The E114's Little Brother
Of all the remarkable features on the E114 probably the most overlooked is its refined handling. TT bikes are notoriously tempestuous and surly; harnessing a TT bike's full potential comes with enormous vigilance--which is hard to muster in a hypoxic state--and refined bike handling skills, something a lot of triathletes and beginning racers will freely admit they don't have. Flogging a TT bike at 30 mph in a straight line is quite different from threading it through a chicane or winding it around a semi-circle at 15 mph, and we all have threatening visions of Michael Rasmussen repeatedly dumping his TT rig in the 2006 Tour de France on that fateful, penultimate day.
Everytime a rider mounts a TT/triathlon bike fully rigged to race some sense of trepidation accompanies: first, you know you're about to suffer as much physical and mental pain as you're willing to undergo without the Geneva Convention protocols being broken, and secondly, you know that your perilously tucked body balanced on a rear disc wheel mounted to short chain-stays is almost a certain recipe for disaster if the roads turn wet, rough, or twisty. The fact that you're steering this set-up with your elbows certainly lends to the hollowness in your stomach.
That's all about to change. The geometry on the E114 and the E112 was derived especially for pro time trialists who find themselves dubiously perched upon these high-speed machines. Traditionally, TT framesets have had shortened rear chain stays and a shorter front-to-center (center of bottom brack to center of front dropout): this enabled the rear wheel to tuck up under the rider nearer the seat tube and the front end to move closer to the rider in the aero position. Of course, some adjustments were made to accommodate for this: TT bikes have generally had slacker head tube angles, anywhere from 69.5 to 71 degrees, to slow down the "nervousness" of the handling. Still, with increasingly steeper seat tube angles the rear stays have been getting shorter and shorter. Argon18 decided to build a TT bike that handles like a road bike, and in so doing, lengthened the rear stays by (on average) 1 cm over other time trial/triathlon frames, and to also extend the front-center by 1 cm (on average) over other similar framesets. The result is a predictable, smooth, but neverthless supremely aerodynamic time trial bike that has almost all the ride manners of a road bike.
The E112 goes on to share many of the design features found on the E114: its frameset is made from the exact same molds as the E114. Instead of using 6006 HM carbon, the E112 uses 5606 HM laminate carbon paired to a 12K weave aesthetic layer. While offering similar performance properties to the E114 the E112 comes at a price roughly $1,000 less than its bigger brother. The E112 does not include the integrated fairing/fork, brakeset, or aerobars, but does include a two-position carbon seatpost.