A new handmade Italian carbon Titici Relli gravel race bike adds more comfort-inducing flex with an Arch Absorber Technology element in its seattube. On top of their signature Flexy ultra-thin toptube, this new gravel bike promises to soak up even more high-speed gravel vibration, so you stay fresh longer to race further, faster…
Titici Relli gravel bike gets more Flexy
Titici calls their new full carbon Relli gravel bike a race bike at heart. So they added more vibration-damping to let riders focus more on the gravel racing at hand, even over rougher and more technical courses. The new Relli is a natural evolution of the gravel race bike, always refining tube shaping and carbon layups to maximize vertical deflection and absorb gravel bumps, while maintaining stiff power transfer and sharp high-speed handling.
A number of gravel bike builders are adding suspension elements to eat up bumps, but Titici prefers to further refine their Flexy (‘but only in a good way‘) concept, which is always going to be lighter, simpler, and require less maintenance to keep working smoothly.
Flexy PAT + AAT vibration-damping tech
Since 2017, Italian bike maker Titici’s Flexy line-up is already quite well-known for its unique, patented ultra-thin PAT toptube (Plate Absorber Technology) that widens out in front of the seat cluster, and tapers to just 8mm thick. Now, this new Relli gravel bike adds another engineered-flex zone with Arch Absorber Technology (AAT) – in the curved lower end of the seattube.
The concept is essentially the same – stretch the tube wide to maintain lateral stiffness, pinch it almost completely flat to damp in-line vibrations.
A thinned & flexing seattube in itself is nothing new. We’ve seen a number of XC hardtails, gravel & even road bikes with similar solutions. But by combining PAT & AAT, this carbon Relli gravel bike promises to be the smoothest riding bike Titici has ever made.
What else is new?
Like their most recent few road bike generations and the new alloy gravel bike, Titici hides all of the cables inside, with fully-internal routing through a Deda full 1.5″ DCR headset system.
With the AAT redesign, Titici also lowered the seatstays by 30mm to free up the rear triangle to flex more around the Arch Absorber seat tube & further flattened the stays for additional vertical compliance.
Tech details
The Relli is race bike, so Titici sticks to fast gravel 42mm tire clearance, but with ample mud clearance.
The bike features a PressFit BB386 bottom bracket, standard 27.2mm round seatpost & conventional external clamp, full-coverage fender mounts, just two conventional bottle cage mounts, flat mount disc brakes, and 12mm thru-axles. But it’s custom, I’m sure they’ll get you more mounts if you need.
Titici lays up the Relli ultra-high-modulus carbon frame with a “Progressive Bandage Workmanship” wrapping technique that takes advantage of slow-set resins to allow them to tweak each frame to perfectly fit its rider in their Lombardy workshop.
Titici Relli gravel – Pricing, options, availability
The Relli is made by hand in Italy to order, so each carbon bike buyer gets the opportunity for completely custom geometry, and custom finish. This new carbon Titici Relli gravel bike replaces the old single-Flexy GR02 carbon gravel bike, while the recently introduced All-In remains their fully-integrated alloy gravel options.
Each frame is custom-made in Italy, so it doesn’t come cheap (think almost 5000€ for their two most recent carbon framesets) and will take at least 2 months’ lead time. But with that, you can get any dream build you can imagine – or afford. We’ll update when we hear official pricing.
