Werehatrack wrote:
On Wed, 6 Apr 2005 13:33:58 CST, wrote:

If that's true, now that the Tour de France (and all other races)
are
composed purely of aluminum and carbon bikes, what is the rate of
failures there? After all, these are bikes that are ridden more in a
month than most bicycles get ridden in their entire lifetime.

And in many cases, are then discarded. These are *racing* bikes.
They aren't intended to be racing 2 years from now because they'll be
2 years out of date at that point.

I've got a fairly convincing counterexample to that, and you'll hate
it, because it's composed entirely of fashion victims :-)

Seriously, there are an awful lot of riders who buy a bike "because
it's exactly what Lance rides". Somehow I can't imagine they throw
their bikes away every season, so either they keep riding them or
someone else does secondhand. My dad is currently riding the same
(make of) frame Lance won his second tour on, and I'm sure there are
many more like him. None of them are coming back with complaints, and
believe me if I'd dropped several thousand on a new bike I'd be
complaining if it broke any time soon.

While it is possible to buy a bike
substantially similar to many of those used in the TdF, doing so when
the intent is to obtain a *durable* product is the wrong approach.
Racing hardware, whether it's intended for cars, motorcycles,
skateboards or bikes, is oriented towards short-term performance, not
longevity. It doesn't have to be the best stuff for *any* use, it
just has to be the best for the specific event, for long enough to
get
to the end of the course.

Plus,
they get ridden outside in the rain, get bashed over cobblestone
roads
at high speed, and get washed with corrosive chemicals and blasted
with
a hose every single day of their lives.

And do you really think they don't also have multiple backup bikes,
techs to check them each day, and spares for everything that might
wear or fail?

The Cervelo guys were insisting in a cyclingnews interview that the CSC
riders rode the same bike for all the flat stages (including crashes,
which CSC seemed rather prone to in last year's tour). Reading various
mechanic's diaries, they (claim to) replace a lot less stuff than you'd
imagine. Even after Roubaix they won't be throwing any frames away.
Chains yes, tubs by the handful, frames no.

When WAS the last time a steel bike won any significant race, of any
kind, any where? I'm not old enough to remember.

Probably in the '70s, maybe the '80s. What of it? Those were
tissue-thin steel frames, not intended to be any more durable than
the
beer-can aluminum ones that replaced them. As with the new ones, a
bike for a high-end comepetitive TdF team hasn't been built for a
75000km life expectancy in a very long time. There's no reason to do
so; it's going to be retired at the end of the season, or maybe even
at the end of the race. It's been a long time since *that* wasn't
true.

Sticking with the same team, the Motorola team used to sell their
season's bikes on at the end of every year. I never heard tales of
people complaining about how their Lance mobile broke soon after being
bought, and I rather doubt Merckx (the Motorola sponsor at the time)
would have let anything with his name and the Motorola livery be ridden
if it was likely to break. The potential PR disaster just doesn't bear
thinking about.

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