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#31
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Wal-Mart Italian Road Bike for $1198
Stephen Harding wrote:
With the addition of stem extenders and high rise, long stems and many long seat posts available on the market, all my bikes are quite comfortable. That reminds me of the old Midas commercial where the competitor only has one model of muffler, and the mechanic says "fit? we'll MAKE it fit" and brings out a bunch of adapters and pipes. What you're doing will work, but it's the wrong way of getting the bike to fit. |
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#32
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Wal-Mart Italian Road Bike for $1198
Tom Sherman wrote:
Chalo Colina wrote: Cathy Kearns wrote: My husband and I needed two different stashes of tubes at home. I have 650c wheels, and I can tell you, you don't want 650c wheels. My wife and I often ride together, her on her bike with 700x28 tires on 20mm wide rims, and me on my bike with 700x60 tires and 38mm wide rims. We have to have different sized tubes with us. I might be able to swipe one of her tubes if I were riding one of my 700x40 equipped single-speeds, but she would have some difficulty using one of mine. That little detail is not enough to make me want to use the same size tire as she does. Does not your wife weigh about 1/3 Chalo? It wouldn't be circumspect of me to discuss that. You can draw your own conclusions: http://datribean.com/presskit.html She's about 5'8" tall. Similarly, having two similar size riders on a tandem with the same tire sizes and inflation pressures as they use on their singles would be silly. I was only demonstrating that using the same rim diameter does not necessarily mean you can interchange consumables. I used to believe that at a given pressure, tire width should be proportional to the load (or conversely, that at a given tire width, pressure should be proportional to load). Observation has shown me that tire internal volume serves as a better indicator of load capacity and/or appropriate pressure. My bike with 700x35 tires (32mm actual) is the closest equivalent I have to my wife's bike with 700x28 tires (26mm actual). Those bikes can probably use the same tubes and tires if the need arises. Chalo |
#33
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Large CFRP Frames
The larger CFRP frames being too flexible is just poor engineering, and
has nothing to do with the inherent properties of CFRP. To reduce the flex in the larger frames requires some engineering enhancements because of the the inherent properties of carbon fiber. Apparently Trek just made the frame larger, without understanding that this wouldn't work. Your information is... interesting. I've sold a number of these bikes, all of them to people who rode other machines and were more than impressed with how the Trek rode. Being too-flexy was never once mentioned. You could (reasonably) argue that the sample size I refer to are those who have actually purchased the bikes, which results in a strong bias. Except that I don't have much of anything else to go on, because people-of-height who ride them invariably buy them. And the "engineering enhancements" are definitely there. The 5.5 version of the frame doesn't use the same layup found on any of the other sizes, and the fittings etc are unique, and specifically designed for, that size. That's the case for every Trek size; there's nothing unusual about having to do that. If a quality manufacturer were to build a 47cm frame the same way they build a 58cm, the 47cm would be dramatically overbuilt (or the 58cm underbuilt). With carbon fiber, there's no reason to do that, unless you're trying to save money where it shouldn't be saved. --Mike Jacoubowsky Chain Reaction Bicycles www.ChainReaction.com Redwood City & Los Altos, CA USA "SMS" wrote in message ... Tom Sherman wrote: SMS aka Steven M. Scharf wrote: [...] Carbon frames that large tend to have problems of too much flex, which is what the reviews of the 64cm Madone found. Colnago seems to have solved this problem in their carbon fiber frames and they go up to 65 cm. The larger CFRP frames being too flexible is just poor engineering, and has nothing to do with the inherent properties of CFRP. To reduce the flex in the larger frames requires some engineering enhancements because of the the inherent properties of carbon fiber. Apparently Trek just made the frame larger, without understanding that this wouldn't work. Colnago describes what they did at "http://www.colnago.com/en/catalogo2008/extremepower.php". |
#34
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Wal-Mart Italian Road Bike for $1198
But for the larger sizes, there is some hope. Completely out of the blue,
Trek decided to build a 64cm Madone this year. We sell quite a few of them.[...] Was it really "completely out of the blue" or did people like you (Trek dealers) ask for the larger size? -- Tom Sherman - Holstein-Friesland Bovinia Tom: We'd been asking for years, and pretty much given up. Especially with a new, very-expensive (in terms of front-loaded costs per size of frame) model. So it was "completely out of the blue" in terms of being unexpected, but it certainly had been asked for. By us, and many others. Vociferously. --Mike Jacoubowsky Chain Reaction Bicycles www.ChainReaction.com Redwood City & Los Altos, CA USA "Tom Sherman" wrote in message ... Mike Jacoubowsky wrote: [...] But for the larger sizes, there is some hope. Completely out of the blue, Trek decided to build a 64cm Madone this year. We sell quite a few of them.[...] Was it really "completely out of the blue" or did people like you (Trek dealers) ask for the larger size? -- Tom Sherman - Holstein-Friesland Bovinia The weather is here, wish you were beautiful |
#35
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Large CFRP Frames
Tom Sherman wrote:
Colnago describes what they did at "http://www.colnago.com/en/catalogo2008/extremepower.php". "The Extreme-Power was born to meet the demands of sprinters Alessandro Petacchi and Erik Zabel of Team Milram and three time World Champion Oscar Freire of Team Rabobank who all have a power output of 180 kg for each pedal stroke." WTF? When did the kilogram (kg) become a unit of power instead of mass? Quick, notify the General Conference on Weights and Measures of this change! Do people actually get paid to write this stuff? Watts your problem? |
#36
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Wal-Mart Italian Road Bike for $1198
But for the larger sizes, there is some hope. Completely out of the blue,
Trek decided to build a 64cm Madone this year. We sell quite a few of them. For years, 62cm was the largest, so those over 6'3 were either difficult or impossible to fit. We have now successfully fit someone 6'7 to a high-quality road bike. High-quality road bike? I thought the Madone was made out of plastic and formed in a mold. I know it's expensive for what it is, but taken all together that would make Madones the equivalent of '80s Oakley sunglasses-- cooked up like polymer waffles and sold at an umpteen squillion percent markup. Plastic? That's like someone telling you that your Nishiki & Fuji & Cannondale are made from refined dirt. Oh. Darn. They are. You could make an argument that just about everything is. Unless... unless it's made of materials produced in a cyclotron! I have a 68cm Nishiki road frame, a 68cm Fuji road frame, and a 68cm Cannondale road frame, and in the past I had a 68cm Schwinn road frame. I find it a bit puzzling that the "technology" of making frames for all sizes of adults seems to have been lost. I'm especially puzzled in light of the fact that plastic Treks have always been lugged, and thus could have been made in just about any size, like the lugged frames of yore. I can't speak for the Fuji and Cannondale, whose designs (primarily tube diameter and, to a lesser degree, wall thickness) may very well have been scaled up for the greater stresses incurred with such a large frame size. But your Nishiki, if it's from the old days, probably was not such a design. Back in the days when steel was king, manufacturers nearly always used exactly the same diameters, and quite often even the same wall thicknesses, throughout their size range. Thankfully, in the largest sizes, butted tubing often wasn't available so at least you had slightly more robust tubes than would otherwise be the case. Because the frames were lugged, tubing diameter was restricted to the same size for all frames, because oversized production-style (cheap) lugs simply did not exist. And, assuming your Nishiki was built this way, you're experiencing a design that works much better for smaller sizes than for what you ride. The move to welded aluminum removed many of the cost constraints that prevented using optimal designs for larger frame sizes, although it remained rare to see a company actually take advantage of this. But for the most part, even though it was technically easier to build a better, taller frame out of aluminum, manufacturers abandoned the concept of building taller frames in general, in an attempt to economize by optimizing their offerings for the most-popular sizes and getting rid of those that sold in small quantities. Getting back to Trek, the "lugs" used are made differently for different-sized frames. This adds very little cost, since each lugset is different for each size frame to begin with, requiring its own mold and layup schedule. It's not something that can be reshaped or cut & welded into a different configuration like a steel lug might be. So then, you ask, why hasn't Trek made the larger sizes available all along? Because the cost of each set of molds for each size of frame is *very* expensive, and fringe sizes quite likely won't amortize out the cost of the fittings (because the volume won't be high enough) before the model runs its course. --Mike Jacoubowsky Chain Reaction Bicycles www.ChainReaction.com Redwood City & Los Altos, CA USA "Chalo" wrote in message ... Mike Jacoubowsky wrote: Chalo wrote: | One significant implication is that very large and very small frames | have mostly vanished from the scene. Very small sizes have been a consumer "problem" for years. Customers shorter than, say, 5'2 or so, may very well benefit from having 650c wheels instead of 700c. But such bikes sit & rot on the floor, because they don't look "normal" or because some ill-advised friend says you don't want 650c wheels because you won't be able to get tires & tubes easily. But for the larger sizes, there is some hope. Completely out of the blue, Trek decided to build a 64cm Madone this year. We sell quite a few of them. For years, 62cm was the largest, so those over 6'3 were either difficult or impossible to fit. We have now successfully fit someone 6'7 to a high-quality road bike. High-quality road bike? I thought the Madone was made out of plastic and formed in a mold. I know it's expensive for what it is, but taken all together that would make Madones the equivalent of '80s Oakley sunglasses-- cooked up like polymer waffles and sold at an umpteen squillion percent markup. I have a 68cm Nishiki road frame, a 68cm Fuji road frame, and a 68cm Cannondale road frame, and in the past I had a 68cm Schwinn road frame. I find it a bit puzzling that the "technology" of making frames for all sizes of adults seems to have been lost. I'm especially puzzled in light of the fact that plastic Treks have always been lugged, and thus could have been made in just about any size, like the lugged frames of yore. Chalo |
#37
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Wal-Mart Italian Road Bike for $1198
With the addition of stem extenders and high rise, long stems
and many long seat posts available on the market, all my bikes are quite comfortable. That reminds me of the old Midas commercial where the competitor only has one model of muffler, and the mechanic says "fit? we'll MAKE it fit" and brings out a bunch of adapters and pipes. We explain (when we don't have the right size in stock, and somebody expects us to make something else fit) that we used to have an alternative that worked for all but those too-tall for our largest frame. A "rack" in our warehouse where we could stretch the customer to fit the frame. The problem was that we couldn't get adequate sound proofing to muffle the screams, and the noises would attract a very odd clientele to the shop. --Mike Jacoubowsky Chain Reaction Bicycles www.ChainReaction.com Redwood City & Los Altos, CA USA "SMS" wrote in message ... Stephen Harding wrote: With the addition of stem extenders and high rise, long stems and many long seat posts available on the market, all my bikes are quite comfortable. That reminds me of the old Midas commercial where the competitor only has one model of muffler, and the mechanic says "fit? we'll MAKE it fit" and brings out a bunch of adapters and pipes. What you're doing will work, but it's the wrong way of getting the bike to fit. |
#38
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Wal-Mart Italian Road Bike for $1198
Mike Jacoubowsky wrote:
Chalo wrote: I thought the Madone was made out of plastic and formed in a mold. I know it's expensive for what it is, but taken all together that would make Madones the equivalent of '80s Oakley sunglasses-- cooked up like polymer waffles and sold at an umpteen squillion percent markup. Plastic? That's like someone telling you that your Nishiki & Fuji & Cannondale are made from refined dirt. No, it's like saying they are made from "metal" rather than "quad- butted Valite!" Madone frames, like all CFRP frames, are made from charred polyacrylonitrile resin-- that's plastic, by the way-- in a matrix of epoxy resin. Which is, y'know, plastic. Plastic is the least marketing-termish thing you could call them. Chalo |
#39
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Wal-Mart Italian Road Bike for $1198
Chalo Colina wrote:
Mike Jacoubowsky wrote: Chalo wrote: I thought the Madone was made out of plastic and formed in a mold. I know it's expensive for what it is, but taken all together that would make Madones the equivalent of '80s Oakley sunglasses-- cooked up like polymer waffles and sold at an umpteen squillion percent markup. Plastic? That's like someone telling you that your Nishiki & Fuji & Cannondale are made from refined dirt. No, it's like saying they are made from "metal" rather than "quad- butted Valite!" Madone frames, like all CFRP frames, are made from charred polyacrylonitrile resin-- that's plastic, by the way-- in a matrix of epoxy resin. Which is, y'know, plastic. Plastic is the least marketing-termish thing you could call them. I thought plastic referred to non-recoverable deformation, not a material type. The correct term is polymer. -- Tom Sherman - Holstein-Friesland Bovinia The weather is here, wish you were beautiful |
#40
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Wal-Mart Italian Road Bike for $1198
On Sat, 3 May 2008 22:40:29 -0700 (PDT), Chalo
wrote: Madone frames, like all CFRP frames, are made from charred polyacrylonitrile resin-- that's plastic, by the way-- in a matrix of epoxy resin. Which is, y'know, plastic. Plastic is the least marketing-termish thing you could call them. I love my 08 Madone 6.9, its an awesome race bike. That said, my daily ride is an alloy track bike with front brake. Neither of them are exactly practical, but my steel-is-real tourer has barely been ridden in 9 months. Its time will come again. |
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