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Re: Cervélo 2015 lineup

Posted: Sat Aug 16, 2014 1:34 pm
by phatphuk
Permon wrote:I think it is much simplier that all of you guys think..... lets look at the paintjobs .... they are cheap!...

You know OP? You could be right after all. Now that I think about it, it could be much simpler than either I or anybody else have guessed at up until now.

Could it be as simple as Cervelo looking around the web in this forum and the hundreds of other forums out there and seen all the pictures of the thousands upon thousands of colorless, non-descript, look-alike bikes that are all the rage these days?

Could it be that Cervelo have seen where people are taking brand new bikes with expertly-applied, expensive, distinctive paint-jobs and stripping them down to the dull charcoal gray of the raw carbon so that their bikes look exactly like the millions of others on the bandwagon?

Could it be that Cervelo have surmised from what they see that the masses don't want "Stylish", "Distinctive" paint jobs that add just the right touch of "Understated panache" to the finish of the bike? Could it be that they've realized that it appears what the masses want instead are "Mediocre", "Non-distinct", "Boring" looking paint jobs stripped of color and style?

It could be. Couldn't it?

Could Cervelo have arrived at this...

Image
The range-topping R series bike, the R5 DA Di2, now comes with HED's super wide Ardennes+ LT wheelset and Continental's GP SLs in 25c size. The complete bike is priced at £7,199 - Warren Rossiter / Immediate Media

...from thinking along these lines?

Some Suit (in an imagined Marketing meeting) wrote:...Right. We've seen all the pictures of stealth bikes in the forums. So. They want mediocre? They want non-descript? Stylishness is lost on this growing majority of stealth bike obsessives? Fine! Then let's give them the mediocre-est; the non-descriptest; the most devoid of style paint jobs that their £7,199 can buy! And let's pay as little on the paint jobs as we can get away with so that we maximize profit on that £7,199!...

Sure. I could totally see that. Makes perfect sense to me.

Re: Cervélo 2015 lineup

Posted: Sat Aug 16, 2014 1:34 pm
by Weenie

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Re: Cervélo 2015 lineup

Posted: Sat Aug 16, 2014 2:07 pm
by djconnel
A few more bikes added to the stack-reach plot.

Image

Again the blue lines indicate points which can be matched to fit with the same stem but with more spacers on the lower stack, longer reach frame. Spacers reduce reach and increase stack.

For small riders, Cervelo and Swift rule, Swift providing around 2 cm less stack, the Cervelo geometry at this size only relatively unchanged from the 2008 Cervelo. For big riders there's several contenders: Cervelo, Trek, BMC, with Trek providing the lowest stack. It would take around 2.5 cm of spacers to bring the Trek up to the bar height of the Cervelo (each mostly horizontal blue line is 1 cm of spacer).

In the mid-range, Trek is the low-stack king of this group, with Cervelo the big-stack leader by far.

Cannondale clearly is not designing to stack-reach. Personally I don't care: I only need to fit one bike, so for a given point on this chart which would be my best fit, all I care about is which bike is closest. The shape of that bike's curve doesn't matter. If I were fitting a team or running a bike shop I'd feel differently.

Re: Cervélo 2015 lineup

Posted: Sat Aug 16, 2014 10:47 pm
by eric
Wow the new Cervelo geometry is totally unusable for me. To get the same fit as my 56cm 2009 R3SL from a current 56cm Cervelo I'd need a -17 160mm stem. I'd need one of those multi-jointed track stems to make a 58cm fit.. reach is about the same but its stack is a whole 5cm more than my bike.

OTOH, the 56cm Evo is almost identical and the Scott is only 1cm more stack which I could deal with. Guess I know where to look should I need to replace my frame.

Re: Cervélo 2015 lineup

Posted: Sat Aug 16, 2014 11:40 pm
by wingguy
asv wrote:It seems like Cervelo has done nothing except change paint schemes and reissue old frames since the company was sold. Pretty sad for what used to be an exciting company.


Yeah, except for a new R series range, new S series range and new P series range, what have PON ever done for us?

Re: Cervélo 2015 lineup

Posted: Sat Aug 16, 2014 11:58 pm
by goodboyr
eric wrote:Wow the new Cervelo geometry is totally unusable for me. To get the same fit as my 56cm 2009 R3SL from a current 56cm Cervelo I'd need a -17 160mm stem. I'd need one of those multi-jointed track stems to make a 58cm fit.. reach is about the same but its stack is a whole 5cm more than my bike.

OTOH, the 56cm Evo is almost identical and the Scott is only 1cm more stack which I could deal with. Guess I know where to look should I need to replace my frame.

Just go to a 54 with a few spacers.

Re: Cervélo 2015 lineup

Posted: Sun Aug 17, 2014 12:06 am
by eric
goodboyr wrote:Just go to a 54 with a few spacers.


That's a thought- the stack is the same. But the reach is 2cm less. That'd require a 140mm stem.

Re: Cervélo 2015 lineup

Posted: Sun Aug 17, 2014 1:06 am
by nameless
djconnel wrote:A few more bikes added to the stack-reach plot.


I think you're not distinguishing between racing and endurance geometries. You have R5 standing way off the rest of the group. That's because all other bikes in your plot are racing geo. In Cannondale lineup, its stack-reach is actually much closer to Synapse (endurance geo) than to SS Evo. Trek has at least four different curves, in order, from bottom-right (aggressive) to top-left (relaxed): Madone H1 (what you have in the plot); Emonda H1 (slightly higher); Madone/Emonda H2 (very close to Cervelo R5/S5); Domane (above Cervelo).

On top of that there's peculiarity of Trek & Specialized, especially in endurance models. Those have plots reaching for the sky (almost literally). Size 62 Domane has reach 386 and stack 656 (way off your chart). Not sure what's the idea here. Maybe they want to be able to accommodate people with back problems by moving them up a frame size or two. With reach 386 and standover 32.8", even an average-sized person can manage to ride a size 62 Domane, and, with stack 656, it's going to feel like a beach cruiser.

Re: Cervélo 2015 lineup

Posted: Sun Aug 17, 2014 12:16 pm
by djconnel
Yes -- I was plotting road racing bikes. The focus was on people who want a long/low position.

Stack-reach design philsophy is interesting. On the short side there's geometrical constraints. On the tall sides some companies seem to take a "granny gear" approach... one big one to catch as much of possible of the full statistical tail of tall riders. It's like when cassettes go 19-21-23-26-32 or similar. The spacing blows out at the big end.

Re: Cervélo 2015 lineup

Posted: Sun Aug 17, 2014 1:02 pm
by nickl
phatphuk wrote:
Permon wrote:I think it is much simplier that all of you guys think..... lets look at the paintjobs .... they are cheap!...



Image[/url]

I think they surveyed what sells well at bike shops. Black bikes sell, and red bikes sell. Therefore, make it half red and half black and everyone will love it, right?

(I seem to one of the few who liked the silver 2013 model, so what do I know..)

Re: Cervélo 2015 lineup

Posted: Sun Aug 17, 2014 2:15 pm
by fly
I have a 2014 S3 and while the paint is fairly durable, it doesn't exactly look lush. Cheap is probably too much to call it, but it just doesn't look that great.

Re: Cervélo 2015 lineup

Posted: Sun Aug 17, 2014 6:46 pm
by rmerka
Paint on Cervelos has always been notoriously thin. You'd think a "weight weenie" would appreciate that.

Re: Cervélo 2015 lineup

Posted: Sun Aug 17, 2014 9:20 pm
by wingguy
eric wrote:Wow the new Cervelo geometry is totally unusable for me. To get the same fit as my 56cm 2009 R3SL from a current 56cm Cervelo I'd need a -17 160mm stem.


The reach between the two 56s is 7mm different. Are you using a 150mm stem now?

Re: Cervélo 2015 lineup

Posted: Sun Aug 17, 2014 10:07 pm
by nameless
djconnel wrote:Yes -- I was plotting road racing bikes. The focus was on people who want a long/low position.


Numbers suggest that Cervelo geometry may not be as purely "racing" as Supersix or Scott Addict. Perhaps because they don't have two separate lines (Supersix vs Synapse) and they want to satisfy everyone at once.

Stack-reach design philsophy is interesting. On the short side there's geometrical constraints. On the tall sides some companies seem to take a "granny gear" approach... one big one to catch as much of possible of the full statistical tail of tall riders. It's like when cassettes go 19-21-23-26-32 or similar. The spacing blows out at the big end.


BTW, I'm not sure why we're talking about stack-reach. Logically, it should be stack-ETT. Picture the rider as 3 straight links (legs - AB, torso - BC, arms - CD) with joints B, C, D between them. We want to fix top two links in space at a comfortable torso angle vs horizontal and at 90 degrees between torso and arms. That means targeting certain saddle-to-bars distance and saddle-to-bars drop (vector BD). We can't do that directly because rider inseam is a variable. Instead we start with stack and reach (vector AD) and fit BD = AD - AB. Which would be fine if AB were always pointed at a fixed angle.

The problem is that the direction of AB (seat tube angle) varies enough from bike to bike to be significant, and saddles have limited range of motion. If two bikes have identical stack and reach, but one has smaller seat tube angle, it will result in a greater saddle-to-bars distance at the same saddle offset for the same rider.

Using ETT in place of reach cancels out most of this effect, because we absorb most of the horizontal component of AB into it.

Here's a practical example. Look at size 50 Cannondale Evo in your plot (second green marker from the bottom). It would seem to be pretty long and low, with less stack but more reach than size 51 Cervelo (519,376 vs 530,369). Aggressive racing fit, right? Well, not exactly. Turns out that Evo has 74.5 deg seat tube, vs Cervelo's 73 deg. So, if you correct for seat tube angle by switching to stack/ETT, Evo is 519,520, Cervelo is 530,531 (size 51) / 505,516 (size 48). It's in line with Cervelo and actually slightly taller.

Re: Cervélo 2015 lineup

Posted: Sun Aug 17, 2014 10:42 pm
by eric
wingguy wrote:
eric wrote:The reach between the two 56s is 7mm different. Are you using a 150mm stem now?


I misread the graph- the hash marks on the stack are 1cm and I thought they were 1cm for reach, not .2cm. So it would fit with a 130mm stem.

Re: Cervélo 2015 lineup

Posted: Sun Aug 17, 2014 10:55 pm
by TheRoadrunner
nameless wrote:
The problem is that the direction of AB (seat tube angle) varies enough from bike to bike to be significant, and saddles have limited range of motion. If two bikes have identical stack and reach, but one has smaller seat tube angle, it will result in a greater saddle-to-bars distance at the same saddle offset for the same rider.

Using ETT in place of reach cancels out most of this effect, because we absorb most of the horizontal component of AB into it.


I am not sure what you are referring to here. If the saddle is in the same position relative to the bottom bracket (ie same height above and same distance behind/possibly in front of the BB) seat tube angle will not affect the saddle to bars distance.

Now if you are saying if a frame will not allow you to achieve the same saddle position relative to the BB, then yes that would be true. But that would be terrible fitting methodology. The height of the saddle and position behind/in front of the BB should be derived from the rider's physiology, preference, type of riding. It should not be determined by the frame itself. If you can not get the saddle to the correct position, you need a new saddle, new seat post, or a new frame that would work. Using the frame to determine what the saddle position should be is backwards.

For your example, why would the rider change the saddle position when moving from the cannondale to the Cervelo? If the saddle position remains the same, then stack and reach is totally usable. If I could not get the saddle in the correct position, I would not buy the Cervelo.

Also, I would be careful on using ETT to compare different brands. Because some brands measure ETT differently, so effective comparison may not be possible.

Re: Cervélo 2015 lineup

Posted: Sun Aug 17, 2014 10:55 pm
by Weenie

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