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Look785Huez.jpgFirst Look: Look 785 Huez RS Disc
When a brand new Look arrives at road.cc Towers, it's only right that we take a first look. The disc brake version of their flagship lightweight racer launched in summer 2018, and comes with 28mm tubeless-ready tyres as standard.
Review: Look 795 Blade RS frameset
Six of the lightest road bikes
On this build the bike comes with the latest version of Look's Zed 2 crankset, which can be switched around to offer 170, 172.5 or 175mm crank arm lengths. It's adjusted via an insert that the pedal screws in to, and to alter your crank length the insert can be pivoted into any one of the three positions to get the preferred size.
We're perhaps a tad miffed to have received this test bike with Sram's 11 speed eTap (read all about the new 12 speed Red AXS here), but elsewhere the components are current and top-of-the-range. Up front we have Look's carbon LS1 super light compact handlebars with the alloy LS1 Superlight stem.
Five different types of carbon are used to create the high modulus lightweight frame, and on this disc brake version the flat mount standard is employed front and rear to reduce weight, improve stiffness and allow for direct attachment of hydraulic calipers. To accomplish the perfect frame optimised for climbing, "the recipe is similar to that of gastronomic cuisine", so say Look. Each tube has been the subject of extensive research to optimise the shape and stiffness-to-weight ratio.
For the thru-axles Look have opted for Mavic's Speed Release system, purported to optimise rigidity. They say Speed Release allows for wheel removal that is on average twice as fast as other thru-axles, which will be good news for team mechanics and those who frequently travel with their bikes. The disc rotors are 160mm at the front and 140mm rear.
Finishing off the spec list is the Vittoria Elusion carbon wheels in a depth of 30mm, Hutchinson Fusion 5 28mm tyres and the Prologo Dimension Tirox saddle.
There are five 785 Huez RS disc full bikes available, with this one coming in at £8,300. Lightweight bikes have perhaps lost some traction in recent years with aero road taking over, but other high-end options with similar credentials include the Time Alpe d'Huez and Trek's Emonda. Testing of the 785 Huez RS will be commencing shortly, with a full test report coming soon.
If you like the look of it, you can find out more on Look's website here.
Arriving at road.cc in 2017 via 220 Triathlon Magazine, Jack dipped his toe in most jobs on the site and over at eBikeTips before being named the new editor of road.cc in 2020, much to his surprise. His cycling life began during his students days, when he cobbled together a few hundred quid off the back of a hard winter selling hats (long story) and bought his first road bike - a Trek 1.1 that was quickly relegated to winter steed, before it was sadly pinched a few years later. Creatively replacing it with a Trek 1.2, Jack mostly rides this bike around local cycle paths nowadays, but when he wants to get the racer out and be competitive his preferred events are time trials, sportives, triathlons and pogo sticking - the latter being another long story.
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Welcome - probably didn't show as they tagged it "not near miss of the day"?
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The small frame, the aggressive posture, lots of standover height.
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9 comments
I’d expect that test bike has been delivered with Red 11 rather than AXS because those Zed cranks aren’t officially 12 speed compatible. Strange to supply a lightweight bike with such a heavy groupset anyway
It looks particularly mundane, and discs on a LOOK just seem to be odd, still never understand why you'd want alloy bars when quality CF are better in every way including impact resistance.
What's the long term story on the adjustable cranks, are they reliable over tens of thousands of miles/no wobbly/falling out insert?
Look don’t seem to know why you’d spec alloy bars either - they’ve used their own carbon bars as it says in the article.
"Up front we have Look's carbon LS1 super light compact handlebars with the alloy LS1 Superlight stem"
I'll never understand why you'd want to make comments such as this when the information is right there in front of you.
Apart from the fact that you didn't read the article properly (as pointed out above) alloy bars are still very common in the Pro peoloton e.g. Deda's Zero 100, FSA's Energy because they stand up better than carbon bars in crashes.
I just love the way companies brag about features such as 5 types of carbon and flat mount discs to reduce weight, but then omit to tell us what the weight of their fully configured bikes actually is. OK, so the impact of low weight is often overstated, but bragging about low frame weight, maybe 14% of the total bike, is a bit pointless if you are then going to detail the spec of an £8k bike without giving the bottom line.
The weight of the frame (in a given size, with tolerance) and the fork is on the Look website on the same page that they discuss other aspects of the frame - whether journalists or other news outlets report that is hardly Looks responsibility. Groupset weights don't change between OEMs and other manufacturers also quote frame/fork weights - so everything is comparable. That said, other reviewers have seemed to be able to publish the weight of the components and full bikes (including the 785 Huez RS Disc) when they have them and this is a 'first look', not a review. What is your actual issue ?
As per my post, Look and others (nothing to do with journalists) on their website and catalogue detail frame weight, which makes up circa 14% or so of bike weight, but on the same web/catalogue they spec up and price fully configured bikes declining to give all up weight. Do they really think weight is important to a self builder, but not to somebody spending 8k on a catalogue configured bike? Trek and Scott, to name 2, don't seem to find it a problem to add up the weight of frame, wheels, groupset, bars, tape, nuts, bolts etc. on a configured bike.
As per my post - they're trivially comparable, listed elsewhere and I can understand not wanting to have a number of specs based on individual component specs. Look don't even have them spec'd on their webpage AFAICS, you have to have a look at a PDF with some example builds to see what's on there. If the exact weight is that important to someone, and they're spending this sort of money, i'd presume they could see the published weights elsewhere (i'm guessing they might even read a review or two before spending this sort of cash) or do the comparison with the other manufacturer/model frame/fork weights. I'm really failing to see an issue here - fair play, maybe i'm just not that fussed about trivia and can see the competitions weights if I want to.