Tech stuff – do people REALLY know…

what they are talking about or do they just remember marketing spiel (for and against) and role it out when necessary? At the end of the day a bike is a bike is a bike. We are not driving F1 cars!

Sometimes they do and sometimes they don’t. Gather evidence opions and make your own mind up. Some folk on here appear to have a lot of good tech knowledge – some just spout marketing bollox

That is one of the most sensable things you have ever said, this industry is getting as bad as the hifi industry and full of pretensious hype

When a manifacturer says this years model is far better than last years model, are they realy saying there last years model was a pile of crap???

yes they are only bikes

“We are not driving F1 cars”
there is a lot of F1 in modern cars …

Knottie – take things out of context and make it mean what you want!!

At the end of the day a bike is a bike is a bike. We are not driving F1 cars!

Mr K

What F1 technology is im my Picasso???????????????

What TJ said. TBH its mostly the suspension aspect were I think the most confusing/bollox/techincal stuff is spouted.

talking about knowing what your talking about/doing.
can someone tell me how to shorten brake hoses and bleed brakes.

It depends, I tend to believe posts more if it’s worded from an ownership perspective, especially if they’re stating flaws of a product. Too many people will claim what they own is the best.

Sometimes you need to step back and appreciate all most riders need is something that is reliable and confident inspiring as they’re never going to use the full potential of their equipment. Always trying to get the ‘best’ is pointless if you’re not concentrating on the weakest component, the rider.

you only have to look at turner bikes releasing the best suspension system ever every 2 years even though they borrow the design from somebody else.
plenty of people on here buy the bullcrap sprouted from the likes of turner, ellsworth, ventana etc and are happy to pay over the odds for them.
they don’t do it for the ride quality but how they feel inside when seen at trail center car parks or posting pics on here.

can someone tell me how to shorten brake hoses and bleed brakes.

http://www.hopegb.com/page_mep_force_33.html

Lots more here

http://www.hopegb.com/page_mep_force_4.html

Bet ur Picasso has Traction control of some sort and crumple zones?
Both of those are derived from F1 and high end motorsport.

Manufacturer’s website for detailed tech info
Park Tools/Sheldon for ‘how to do’
Bike forums for tales of woe/conspiracy theories/octopus adventures with rocks

😉

ABS and stability control both derive from motorsport too.

here we go again people talking with authority – what does the original question ask fellas?

I wrote my Thesis on bike suspension systems, but that was nearly ten years ago, so I just attempt to filter all the marketing bull, try stuff out practically and take as much stuff apart as possible.

Actually designing a bike (even a hardtail; ask brant) is really hard in reality if you’re doing it from the ground up, so I think all the cpmponent, frame and suspension designers out there are doing an amazing job.

I really believe we are involved in one of the most tech savvy sports though; besides all that stuff is nearly as fun as actually riding the things!

The problem with forums is people tend to make stuff snowball and rumors soon become ‘known facts’

plenty of people on here buy the bullcrap sprouted from the likes of turner, ellsworth, ventana etc and are happy to pay over the odds for them.

mr smith, what would you prescribe we buy then, that is just has good but cheaper.

I think all the cpmponent, frame and suspension designers out there are doing an amazing job.

…apart from hope who are unable to design a brake lever that sits in a good position next any of the current (or past) gear shiters.

ABS and stability control both derive from motorsport too.

it’s development possibly but it was the aviation industry that used it first.

There are subtle changes to products from year to year, be it damping on a fork or s slightly different bead on a tyre this doesn’t mean that manufactures will make a new casting or pattern on a tyre. It’s like your car, the shape may not have changed but the bits inside have been improved…

mr smith, what would you prescribe we buy then, that is just has good but cheaper.

buy whatever makes you happy, it’s your money (or the banks if you are one of those people who lives on credit)
any of the numerous £1k frames (or cheaper if you buy a whole bike) that use the same suspension. like a giant/maestro, commencal, kona etc or any of the european brands that use a true 4-bar, or a whole pitch pro for not much over 1k.
often the warranty is better than many of the bullcrap brands, though i suppose a marin doesn’t get the same appreciation from your peers.

So true Stato. So true. Somebody certainly caught napping on that one.

At the end of the day it’s easy enough to spot marketing bollox (the companies with the biggest budgets, funnily enough are more guilty of it than the smaller operators). How many times have Trek / Specialized / Gary Fisher ‘revolutionised’ the Mountain Bike in the past 10 years by giving us new look or a pivot in a new position that makes no difference whatsoever?

Then you get people like Turner who use the FSR design for 10 years until the license got too restrictive, tweaks it for a couple of years then lands on the DW link. Oh yes, it’s all marketing bollox from Dave, the man doesn’t actually care how his bikes ride… 🙄

If you want to point a finger at a company that places Marketeering over Engineering you’ve got to look no further than Marzocchi. Can you imagine the design meetings? Boss: “How can we make our new line of forks (the same as last years but with more ‘street’ graphics) appeal to the buyers?”, Lackey: “We show the forks with scantily clad ‘Ladies’, Sir!”

Ummm… time for my tablet methinks.

/edit/ I don’t ride a Turner, for the record.

It’s all BS imo…….

The view from inside….

It’s a companies job to part you from your cash as regularly as possible. To do this they need to make you think you are upgrading for positive reasons, ie. “i’m buying this because it is so much better”, rather than ‘ last years never worked”.

The easiest way to do this is to sell you on the differences. They might not be huge differences, so the marketers art is pitching these in the correct way to stimulate maximum interest.

Though they might be true the following marketing campaigns aren’t likely to help increase sales.

Fox forks: Largely unchanged since 2002.
Boxer World Cup Solo Air 2009: Long legged Totems for ridiculous money.
Marzocchi 2009 forks: Bigger breasts in the adverts to blind you to continuing bearing slop.

Trust me on this, marketing guys would love to write things just like they are, as above, but we’d be out of a job pretty damn sharp. Flowery marketing prose helps sell gear. None technical users lap it up and replay it verbatim, as if it’s fact. Replay it often enough and it is fact.

Sometimes you need to step back and appreciate all most riders need is something that is reliable and confident inspiring as they’re never going to use the full potential of their equipment. Always trying to get the ‘best’ is pointless if you’re not concentrating on the weakest component, the rider.

Well said solamanda and so true. I’ve seen SO many people (not just in MTB) who will buy something because it’s the latest ‘must-have’ or because it’s what they *want* (cf *need*) often without realising that actually that money would have been better spent on a Skills Day for them to improve their riding.
I don’t really have a problem with AGNI types (after all, the industry thrives on them), it’s when they believe that they can buy their way to being a better rider that problems start.

If you want to point a finger at a company that places Marketeering over Engineering you’ve got to look no further than Marzocchi. Can you imagine the design meetings? Boss: “How can we make our new line of forks (the same as last years but with more ‘street’ graphics) appeal to the buyers?”, Lackey: “We show the forks with scantily clad ‘Ladies’, Sir!”

I don’t know about Marzocchi putting marketing over engineering tbh, round the time the original Bomber range came out they gave the bike suspension market a good kick up the backside. Rockshox were still playing with elastomers and coils that felt like a pogo stick, the fact they upped their game to where they are now is because Marzocchi pushed the market forwards.

Having said that, the current Rockshox range is back on top imo.

The ‘tech’ stuff that irritates me though is the attitude of ‘you can’t put those forks on that frame’ and ‘you can’t ride that with that bike’. Half the developments that led to each bike becoming built for specific purpose was users mixing things up for the variety of stuff they ride, before long travel HT frames, people just stuck long travel forks on HT frames. Sure the geometry wasn’t ‘designed’ for it, but thats what people did and the design followed later.

We are not driving F1 cars!

Have you not seen the Scott Genius?

some know, some dont, i do, i dont

depends on the question.

charlierevell – Member
Bet ur Picasso has Traction control of some sort and crumple zones?

Traction control with 90bhp FFS

it’s got a digital dash if that counts

You only have to look at the combination of people using the line “I’m an engineer” to support their incorrect ideas and the fact that when you do try and explain things in real engineering terms you get shouted down by those who’ve been taken in by all the marketing spiel. My favourite bugbear is the idea that a “flexy” steel or ti frame with less than 1mm of vertical travel is somehow significantly more comfy than a stiff alu frame when both are fitted with 50mm of air suspension where a few psi difference make more difference in softness of the ride compared to the difference in the frames.

The majority of us have neither the time, money nor inclination to be constantly trying out the various designs and materials (be that frames, forks, clothing, tyres). So, the opinions of journalists and other users becomes very important. If the journalists decide to look after their careers by maintaining the facade of constant improvement, it leaves us with nowhere to get independent advice. “Try everything out before you buy”? Not really an option for the majority is it?

So – we’re left with picking up the scraps of information available and using these to formulate our own opinions. No wonder then that you’ll hear the same stuff repeated.

Personally, I never comment on anything I have no experience of. So, if someone asks about FS frames, I’m happy to compare my Spesh FSR and my Meta 5. Then it stops. If someone asks about Ti as a frame material, I’m happy to compare it with my steel Inbred. But don’t ask me why things are different – I can only report how it feels to me.

As for suspension settings etc. I usually just set everything in the “middle” and go ride it.

We are not driving F1 cars!

Gordon Murray said of F1 “..they’re almost built to the standards of modern mountain bike components..”

sq225917:
Fox forks: Largely unchanged since 2002.

I wouldn’t be buying some TALAS 36RCs this weekend if they still had a bolt on axle.

As I said before, half the fun is reading mags, getting involved in forums, doing the research and buying new stuff!

mr smith, what would you prescribe we buy then, that is just has good but cheaper.

Specilalized, Trek, GT, Diamond Back, Commencal, Giant, Scott……. add any other decent, large, mainstream manufacturer of your choice.
Probably not as ‘nice’ or won’t make you feel as ‘good’ but just as good. Better in some cases…. much better….

mr smith, what would you prescribe we buy then, that is just has good but cheaper.

Than a ventana or a turner well a kona indeed…
I did fall in the “niche” trap. My two first FS were rocky mountains. A fanatic (like a element race) and the first switch.
Was there a difference between the switch and a stinky in terms of riding, well very little. To be honest I have tried plenty of kona at this time and couldn’t really find any of them being very different than the switch. They were just cheaper than the RM. Then you could argue the attention to detail, and quality of build are better on the RM. But that is hardly going to change the quality of the ride.

MTB industrie is like japanses motorbikes industrie. Each year the new gsxrbusa-x9-r1 is much better than the previous year model that already was the best bike in the world…

However if you buy a bike without trying it you are an idiot…

I ride a bike like Swiss Tony rides a lady, long smooth and alot of attention.

he doesn’t mince tho hora

What F1 technology is im my Picasso???????????????

Cigarette lighter.

Certainly there is a lot of hype and most of it should be ignored. A lot of detail of suspension design is actually pretty complex and not so easy to understand without drawing up a full set of models etc, so hard to prove or disprove at initial inspection, which is why its not as easy to sort the wheat from the chaff. Certainly bikes with the same type of suspension but slightly tweaked geometry can handle differently, but it’s unlikely to be very much differently. As with the comment above regarding frame materials – I too see no reason why steel or ti should be noticably different in handling, but I suspect this is not what people are “noticing” – they’re noticing the reduction in things like trail-buzz and other low amplitude but higher frequency noise which isnt ironed out by forks very well and acn be amplified by the tyres airspace in a resonant sort of fashion. Having never conducted experiments in controlled conditions with identical-geometry frames of different materials its difficult to tell, which is why people go by general opinion. As for frame design being very complex etc – to some extent, yes, but I think you’ll find that what happens is the guys that come up with a truly innovative design do some impressive work, but the rest of the time it’s just slight drawing adjustments to existing designs churned out in china, and the innovative designs are fairly quickly copied more often than not. Certainly when I worked in “the industry” as a lowly mechanic/webby and looked at importing some frames, talking with the manufacturer you could basically ask/see what large manufacturer was buying which models from their catalogue and then ask for say…an extra gusset there, or move the cable lugs from there to there and make them this style instead, or change this style of chainstay for the ones that are on such and such a persons frame design etc.

As in every other area of life, its full of opinion, people who know a lot, people who think they know a lot and people who know nothing but claim to know a lot and people who have no idea and just wait to be handed info.

What F1 technology is im my Picasso???????????????

Disc brakes. Fuel injsection.

I think some companies trade on that kind of marketing – their stuff is the best thing ever each year – but not all. Ellsworth spring to mind – how can they justify making their frames so expensive when they are functionally the same as say Specialized?

Other companies like say, Orange, seem to just make frames and tell you why they like them that way, and bring something new out every so often. Their new bikes are just a tweaking of their old ones – like the Alpine 5. It reflects the changing way people ride.