Ronde van Vlaanderen 2017 *spoilers*

maddog 2

Indeed.

gweeds

yourpaceormine wrote:

Pinno wrote:

Aah but with a slight suspension sort of thing - a coiled spring in the steerer.

Interesting:

Okay not an engineer, but I would imagine that spring must be ever so strong (or whatever the technical term is) to keep headset in the right place. Too sloppy and headset would be compromised. So if the spring has to be dead strong, what advantage will it give? Might offer some bounce hitting metre deep pot holes, but over juddery cobbles? Not forgetting that once compressed the headset will be fubar'd, and floppy sloppy.. Would have been more efficient putting the flex in the stem, like a, err flexstem from the eighties.

Going out on a limb I'm going to suggest that Specialized do have many engineers and they've probably sussed it pretty well.

Flexstems were shite. All the reviews of this one reckon it's a bit good.

rick_chasey

Also, note the chain catcher on his bike:

Omar Little

I briefly had 52/42 on a bike (someone in the bike shop had replaced the inner ring with the wrong size). I got chain suck when i tried to change gear on the rollers never mind on cobbles putting a lot of power down

philbar72

Pinno wrote:

dish_dash wrote:

Gweeds wrote:

Worse advert for their mechanics.

2 dropped chains and all for the sake of a £15 chain catcher.

Lefevre doesn't do marginal gains...

...or accurate time gaps. Sometimes he doesn't even bother.

read one of Cavs Biographies and the quickstep mechanics put a 170 crank arm on his 172.5 chainset, ahead of the 2014 tour. no wonder he never competed... seems they've a few duff mechanics...

rick_chasey

As per picture above, there is a chain catcher.

It got caught between the rings.