I also believe that this is a stupid thread since a bike's technology is... well.. elementary. Anyone can make a hi-tec bike. It's not a car. It's not an airplane. Building a high quality bike is really, really easy.
stella-azzurra: I have two italian bikes for many reasons. Looks, ride quality, heritage... I have ridden many bikes through the last 20 years and I still find that the huge experience many Italian manufacturers have cannot be neglected.

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Wilier Cento Uno
Colnago Master X-light
Wilier 18carati

Aren't you just contradicting yourself? If building a great bike is easy, design experience is irrelevant.

Nope, I think he's talking about the one that's an acronym for Toyo Rayon, that was founded 30 years before Raychem.

Really? all those millions being wasted in cycle development by manufacturers, if only they had realised!


@HammerTime2 oooohhhh, low blow!

I guess it's all relative to what the user likes.

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I'll drink to that Getter.

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Storck Fenomalist 6.3kg.
BMC Teammachine SLR01

I have many Italian bikes as well but still believe that the best bike is the one that fits craftsmanship aside.
These days each of the top manufacturers (mass and custom) have top notch bikes each with their strengths and weaknesses regardless of where the frame or component is made.

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I never took drugs to improve my performance at any time. I will be willing to stick my finger into a polygraph test if anyone with big media pull wants to take issue. If you buy a signed poster now it will not be tarnished later. --Graeme Obree

@ wingguy & stephen@fibre-lyte

I usually try to be precise although english is not my native language.
I was talking about a hi-tec/high quality bike from a manufacturing/materials point of view. I do not believe that every hi-tec bike rides great. There are expensive bikes of the highest standards that ride really bad (not comfortable, not good geometry, not balanced on the road, not lively etc. etc.) and less expensive bikes that have a really enjoyable ride quality (including some heavy steel frames).
You need some experience to understand all these of course. Otherwise you think that marketing and huge budgets always equals ride quality. That is not true.

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Wilier Cento Uno
Colnago Master X-light
Wilier 18carati

I agree with the last post, but your earlier post said that it was very easy to build a high quality bike. Regardless of the cost or the hi-tec methods involved (or not), building a high quality bike isn't easy. I do agree however that some inexpensive bikes can be as good to ride as some expensive bikes

It is very, very easy in comparison to a high quality car, or boat, or plane... Berk can design and produce a top frame himself without any serious RD or budget or engineers support team and he's like 18 years old

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Wilier Cento Uno
Colnago Master X-light
Wilier 18carati

Berk is a educated as an engineer. He knows his composite tech fairly well.
He does is own R&D. He has a budget (however limited and funded through other means).

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Exp001

Wait, what? Whole industry are full of worthless cars. If we're not talking about engine, car or boar is not that much more advanced than a bike. Bike is just smaller package. If anything, bike needs a lot more fine detail and precision. What we use on our bike finetuning titanium bolt lenghts and custom carbon fiber parts are F1 technology. Ordinary car compared to top notch bike is like comparing tetris to a spaceship. Many cars are assembled by robots in less than hour, many carbon fiber parts needs 20 hours by hand. Even glueing a fricking tub on takes 3 days to do it properly.
Berk would design and make car or boats body if he would be paid to do it.

That's BS. The tolerances on some of the modern engines and various other parts (especially drivetrain) are on the aeronautical level. Modern cars really are complex machines and some of their multimedia interfaces uses more electronic power than the Eagle lunarlander in the 1969. Building a brand new model in car industry is currently a multi million dolar investment, so it's really not comparable to the bikes.

Do bike use advanced composite technology? Yes, but the are away from the Aeronautical industry, motorsport industry and in some cases automotive industry. But the mechanical engineering, not to mention electronics are from a completely different planet on bikes.

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A light bike does replace good fitness.

and being grounded regularly these days apparently

What makes you think that tolerances used when manufacturing a bike are any different to those when manufacturing parts for a car?



Not taking anything away from Berk, but are you trying to say that his frame is at the absolute cutting edge and all those known brand manufacturers are wasting their time (and multi million pound budgets) in development? For that matter, what is it about Berks frame that appeals to you? Have you ridden it?

For the record, our special projects engineer built his own time trial frame, fork and wheel set including deep rim front and tri spoke rear, all in carbon, back in the mid nineties, almost twenty years ago. I'm sure that he'd tell you that he could have done a lot more with a multi million pound budget

I do not want to take anything away from Berk either but ask yourself, he has built 4 maybe 5 frames? Berk is definitely a very talented young man. Super thoughtful and I like him a lot. There just simply isn't enough production, testing and data points to validate the work as an end all benchmark.

I just handed carbon crumpton #390(over a 9.5 year period) to my painter the other day. I am 47 years old and still do not know what I do not know. But I know as a single entity, repetition and volume brings experience. I'll get there some day.

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www.crumptoncycles.com