with the other brakes. They rely on the magnetic system on the Omega X, so you'd have to remove the covers. The good news - Omni is designed for this! The shapes behind the covers are designed to be fast on their own (though not quite as fast as with the covers on).

• I am interested in custom paint. Do you offer options for this?

At present, we do not offer custom paint. This is something we are considering for the future. Some customers still want to take their Omni to a custom painter for their own personal touch. Keep in mind that doing so may void the warranty on your frame, as over-aggressive sanding into the bicycle could damage the carbon layup. Nevertheless, some customers have asked for a blank "template" of the bicycle to tinker with their own designs. So, we offer a blank template here and here for your design pleasure.

• Can you comment about the structural testing of the frame and fork. What tests are performed, and what does this tell us about the strength and reliability of the Omni?

Some of this is proprietary, but there is still a lot of good information we can share. First off, the testing standards. Unfortunately we cannot simply publish the applicable ISO standards, because that is their proprietary information and costs about $800 just to buy a copy of the written testing standards from ISO. However, many of the strength and fatigue tests are similar to one another, and we can describe the pattern of testing. ISO has multiple types of tests. First, there are strength tests. A strength test simulates a single large force being applied on the bike (sometimes at the seatpost, sometimes at the fork, sometimes at the bottom bracket, etc). The part must withstand that without forming any visible cracks or other failures. These tests are designed to show if the bike will survive an extraordinary event. The part needs only to survive one of these events. If you repeated the strength test enough times, you would likely break the part completely. Then there are fatigue tests. You get to start with a fresh sample (not the sample you used for the strength test). Similar forces are applied as in the strength test, but at much lower magnitudes (think 200 Nm instead of 1500 Nm). But this time, the machine runs the test over and over, as much as 200,000 times. In order to pass the test, the part may not show any cracks or other physical damage. Recently, the ISO tests were updated to require that the entire part be painted white before testing, so that any cracks would be more readily visible. The ISO testing standards are routinely updated to make the tests more reliable and more robust. There are other tests and standards beyond strength and fatigue, for various parts throughout the bike. For instance, brake stopping distance in wet and dry conditions. Or steerer range - you must have at least 20 degrees on each side, in the event that you use a steerer lock. (Omni has a removable steerer lock that offers 44 degrees on each side.) We test at the factory to well beyond the ISO standards to ensure that when we have the part certified at an independent third-party lab, we know that the part will pass there as well.

Can you comment on where Omni is manufactured, what materials are used, what grade of carbon fiber is chosen for Omni, etc?

Our primary carbon manufacturing facility makes product for the very biggest names in the business. We began a partnership at this factory in 2014 for the manufacture of Alpha X and have been with them since then. Our factory doesn't merely source the highest-end Toray pre-preg sheets ... they manufacture their own sheets of UD out of raw Toray fiber, on a massive loom that's about 80-feet long and takes up two very large rooms (see images below). Controlling fabric construction allows us to more closely control thickness, tow, modulus, etc. Other materials, like 3K sheets, LCP, etc, are also used where appropriate for strength, stiffness, etc. Some of this process is proprietary information, but the end result is to achieve uniformity. That is, we reach a process that is completely repeatable from unit to unit, so that every single product off the production line will perform identically to every other one. Given that so much of carbon fiber construction is executed with manual labor, process control is important to ensuring uniform quality.


Carbon fiber being woven on a massive loom



Individual spools of carbon thread coming in to form a single UD sheet



The collected strands entering a press to receive epoxy



The final prepreg sheet bonded with epoxy