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I'd love to try a smartweld! As above, alu frames can be great but you are out of the shit-carbon price bracket at £1300
640 quid over at [url= http://www.hargrovescycles.co.uk/specialized-allez-e5-frameset.html?gclid=COqzpMjqicYCFQ-WtAodynQApQ ]Hargroves[/url]. I'd rather that over a 640 quid carbon frame.
Stop it! Links should be banned...
Stiffness more to do with design and build rather than some inherent property in the material
indirectly due to the material property.
Simplistically:
Aluminium fails from fatigue.
Flexing causes fatigue.
Stiffness reduces flexing.
And most effective way of stiffening a tube is to increase its diameter hence the traditional fat tubed, stiff ally frame.
Probably a fair amount of "precautionary principle" when ally MTBs became popular and were all massively oversized, manufucturers a little more sophisticated and knowledgeable now.
Aluminium fails from fatigue.
Flexing causes fatigue.
Makes you wonder why airplane wings aren't constantly falling off due to fatigue 😉
I've been riding my new Spesh e5 as linked to above for the last few weeks
Apart from some anoying bb noise that maybe my used Chainset it's been great.
Feels far quicker than my normal Ti merlin road bike just not as comfy
Not that that was a great surprise and also what I wanted.
I've been very pleased with it and feels nicer to me than the cheap carbon bikes I've ridden
Makes you wonder why airplane wings aren't constantly falling off due to fatigue
Don't tell him they're glued on!
You mean they don't?
I also moved to CAAD10 a year ago, from a Giant Defy 2, based on.... it looked nice in the shop and seemed to fit. If a bike makes you happy, go ride it. Not sure about all this vertical, lateral compliance, but once I get some of them new bouncy wheels, I'm sure I'll only need one bike for everything.
As a (mainly) mountainbiker, I stuck with Alu because I know I'll end up bunny hopping, dropping it or bouncing off something sometime soon....
(nice stealth build btw Bigdug)
cheers Holmesey
The new Boardmans have some of the nicest detailing I've ever seen in an alloy frame.
jameso - Member
...Merckx and Hinault did ok on skinny steel tubes. Ever see that old video of Hinault launching up the lower ramps of Alpe d'Huez in the big ring? I'd probably call those frames whippy but I couldn't blame them for 'loss of power' ...
I have often wondered if that's why it seemed easier to pull a whopping big ring on my SS in the old days.
Specialized doing some real interesting things with a new Allez ([url= http://www.bikeradar.com/road/news/article/specialized-allez-sprint-drops-hammer-on-carbon-44867/ ]here[/url]).
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Saw that on another forum, I don't like specialized but I really like the look of that for some reason.
They now have a version of that Allez DSW Sprint up there ^^^ that takes a front mech ([url= http://www.bikerumor.com/2016/02/19/specialized-dsw-sprint-goes-x2-with-new-front-derailleur-compatible-frameset/ ]here[/url]). Like it a lot.
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