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#12
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Carry On About Steel
On 11/16/2016 12:41 PM, wrote:
On Monday, November 14, 2016 at 9:37:17 PM UTC-8, wrote: On Monday, November 14, 2016 at 6:09:49 PM UTC-6, sms wrote: On 11/14/2016 11:40 AM, wrote: On Monday, November 14, 2016 at 10:09:35 AM UTC-6, wrote: And it seems like more and more people are coming to these conclusions as well. Locally the sales of CF road bikes have dropped off too dramatically at least one more bike shop has gone out of business and another is only open half time. The local steel bike specialist appears to be improving. Odd conclusions you have. Lets come up with more rational conclusions. 1. How do you know carbon fiber bike sales have dropped off? Do you have sales data from all the bike shops? Observing the bikes you see on the road or trail is not too precise. They have dropped off in 2016. Because global road bike sales fell dramatically in 2016. No real way to know if steel bicycle sales are up since since steel road bikes are now such a minuscule part of the market. Can you point to where you gathered this information? Are global road bike sales down? Declining high-end road bike sales are real problem for shops that depended on those sales to survive. Proof that high end bike sales are down? Or are high end (carbon) still the same but overall bike sales are down? Thus the cheaper steel and aluminum bikes had a drop but carbon stayed the same. On TV and the internet I see stories of car sales being at all time highs in 2016. Sales figures for Ford, GM, Fiat, VW, Toyota, Honda are frequently cited. But have never seen anything similar for bikes. Is there any public information for the revenues of Trek, Giant, Specialized? There has been a LARGE growth in bicycle sales but almost entirely in the lower grades. The statistics are not presently available since we are not i the new year yet so this data is entirely word of mouth. But this increase in large cities is very plain especially with those that are the most bicycle friendly. What I have noticed over the last couple of years is that the "pelotons" of college students that were commonly as large as 100 members have completely disappeared. Is this due to an increasing economy making cars available to this same age group? Or is it because racing has disappeared from open TV? The popularity of cycle racing in Europe is almost entirely due to the fact that EVERYONE lives near when major races pass. This is different in the US where in order to spur growth you MUST have televised races. The Tour of California was only two days in Northern California this year and it wasn't televised and the numbers of spectators was shockingly low from two years ago. With some experience in retail, besides the bike shop, I can tell you that when sales are off all levels of management have a gazillion theories or excuses. When they're up, it's always attributed to management genius. -- Andrew Muzi www.yellowjersey.org/ Open every day since 1 April, 1971 |
#13
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Carry On About Steel
On 11/16/2016 1:09 PM, AMuzi wrote:
snip With some experience in retail, besides the bike shop, I can tell you that when sales are off all levels of management have a gazillion theories or excuses. When they're up, it's always attributed to management genius. LOL. But still, market saturation is a fact of life. --- This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software. https://www.avast.com/antivirus |
#14
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Carry On About Steel
On Wed, 16 Nov 2016 15:09:20 -0600, AMuzi wrote:
On 11/16/2016 12:41 PM, wrote: On Monday, November 14, 2016 at 9:37:17 PM UTC-8, wrote: On Monday, November 14, 2016 at 6:09:49 PM UTC-6, sms wrote: On 11/14/2016 11:40 AM, wrote: On Monday, November 14, 2016 at 10:09:35 AM UTC-6, wrote: And it seems like more and more people are coming to these conclusions as well. Locally the sales of CF road bikes have dropped off too dramatically at least one more bike shop has gone out of business and another is only open half time. The local steel bike specialist appears to be improving. Odd conclusions you have. Lets come up with more rational conclusions. 1. How do you know carbon fiber bike sales have dropped off? Do you have sales data from all the bike shops? Observing the bikes you see on the road or trail is not too precise. They have dropped off in 2016. Because global road bike sales fell dramatically in 2016. No real way to know if steel bicycle sales are up since since steel road bikes are now such a minuscule part of the market. Can you point to where you gathered this information? Are global road bike sales down? Declining high-end road bike sales are real problem for shops that depended on those sales to survive. Proof that high end bike sales are down? Or are high end (carbon) still the same but overall bike sales are down? Thus the cheaper steel and aluminum bikes had a drop but carbon stayed the same. On TV and the internet I see stories of car sales being at all time highs in 2016. Sales figures for Ford, GM, Fiat, VW, Toyota, Honda are frequently cited. But have never seen anything similar for bikes. Is there any public information for the revenues of Trek, Giant, Specialized? There has been a LARGE growth in bicycle sales but almost entirely in the lower grades. The statistics are not presently available since we are not i the new year yet so this data is entirely word of mouth. But this increase in large cities is very plain especially with those that are the most bicycle friendly. What I have noticed over the last couple of years is that the "pelotons" of college students that were commonly as large as 100 members have completely disappeared. Is this due to an increasing economy making cars available to this same age group? Or is it because racing has disappeared from open TV? The popularity of cycle racing in Europe is almost entirely due to the fact that EVERYONE lives near when major races pass. This is different in the US where in order to spur growth you MUST have televised races. The Tour of California was only two days in Northern California this year and it wasn't televised and the numbers of spectators was shockingly low from two years ago. With some experience in retail, besides the bike shop, I can tell you that when sales are off all levels of management have a gazillion theories or excuses. When they're up, it's always attributed to management genius. Or, one might say, everyone is eager to accept the responsibility for success and far less eager to accept the blame for failure :-) |
#15
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Carry On About Steel
On Wednesday, November 16, 2016 at 6:32:19 PM UTC, wrote:
On Monday, November 14, 2016 at 6:30:24 PM UTC-8, Andre Jute wrote: wrote While trying to think of how to quantify this I still do not have a calculation but it would be very complex. I have steel and aluminium (what you call aluminum) bikes that are very similar, and outitted very similarly. I have written here and elsewhere about the ways in which a steel bike is more comfortable and inspires more confidence when you're hanging it on the limit. It may be because I'm sensitive to microvibrations and generally interested in ergonomics, but in my opinion a good deal of the greater usability of steel bikes (compared to ali -- I don't have a plastic bike at all) will eventually be traced to steel, or the construction methods of steel bikes, or some other factor forced on steel bikes by the peculiarities of the material (tube thickness, wall dimension), resulting in better control of microvibrations. This suspicion of mine is reinforced by experience with wide low pressure bicycle tyres ("balloons"; "29ers") and softly-sprung, long travel but firmly damped automobile suspensions. The difference between a steel and an ali bike at the end of a long day in the saddle is too large not to have a physical explanation; it aint just the psychosomatics resident in pride of ownership. As for quantifying it, good luck. Andre Jute There's more to materials than Timoshenko ever dreamed of Here's your whole original post. Nothing more from me in this post. On Monday, November 14, 2016 at 4:09:35 PM UTC, wrote: Frank - Doing another 50 mile ride yesterday I concentrated on the feel of the bike. Originally I removed all of the parts from my Colnago Dream Reflux (all al save fork) and put them on the Eddy Merckx Corsa Extra. On the Colnago you HAD to get out of the saddle on bumps whereas on the Eddy, which is a stiff steel bike, I simply didn't need to. The difference in the impact on your body is so marked that you simply cannot question it. And because of this lower impact you have far less fear of cornering and hitting a bump in the middle of it. I find that descending very fast on twisty roads to be easy when I was always nervous on other materials. Now there WERE flexy comfortable AL and CF bikes like the Vitus and my Look 247 but these appear to have gone out of date. While trying to think of how to quantify this I still do not have a calculation but it would be very complex. And it seems like more and more people are coming to these conclusions as well. Locally the sales of CF road bikes have dropped off too dramatically at least one more bike shop has gone out of business and another is only open half time. The local steel bike specialist appears to be improving. Though I wonder how much has to do with CF bikes now looking so massive while a steel bike looks so simply in comparison. You could be right but I feel that it's more a matter of control because steel doesn't have the same impact resistance of other materials. Or perhaps I should say it does not have the same impact resistance to the modern bikes that are super light and hence have to be made extremely stiff to avoid breaking the materials. I have a Look KG247 that is a VERY soft riding carbon fiber bike with aluminum lugs. But it weighs equal to a light steel bike. Vitus and Alan aluminum bikes are slightly lighter than steel and ride very comfortably but do NOT lend confidence under heavy going. But the new "light" bikes are just on the edge of strength and are extremely stiff riding. I really didn't like my C40 though it was so light that you could feel a definite difference in climbing speed. And my mostly CF Colnago Dream HP while a nice bike simply isn't as comfortable as my Eddy Merckx which weighs only two lbs more. Yeah. However, how high up the scale can you go racing these days with a two-pound penalty? I have no problem with the first approach to a hypothesis arising from someone's personal perception of a problem. On the contrary, it seems to me that's more often the case than not, even in engineering. A lot of the theory floating around bicycle engineering sees the light of day precisely because first the engineer was a cyclist, which in turn inspired an often practical question, which was then reformulated as a hypothesis so that the research could be respectable instead of a bee in a hobbyist's bonnet... Andre Jute Why should passion be excluded from research? |
#16
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Carry On About Steel
On Wednesday, November 16, 2016 at 5:14:03 PM UTC-8, Andre Jute wrote:
On Wednesday, November 16, 2016 at 6:32:19 PM UTC, wrote: On Monday, November 14, 2016 at 6:30:24 PM UTC-8, Andre Jute wrote: wrote While trying to think of how to quantify this I still do not have a calculation but it would be very complex. I have steel and aluminium (what you call aluminum) bikes that are very similar, and outitted very similarly. I have written here and elsewhere about the ways in which a steel bike is more comfortable and inspires more confidence when you're hanging it on the limit. It may be because I'm sensitive to microvibrations and generally interested in ergonomics, but in my opinion a good deal of the greater usability of steel bikes (compared to ali -- I don't have a plastic bike at all) will eventually be traced to steel, or the construction methods of steel bikes, or some other factor forced on steel bikes by the peculiarities of the material (tube thickness, wall dimension), resulting in better control of microvibrations. This suspicion of mine is reinforced by experience with wide low pressure bicycle tyres ("balloons"; "29ers") and softly-sprung, long travel but firmly damped automobile suspensions. The difference between a steel and an ali bike at the end of a long day in the saddle is too large not to have a physical explanation; it aint just the psychosomatics resident in pride of ownership. As for quantifying it, good luck. Andre Jute There's more to materials than Timoshenko ever dreamed of Here's your whole original post. Nothing more from me in this post. On Monday, November 14, 2016 at 4:09:35 PM UTC, wrote: Frank - Doing another 50 mile ride yesterday I concentrated on the feel of the bike. Originally I removed all of the parts from my Colnago Dream Reflux (all al save fork) and put them on the Eddy Merckx Corsa Extra. On the Colnago you HAD to get out of the saddle on bumps whereas on the Eddy, which is a stiff steel bike, I simply didn't need to. The difference in the impact on your body is so marked that you simply cannot question it. And because of this lower impact you have far less fear of cornering and hitting a bump in the middle of it. I find that descending very fast on twisty roads to be easy when I was always nervous on other materials. Now there WERE flexy comfortable AL and CF bikes like the Vitus and my Look 247 but these appear to have gone out of date. While trying to think of how to quantify this I still do not have a calculation but it would be very complex. And it seems like more and more people are coming to these conclusions as well. Locally the sales of CF road bikes have dropped off too dramatically at least one more bike shop has gone out of business and another is only open half time. The local steel bike specialist appears to be improving. Though I wonder how much has to do with CF bikes now looking so massive while a steel bike looks so simply in comparison. You could be right but I feel that it's more a matter of control because steel doesn't have the same impact resistance of other materials. Or perhaps I should say it does not have the same impact resistance to the modern bikes that are super light and hence have to be made extremely stiff to avoid breaking the materials. I have a Look KG247 that is a VERY soft riding carbon fiber bike with aluminum lugs. But it weighs equal to a light steel bike. Vitus and Alan aluminum bikes are slightly lighter than steel and ride very comfortably but do NOT lend confidence under heavy going. But the new "light" bikes are just on the edge of strength and are extremely stiff riding. I really didn't like my C40 though it was so light that you could feel a definite difference in climbing speed. And my mostly CF Colnago Dream HP while a nice bike simply isn't as comfortable as my Eddy Merckx which weighs only two lbs more. Yeah. However, how high up the scale can you go racing these days with a two-pound penalty? I have no problem with the first approach to a hypothesis arising from someone's personal perception of a problem. On the contrary, it seems to me that's more often the case than not, even in engineering. A lot of the theory floating around bicycle engineering sees the light of day precisely because first the engineer was a cyclist, which in turn inspired an often practical question, which was then reformulated as a hypothesis so that the research could be respectable instead of a bee in a hobbyist's bonnet... Andre Jute Why should passion be excluded from research? That's a problem but somewhere in these groups someone said that they had built a 16 lb EL steel bike. I wrote to the UCI and asked them not to reduce their weight limit and got a polite letter back saying that it isn't their fault if people are willing to kill themselves buying a 10 lb bike and riding it for more than a couple of months. Racers presently have new frames to use almost every other race. And that is with the 16 lb limit. Imagine what is going to happen when the UCI takes the weight limit away completely. It won't take too many deaths before sports riders are turned completely off and stop riding. Most are family people that don't want to die simply from using the latest and greatest. |
#17
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Carry On About Steel
On 11/17/2016 8:08 AM, wrote:
snip That's a problem but somewhere in these groups someone said that they had built a 16 lb EL steel bike. I wrote to the UCI and asked them not to reduce their weight limit and got a polite letter back saying that it isn't their fault if people are willing to kill themselves buying a 10 lb bike and riding it for more than a couple of months. Racers presently have new frames to use almost every other race. And that is with the 16 lb limit. Imagine what is going to happen when the UCI takes the weight limit away completely. It won't take too many deaths before sports riders are turned completely off and stop riding. Most are family people that don't want to die simply from using the latest and greatest. You would think that the bicycle manufacturers would not want to market these fragile road bicycles for fear of lawsuits when they start breaking. The days of bicycles being expected to last 25+ years are over, but you still expect a $5000+ road bicycle to last more than a year. --- This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software. https://www.avast.com/antivirus |
#18
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Carry On About Steel
On Thursday, November 17, 2016 at 4:08:55 PM UTC, wrote:
On Wednesday, November 16, 2016 at 5:14:03 PM UTC-8, Andre Jute wrote: On Wednesday, November 16, 2016 at 6:32:19 PM UTC, wrote: But the new "light" bikes are just on the edge of strength and are extremely stiff riding. I really didn't like my C40 though it was so light that you could feel a definite difference in climbing speed. And my mostly CF Colnago Dream HP while a nice bike simply isn't as comfortable as my Eddy Merckx which weighs only two lbs more. Yeah. However, how high up the scale can you go racing these days with a two-pound penalty? I have no problem with the first approach to a hypothesis arising from someone's personal perception of a problem. On the contrary, it seems to me that's more often the case than not, even in engineering. A lot of the theory floating around bicycle engineering sees the light of day precisely because first the engineer was a cyclist, which in turn inspired an often practical question, which was then reformulated as a hypothesis so that the research could be respectable instead of a bee in a hobbyist's bonnet... Andre Jute Why should passion be excluded from research? That's a problem but somewhere in these groups someone said that they had built a 16 lb EL steel bike. I wrote to the UCI and asked them not to reduce their weight limit and got a polite letter back saying that it isn't their fault if people are willing to kill themselves buying a 10 lb bike and riding it for more than a couple of months. Racers presently have new frames to use almost every other race. And that is with the 16 lb limit. Imagine what is going to happen when the UCI takes the weight limit away completely.. It won't take too many deaths before sports riders are turned completely off and stop riding. Most are family people that don't want to die simply from using the latest and greatest. It's a sad reflection when an important function of the regulatory body of a sport becomes saving the stupid from themselves. I think Scharfie, in his reply to you, has it right: the manufacturers will eventually be stopped by the cost of liability lawsuits; their insurers will step in. Andre Jute Behind the scenes |
#19
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Carry On About Steel
By the way, my current steel bike is marching on for ten years and I expect it to see me out. It wasn't built stupid-light, though.
Andre Jute Not a fashion victim |
#20
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Carry On About Steel
On Thursday, November 17, 2016 at 2:28:20 PM UTC-8, Andre Jute wrote:
By the way, my current steel bike is marching on for ten years and I expect it to see me out. It wasn't built stupid-light, though. Andre Jute Not a fashion victim My Eddy Merckx and Basso are 30 years old and I expect them to last long after I'm dead and gone. And no jokes about them killing me....... |
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