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Help Needed: Trying to identify manufacturer of my seat post.



 
 
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  #11  
Old July 1st 08, 05:08 PM posted to rec.bicycles.tech
Ryan Cousineau
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Posts: 4,044
Default "Designed by Keith Bontrager" was Help Needed: Trying to identify manufacturer of my seat post.

In article
,
Chalo wrote:

Andre Jute wrote:

Chalo wrote:

Tom Kunich wrote:

wrote:

*Icon was Trek's name for house branded
components on their bikes - like bars, stems, seatposts -
before they started using the Bontrager badge for that.

Let's make a point - If Keith Bontrager is really involved in
developing
those components the chances are that they're much better than
otherwise.

Let's also be clear-- it's exceedingly unlikely that Keith Bontrager
has anything to do with any of the components bearing his name
anymore. *If that wasn't abundantly clear before, it sure was by the
time Rolf wheels were rebadged as Bontragers.


Let's be precise as well as clear, if you please,Chalo. When, as in a
year, did Keith Bontrager cease to create the designs sold under his
name?


Trek bought the Bontrager name in 1995. If I had to guess when
Bontrager component designs were no longer Keith Bontrager's designs,
I'd guess 1995.

Chalo


Careful now. Keith still works at the Bontrager division, and if he's
not penning the lines on the drawings anymore, he still seems pretty
intimately involved with the stuff that bears his name.

This interview, whose date I can't determine, is quite fawning, but
Keith is certainly asserting that he still works the

"My part is to contribute ideas for new parts or to help others with the
projects we are working on. I get to do some ride testing too. I* work
in Santa Cruz and coordinate with others electronically."

http://www.bikeradar.com/news/article/interview-keith-bontrager-15870

Elsewhere in the interview, he shares enough opinions about current
bike-engineering that he's at least been paying attention.

--
Ryan Cousineau http://www.wiredcola.com/
"In other newsgroups, they killfile trolls."
"In rec.bicycles.racing, we coach them."
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  #12  
Old July 1st 08, 05:16 PM posted to rec.bicycles.tech
Ryan Cousineau
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 4,044
Default "Designed by Keith Bontrager" was Help Needed: Trying to identify manufacturer of my seat post.

In article
,
Chalo wrote:

Andre Jute wrote:

Chalo wrote:

Tom Kunich wrote:

wrote:

*Icon was Trek's name for house branded
components on their bikes - like bars, stems, seatposts -
before they started using the Bontrager badge for that.

Let's make a point - If Keith Bontrager is really involved in
developing
those components the chances are that they're much better than
otherwise.

Let's also be clear-- it's exceedingly unlikely that Keith Bontrager
has anything to do with any of the components bearing his name
anymore. *If that wasn't abundantly clear before, it sure was by the
time Rolf wheels were rebadged as Bontragers.


Let's be precise as well as clear, if you please,Chalo. When, as in a
year, did Keith Bontrager cease to create the designs sold under his
name?


Trek bought the Bontrager name in 1995. If I had to guess when
Bontrager component designs were no longer Keith Bontrager's designs,
I'd guess 1995.


Here's another interview, this one in 2004, in which Keith talks in a
fair bit of detail about what he was working on then and his thoughts on
underdesigned stems:

http://www.cyclingnews.com/tech.php?id=tech/2004/features/bontrager

--
Ryan Cousineau http://www.wiredcola.com/
"In other newsgroups, they killfile trolls."
"In rec.bicycles.racing, we coach them."
  #13  
Old July 1st 08, 05:46 PM posted to rec.bicycles.tech
Chalo
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Posts: 5,093
Default "Designed by Keith Bontrager" was Help Needed: Trying toidentify manufacturer of my seat post.

Ryan Cousineau wrote:

*Chalo wrote:

Trek bought the Bontrager name in 1995. *If I had to guess when
Bontrager component designs were no longer Keith Bontrager's designs,
I'd guess 1995.


Careful now. Keith still works at the Bontrager division, and if he's
not penning the lines on the drawings anymore, he still seems pretty
intimately involved with the stuff that bears his name.


Maybe. But I've seen enough pre-Trek Bontrager frames, and owned
enough pre-Trek Bontrager forks, to see that those things were not the
work of the same person or design philosophy that's at work at Trek
today. (Much as I might like my Bontrager Satellite Elite flip-top
box/saddle.)

To me, the qualitative transformation within Bontrager appears as
distinct as that of Salsa before and after Ross Shafer.

Chalo
  #14  
Old July 2nd 08, 02:21 AM posted to rec.bicycles.tech
Ryan Cousineau
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 4,044
Default "Designed by Keith Bontrager" was Help Needed: Trying to identify manufacturer of my seat post.

In article
,
Chalo wrote:

Ryan Cousineau wrote:

*Chalo wrote:

Trek bought the Bontrager name in 1995. *If I had to guess when
Bontrager component designs were no longer Keith Bontrager's designs,
I'd guess 1995.


Careful now. Keith still works at the Bontrager division, and if he's
not penning the lines on the drawings anymore, he still seems pretty
intimately involved with the stuff that bears his name.


Maybe. But I've seen enough pre-Trek Bontrager frames, and owned
enough pre-Trek Bontrager forks, to see that those things were not the
work of the same person or design philosophy that's at work at Trek
today. (Much as I might like my Bontrager Satellite Elite flip-top
box/saddle.)

To me, the qualitative transformation within Bontrager appears as
distinct as that of Salsa before and after Ross Shafer.


It's possible. It's also possible that the transformation is a result of
available resources. Carbon fibre really is the material of choice at
the sharp edge of bike design*, and Trek is big enough as a company that
if they decide to, say, come up with an entirely new BB or headset
standard all their own, they can credibly do so (whether one likes it or
not).

He said in one or the other of the interviews he posted that time had
simply passed steel by as a high-end frame material, at least for frames
meant to be competitive in terms of weight (and probably aero shaping,
though that would be my inference). He also made this comment:

"Our work this year on the road stuff had some edge, but it wasn't
really an all out F1 approach. You'd know if we ever really pulled the
trigger on that (and so would the UCI). It would be fun to do it that
way though I have reservations about what it might do to the sport."

http://www.cyclingnews.com/tech.php?id=tech/2004/features/bontrager

No elaboration on that, so I don't know if he's talking about strange
new innovations that might momentarily be UCI-legal, or if he's talking
about designs that would be explicitly UCI-illegal from day one.

I suspect that what he meant was the idea of a cost-no-object UCI-legal
bike. Note that UCI rules do call for bicycles to be available to all
riders, which is probably how they would ban a really over-the-top
wonderbike.

For commercial reasons, Bontrager almost certainly has different
priorities today than he did when he was independent. This may be a case
of wishing Morgan still made wood-framed cars**.

*Even some of Keith's writing questions whether we may be too far out on
the sharp edge.

**which actually, they do, and that is either the point or the problem,
depending on how you feel about Morgan.

--
Ryan Cousineau http://www.wiredcola.com/
"In other newsgroups, they killfile trolls."
"In rec.bicycles.racing, we coach them."
  #15  
Old July 2nd 08, 02:52 AM posted to rec.bicycles.tech
Tom Sherman[_2_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 9,890
Default OT: Morgan

Ryan Cousineau wrote:
...
For commercial reasons, Bontrager almost certainly has different
priorities today than he did when he was independent. This may be a case
of wishing Morgan still made wood-framed cars**.
...

**which actually, they do, and that is either the point or the problem,
depending on how you feel about Morgan.

butbutbut, can I get a new three-wheel Morgan?

--
Tom Sherman - Holstein-Friesland Bovinia
The weather is here, wish you were beautiful
 




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