Column: The Joy of Flex | Get your Singletrack Issue 141 sneak peek

The following is an excerpt from the first column published by our new Technical Manager, Benji Haworth. This column will be published in full in the …

By singletrackmag

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Look forward to reading this… I suspect it might be met with some “robust” debate.

What I would say is that unless you cover a bike with strain gauges and a datalogger you won’t truly know what’s going on.

Torsional might be a useful word in any article about frame flex

Seatposts also flex vertically for the same reason as your handlebar argument. I make frames with bent seat tubes (wheel clearance for short chainstays) and the actual angle of the post ends up around 67 degrees (effective angle is about 72 deg), so with a 27.2 post you can see and feel a bit of flex.

Day job is an engineering lab with strain gauges and rigs, but bikes are a hobby and I really can’t be arsed investigating further 🙂

I was surprised by how much wheels flexed vertically when I saw this: https://youtu.be/YWW1fPHnK1k – other wheels may vary, of course.