Scott Plasma 20 (2011)

September 13, 2010

Scott's Plasma 20 is nestled inside a hot price category. This complete bike, featuring the Plasma 2 frame, will MSRP at $3300. It competes with Cannondale's Slice 3, Cervelo's P3 Ultegra buid, the Specialized Transition Pro, Trek's Speed Concept 7.5, and Felt's B12, among others. The median price Slowtwitchers expect to pay for their tri bikes has been creeping up in recent years—about on par with the increase in cost of health care insurance premiums (yes, the increase has been that steep).

Frame
The Plasma 20 is the complete bike built aboard the Plasma 2 frame, and this frame is a lot more elegant and user friendly than the now-discontinued Plasma 1. This current frame features a fore/aft adjustable Ritchey seat post cap—also found on some other tri bikes, notably the Ridley Dean—and offers Plasma riders the ability to ride a bit more steep than possible on the Plasma 1.

The Plasma 2 frame is offered in 5 sizes. It's a huge upgrade over the original Plasma 1, and don't you just love how the fork mates into the frame? Even though the Plasma 3 is Scott's "superbike," the way the fork integrates makes the Plasma 2 the equal, in terms of this bike's lines, of most of the other companies' superbikes.

A lot of people would fit on this bike, even many who don't think they would. This, if you want your bike built up underneath you the way I think it should be built. If you nose around Scott's website you'll fine pics of Scott's Plasma TT. Note how much frame fits up underneath the rider's position. That's what you want: lots of frame under you, very little air between the armrests and the top tube. This Plasma 20 will grant you that option, if you fit yourself according to this bike's length. Because it's not a long bike per se, you'll want to size up one, maybe two frame sizes. This, if you choose a properly short stem (between 70mm and 100mm, depending on your height).

Here's a clue for you to ponder: The Plasma 3 bikes—both the TT and the Premium—come with two stem length options: 75mm and 90mm. Pretty short, right? Scott has correctly discerned something: You need to ride shorter stems on tri bikes than you do on road bikes. So, don't necessarily choose your Plasma 20 with the stem factory spec'd. If it comes with (say) a 100mm or 110mm stem from the factory, you might be better off with an 80mm or 90mm stem on a frame the next size larger. That'll grant you more frame, less spacer, less stem, less headset top cap, and your Plasma 20 will fit you like the Plasma TT bike fits many of the Team HTC Columbia riders.

Scott's Plasmas, like Kuota's Kueen K and Ridley's Dean, features seat masts that you cut to size. The drawback is that it can make the bike less compact for shipping, and when you cut the mast, well, it's cut. You've personalized it. Best you executed the cut correctly, these seat post caps have several centimeters of upsy-downsy, and no more. On the plus side: this design makes for a stronger, lighter seat cluster area, and you don't have to worry about seat binder bolts either stripping out of the frame, or being not tight enough to keep the seat post from slipping.

One final mention: these Scott frames have a feature I've rarely seen elsewhere, a chain stay shaped so to cause the rear derailleur to be "faired" by the chain stay, just like the rear wheel is faired by the seat tube. Does it work? I don't know. Does it make for a sexy narrative? You bet.

Gruppo
Just a year ago you'd have been forced to pay $5000 for a complete bike with the Plasma 2 frame. This makes the Plasma 20 a superb frame at an approachable price. This is especially the case if you look at the groupset, which is certainly not a scrimp job—don't you get tired of wildly asymetrical bikes made up of expensive, sexy frames on which are hung exceedingly entry level parts?

The Plasma 20 features an Ultegra kit, including the crankset, BB, and the chain, and the cassette. And the brake calipers. The only Shimano part on this bike of lesser stature than Ultegra is the wheelset (the WH-RS10 is a bit more entry level than Ultegra). This wheelset spec is a downspec from what you'll find on, say, Cannondale's Slice 3. This Shimano wheelset is not the equal of the Mavic Cosmic Elite on the Slice. But then, the Plasma 20 costs $200 less than the Slice, and $300 and $400 less than some of the other bikes listed above. This particular downspec is one big reason. Just, it depends on what's important. If you have a lot of training wheels in your garage, like I do, and this is just one more pair, then, no problem, save the money and take the beater wheels. If you're training wheel challenged, and you want more training wheel underneath you, best wrangle your best deal on a Plasma 20 from your dealer with an upgraded wheel.

The high-end spec continues with a Fizik Arione Tri 2 and Profile Design's very functional QSC pursuit brake levers.

Front-end config
The bike also features a bar I moderately like—Profile Design's T2—with an extension I really like, Profile Design's Cobra. The potential problem is the pairing of this bar with this frameset. I write about this every year, and, I'll continue to write about it for as long as Scott's bikes are spec'd this way.

Companies like Scott and C'dale make mandatory tri bikes. By this I mean that you really need (if you're a retailer) to have at least one of these brands on the floor, because they fit a geometric rider type that more standard tri geometries (like Felt and Cervelo) are less likely to fit. Specialized and Trek are splitting the geometric difference these days—choosing geometries halfway between a Felt/Cervelo and a Scott Plasma geometry.

Anyway, point being, The Plasma 2 frame is a taller, narrower frame, and if you're going to to successfully ride this bike with the taller profile aerobars and stem spec'd on this bike then you either need to have a longer-leg, shorter torso morphology; or you have to want to ride the bike less aggressive (taller in front); or you'll want to ride the bike shallower of seat angle (which will cause you to want to ride with your aerobars higher in front).

But I always like to see what the pros are doing, and, what these companies are doing on their highest end bikes—which are what they give to their pros. Note the Plasma TT model I referenced above. This is the frameset you get in either Scott's TT bike, or Scott's Premium model (The Premium is Scott's tri bike built on their TT platform.) Scott's so-called "TT bike" simply features the flat stem you see pictured, and is only available in a cable-less, Di2 config, while the Premium is the same Plasma 3 frame spec'd with an angled-up stem and holes for cable routing.

The upshot: For a lot of people (me, for example) the Plasma 20 is spec'd with an aerobar the config of which is too tall. Further, it'll come with a minus-6° stem shown in the pic. But this is no problem. Buy this bike one size (or two sizes) larger than your dealer will want to sell you, pull the O.E. stem off, put a shorter, minus 17° (flat) stem on, and get rid of that large top cap spacer. If the bike still rides too tall for you, then you'll have to yank those Profile T2's off and place a Visiontech, or, something lower profile, on this marvelous frame.

Value
It's taken Scott a while to raise their timed race bike game, quite frankly. Of course, one could say the same about Trek and Specialized. But each of these companies has come out swinging in 2011, and Scott's lineup is at least the equal of anybody out there. Of course, there is one one problem Scott faces: this is the least expensive bike it makes.

Still, among those making bikes in this low-to-mid-$3000s price category, there are a few bike models that might equal the Plasma 20. No other bike flat-out beats the Plasma 20—it gives as good as it gets from the best bikes in this price category. The only thing to consider about this bike is whether its stem and aerobar spec matches your own rider profile: your morphology; how you like to ride; how aggressive your armrest drop. If it doesn't, no problem. This is still very possibly your bike. Nothing's keeping you from subbing in a Hed Black Dog and Clip-Lite, a Visiontech, a Profile Design CX3 or Volna or, for that matter, Felt's very nice Devox aerobar, which can be purchased in several configurations in the aftermarket. All these are low-profile aerobars, and allow the Plasma 2 to be transformed into a lower-profile bike conceptually close to the Plasma TT.