I ended up here after having to move on from the FM126 frameset on Indiegogo by Longteng/Mondince. I was pursuing the LTK-266-D-SL, which looks awesome, but they still don't have it in 58cm. Alisa pointed me in the direction of the RD301-D, and I've found this thread helpful. I'm in New England and the roads can suck, so a beefier bike kind of sounds nice.
Some concerns:
- I'm looking to get a "fast" road bike - not for crits/elite racing, but something that fits into the shed well when I already have an endurance gravel bike (specialized diverge) and a xc hardtail (specialized epic ht). Is this bike too redundant by already having a gravel bike?
- The downtube is huge, but seems to look relatively ok in some of the painted frames
- Some of the comments indicate it isn't overly snappy, but is similar gemoetry-wise to the sl8 and aethos. Will this bike fill my desire to have a faster, not endurance, but also not all our race geo, road bike? I'm thinking yes as I'll
Is this a leading option for a fast-ish road bike in the under $1k USD price range? Should I just spend more money and reach for the Yoeleo r12? I understand the prices stay low because the marketing is nonexistent, but I have trouble picking frames out when looking at factory/sellers websites like Lightcarbon and LongTeng. I'm interested in doing a complicated paint job (if they agree to it), so price might come up for the aesthetics.
