2016 Venge

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tinozee
Posts: 764
Joined: Wed Jun 01, 2011 7:53 am

by tinozee

Martin.dk wrote:
tinozee wrote:Shitty spoiler bro. Don't expect to see same day race results in a thread like this.


Ouch...I'm really sorry about the spoiler. I didn't even think about it before I saw your post. :oops:

/Martin


No worries man. At the time I was just getting on the trainer to watch that but it was ok anyway. It's one of the penalties of not watching live. ;)

by Weenie


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justkeepedaling
Posts: 1712
Joined: Thu Jan 03, 2008 6:14 am

by justkeepedaling

BeeSeeBee wrote:
bungis wrote:Might be a bit provocative but can you ask whether or not they used a full-size dummy rider when testing in the wind tunnel and their reasoning for such.

e: Also, water bottles.


Chris actually laid out the testing protocol on slowtwitch, it was pretty good.

http://forum.slowtwitch.com/cgi-bin/gforum.cgi?post=5595701#5595701

Sorry, in the text of my post where I included that image, I stated that the y-axis is CdA and each division is 0.002 m^2.

Frame size: 56cm
Fit Coordinates: will need to dig up exact stack and reach coordinates, but as stated earlier it roughly corresponded to a 8-10mm dust cap + 110 mm 6 deg stem; pretty much every bike was able to hit this position with just a few mm of adjustment (e.g. I don't recall any of the competitor bikes requiring an actual spacer).
Wheels/tires: all tested with Roval CLX60s and SW24 tires inflated to 100psi.
Bars: Round compact *except* when the bike is spec'd with a proprietary or integrated solution (e.g. Cervelo's new bar with the updated S5, Propel, Canyon Aeroroad, Venge ViAS)
Saddle: Romin 143
Bottles and cages: 2x rib cage w/ 22 oz bottles
Rider: the graph I posted is for no rider - we've tested the same set with both a full mannequin and lower half only. We've also tested a limited set of interesting ones with a live rider. In all cases (interestingly) involving aero road bikes the CdA deltas held within 0.001-0.002 m^2 of the bike alone tests. As a result, using the no rider graph is easier to read since the max/min values for each bike (vs. bike+rider) isn't as dramatic.
Ambient conditions: varied slightly through the block of testing, but we measure in real time barometric pressure, relative humidity, and temperature to determine air density which is used for determining CdA from the raw force values (aero geek side note: we actually measure dynamic pressure directly from a pitot so we don't technically need air density to determine CdA, but we do anyways to know wind speed from dynamic pressure).
Velocity: Ran at 50km/h wind speed, but again this is normalized out as we record and report CdA. We have done a subset of testing at 40km/h as well and the CdA values hold (meaning the flow regime is consistent in that speed range).


My issue with the protocol was the speccing of a round bar on bikes without an integrated setup as opposed to an aero road bar like the Aerofly. I don't think it changed the fact that the Venge came out ahead, but perhaps the delta between it and the next fastest would have been narrowed a bit. The Felt AR tested a little faster than the S5 in Tour's test, so if it was handicapped by a round bar since it doesn't have a proprietary bar setup, that doesn't sit well with me.


justkeepedaling wrote:Ask what the average amount of front wheel deflection is for riders and how that affects the front wheel cutout.


Radial deflection from just riding? or do you mean under braking forces? The bike doesn't seem to have a glaring difference in spacing between the tire and down tube compared to other aero bikes as far as I can see.


It's near impossible to have absolutely no steering input when riding, even riding straight. That gives the front wheel an angle relative to the downtube.

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BeeSeeBee
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Joined: Mon Dec 21, 2009 6:00 am
Location: Bay Area, CA

by BeeSeeBee

Oh, I misinterpreted your question, I thought you were concerned about the proximity of the tire to the downtube for rub or something, not it's off-axis alignment with the cutout. I'm going to go for a few hour ride on it tomorrow but I don't think the engineers are going to be there :( I'll have a complete write up later, but the whole trip down there was awesome!

LionelB
Posts: 1595
Joined: Sun Oct 05, 2008 8:09 pm
Location: Aix en Provence

by LionelB

I tried it for a couple of days. Not my cup of tea at all. The wheels were very bad (clincher version), the brakes are way below average, it's not light at all.

Image

Image

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kgt
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Location: Athens, Greece

by kgt

I guess Cav and Sagan have a similar feel...
I won't be surprised if a much revised version appears next year.

LionelB
Posts: 1595
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Location: Aix en Provence

by LionelB

Better wheels may have changed my perception but I thought these were highly contributed to the overall sluggish feeling I got with this bike.

wingguy
Posts: 4318
Joined: Thu Mar 08, 2012 11:43 pm

by wingguy

LionelB wrote:The wheels were very bad (clincher version),


Ummm, any elaboration on that?

SLCBrandon
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by SLCBrandon

Is that a size 58?

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BeeSeeBee
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Location: Bay Area, CA

by BeeSeeBee

Here's an album from my Specialized visit. It was a really awesome experience getting to see the tunnel, talk with Chris Yu and Cameron Piper about the bike, tunnel, and a whole lot of other things.

Gallery link

As for the actual bike, I thought it was really solid, felt just as good as my Felt AR. I like wringing my hands about bike equipment and setup as much as the rest of you, but once on the bike, I'm pretty insensitive to things like stiffness, comfort, handling, etc. It felt different but neither better nor worse, just different. I wasn't a fan of the riser bar, only because I like grabbing the bars close to the stem when I'm slowly noodling around, but obviously there's a flat option.

As for the braking... I wasn't particularly pleased with it. It felt like I was grabbing a whole handful of lever before really noticing a significant slowdown.

I'm okay with concessions to aerodynamics so long as the function is maintained (e.g. under the BB brakes are something I'm 100% okay with because for me there's no functional loss), but I didn't feel like these brakes had that.

Caveat: I ride HED Jets, so I'm used to really great aluminum brake tracks, I don't know how much of the braking performance was due to riding carbon clinchers again (I rode 404 Firecrests for a while, but have largely forgotten the feel) vs. the brakes themselves.

I asked Chris about fitting the Turbos vs the Turbo Cottons for any gain in speed. Tom Anhalt apparently just spent some time with them so I'm interested to see what comes out of that. His previous analysis showed that switching to the cottons would result in a less total drag+rolling resistance, I'm just not sure if that aero drag plot was for the CLX64, which was designed as a system with the non-cotton Turbos.

climbandpunishment wrote:If you could, ask them what the free stream turbulence levels in the tunnel are, and see if you can tell where the tunnel pitot tubes are mounted. I'm really curious to see how applicable all the WinTunnel videos really are to real world conditions. Not sure if they'll feel comfortable answering, but it's worth a shot. Thank you, and have fun; I hear it's a great tour!


The pitot tube you can see here and here. Cam said the free stream turbulence levels were "low," unfortunately, I didn't have enough time prior to visiting to research tunnel design that thoroughly so didn't have any idea what specifically I should be asking about that.

who_intheworld wrote:I'm curious about the wind tunnel test comparison without bottles.
Since the sprinters seem to throw their bottles away before the final sprint,
I want to know how this affects the drag of each bikes.


I asked Chris about their doing this, and he mentioned they've seen a 1-2W difference between bottles and no bottles with the VIAS, the bottle shielding of the frame appears to be very good.

LionelB
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Joined: Sun Oct 05, 2008 8:09 pm
Location: Aix en Provence

by LionelB

SLCBrandon wrote:Is that a size 58?

yes

LionelB
Posts: 1595
Joined: Sun Oct 05, 2008 8:09 pm
Location: Aix en Provence

by LionelB

wingguy wrote:
LionelB wrote:The wheels were very bad (clincher version),


Ummm, any elaboration on that?

Felt super heavy, slow to accelerate, caught a lot of side wind.

cajer
Posts: 673
Joined: Sun Jul 14, 2013 1:26 am

by cajer

It is lighter than 404 clinchers.

More importantly, how is the braking on those rims compared to other carbon wheels?

LionelB
Posts: 1595
Joined: Sun Oct 05, 2008 8:09 pm
Location: Aix en Provence

by LionelB

cajer wrote:It is lighter than 404 clinchers.

More importantly, how is the braking on those rims compared to other carbon wheels?

way below average but this is hard to tell if this is coming from the brakes of the wheels

mile2424
Posts: 408
Joined: Sun Jan 04, 2009 3:22 am

by mile2424

Luis with the colored version of the frame which looks nice!

Image
Last edited by mile2424 on Wed Sep 09, 2015 8:46 pm, edited 1 time in total.

by Weenie


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nathanong87
Resident master of GIF
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by nathanong87

that's a good colorway

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