You can achieve the same position on both bikes…there may be geometry differences between the two bikes, but nothing so significant that it means you can’t be in the same position on both (outside of perhaps some extreme examples).
ETA - meh, everyone else covered it. one of these days I am going to remember to read the rest of the thread before I hit “reply”.
I’ll play devil’s advocate here. Tarmac is perfectly good - no need to swap. The Venge is slightly faster. But you can close the gap to like 5 seconds over 40km or something if you add aero bars to your tarmac.
I fitted aero bars to my tarmac, Pro vibe aero, as I could internally route the brake and di2 gear cables. These are brilliant bars, thinking of fitting to my other bike now
I’m planning to put an Aerofly 2 on my Tarmac, my LBS (Spec Concept Store) recommend upgrading to the S-Works SL stem but I’ll likely stick to the one that came with the bike as the S-Works only comes in a gloss finish and the rest of the cockpit is matt.
Not sure why folks think the black and white differentiator is whether you’ll be riding uphill or not. The difference between my SL6 frame/fork/seatpost and Venge frame/fork/seatpost was 42 grams. The difference in comfort was worth a fair bit more than that.
I’d say the choice is down to how good your roads are. If you live in an area with generally smooth asphalt (not a lot of road joints, rough chip seal, don’t ride gravel) - get the Venge. It does a great job of smoothing out minor buzz. Anything more - you’ll appreciate the Tarmac.
I recently swapped my build from the Tarmac to the Venge and decided to go back. I’m over the moon with that choice. And I’d have a hard time believing there’s more than maybe ~5w between the setups (considering I used the same bars and wheels)
I have them. In my Venge. That I got to replace my Tarmac. Granted, none was paid for after u was hot by a taxi… Aerofly bars are the shit. I love them. They’re comfortable and I like the dimpled top that give just a little bit of grip
Whenever you throw the Aerofly II on your tarmac I’d be interested in hearing about the process. My bar is showing up soon and I’ve never done any hydraulic/di2 routing before and am not sure if I want to try it myself or just have the shop do it.
My $.02…try it yourself. You have nothing to lose. If you can’t do it, just take it to the shop then. But if you succeed, you have learned a valuable new skill.
I’m planning on using the lockdown time to do just this…swapping out components in my CX bike and will try to do the brakes myself. If not, the shop is just up the street!
Yeah, if you’re on the fence about doing the work yourself - don’t. Hydro is a bit more involved of a process. Though I find Shimano to be significantly less frustrating than SRAM.