Stiffer, happier and more productive

simonaspinall

Ok, so all bike manufacturers go on about their bikes bening lighter, stiffer, more comfortable....

Is there a measure/ratio of how stiff they are compared to other brands because every manufacturer just goes on and on and on and it is meaningless!

Can we then get a final league table.

In fact, why don't Bike Radar publish these stats in their reviews as they would be very useful and informative for the consumer. If you've got money to spend on shiny bike bits you'd want to know, wouldn't you?

joeyhalloran

would cost a lot to do and an independent tester would have nothing to gain (unless he was a millionaire with money to burn and wanted the best bike, so tested them personally. But then why would they bother sharing the results?).

You can test them by riding on them, but you won't be able to accurately put them in a table until you take them all to a lab.

alan_sherman

The german bike magazines test stiffness. Which is why some german brands are really stiff.

Bobbinogs

...and there was me thinking it was a useful link to viagra. Pah! Have to keep surfing...

simonaspinall

Shame - It's just that so many press releases and even bike reviews go on about stiffness etc that it loses all meaning - At least if you had some numbers you could do some comparable work - the figures could be submitted by the manufacturer themselves to save the cost of testing. This is of course a partial review, but it's what they have to prepare for datasheets and so forth.

What's stiffer/lighter/comfortable - Storck vs Pinarello vs Focus vs Canyon

And so on.

joeyhalloran

the other difficulty is apparenlty you want frame flex in certain places (I watched a video when they were designing the current Trek Madone), this adds extra complication in getting the test right (was this good flex or bad flex?, you need to be very accurate in knowing where the bike is flexing).

simonaspinall

JoeyHalloran wrote:

the other difficulty is apparenlty you want frame flex in certain places (I watched a video when they were designing the current Trek Madone), this adds extra complication in getting the test right (was this good flex or bad flex?, you need to be very accurate in knowing where the bike is flexing).

Good point...but it would be nice to have some sort of 'map' to show what stiffness means compared to other brands otherwise it's a useless statement.

"This bike is wondefully stiff.."
"XXXXXX have improved the stiffness but kept the weight down"
"xxxxxxx claim an increase of 20% extra stiffness despite losing 200g from the frame"

Drivel! What we want to know as consumers is "A (insert bike brand here) has improved their stiffness to weight ratio by 20%! It now stands about 3rd in the market for absolute stiffness and about mid performance of stiffness to weight compared to other brands"

Even if you had a technical line drawing of where the frame is stiff/flexy etc that'd be a huge bonus instead of listening to a bland press release being chugged out.

joeyhalloran

I agree, I am a timetrialist so have read various company statements saying each of thier bikes are definatively the fastest in wind tunnel test. Whats more is many actually have the results! They just change the test until they get the best results, publish the results while not revealing exactly how they did it.

I take comfort in the fact that at my power, the difference in flex between many top frames will be so small as to make next to no difference (certainly not going to win me any races).

Pretre

JoeyHalloran wrote:

I take comfort in the fact that at my power, the difference in flex between many top frames will be so small as to make next to no difference (certainly not going to win me any races).

+1

The only thing that would make me not buy a specific frame is if a test said it was uber-stiff & therefore uncomfortable for mere mortals but there are very few of these around nowadays - even the pro's like something they are not totally uncomfortable on

balthazar

Damon Rinard measured quite a few frames some years ago:

http://www.sheldonbrown.com/rinard/rina ... etest.html

He writes with clarity on the subject as well.