by youngs_modulus on Fri Apr 27, 2007 4:06 am
Oh my goodness. So many subjects dear to my heart, all in one thread. OK, here we go:
Engineering: I'm a mechanical engineer who cut his teeth in the bicycle industry. I've been a mechanic for 20 years and done many other kinds of work in the industry. Most recently, I had a brief stint at a bicycle manufacturer, designing carbon fiber components. I left partly because the bicycle industry does very little "real" engineering. There are certainly many "real" engineers working in the industry, but margins are far too low to invest much in engineering. It's very much a "make-it-and-break-it" culture. I do finite element analysis (FEA) for a living, specializing in composites. That means I work mostly in aerospace. Cervelo uses Nastran (IIRC) which, although not my favorite code, definitely qualifies as hard-core FEA. In the North American bike industry, only Trek, Specialized and maybe Easton invest as much in engineering. And Trek only does so reluctantly, IMHO.
The Cervelo R3: I bought one (a 54) ten days ago, and I'm really impressed. The inside of the head tube looks fine to me. I find the head tube a little too tall and the top tube slightly too short (for me) but the engineering and manufacturing quality is there--insofar as I can see. I'm not willing to cut my own frame in half along the major axis. It works and it weighs 882 grams, which is really astonishing.
The frame rides really well...it's stiff in torsion and compliant vertically; these two qualities are sort of the point of composites in bike frames. It handles fine. There is nothing wrong with the R3. If you'd rather ride a Look, do so by all means. They both build into wonderful bikes.
DocRay: I agree with 95% of what you say, but I think you're wrong for taking DaveS to task for not having designed bicycles. Industry experience is great, but engineering principles extend across industries. I agree with you that DaveS is wrong about the R3 headset bearing seats, but his assertions are reasonable. Wrong, but reasonable. The bicycle industry does not attract the best and brightest. It attracts those who are willing to work for 65%-80% of a typical salary in order to do something they love. Some of these people are very bright and some are not. Even the bright ones, though, are hobbled by the nonexistent R&D budgets in the bike industry. That said, engineers have an incentive to be conservative retro-grouches. DaveS is, in my opinion, being a little grumpy and retro-grouchy. But he is not saying crazy things. Again, for the record, I disagree with what he says, but these are topics about which reasonable people can disagree.
Tunisia: I visited Tunisia for three weeks in 1999-2000...I wanted to be in a country where it was not Y2K during the changeover. (It was 1420 according to the Islamic calendar, IIRC). Tunisia is wonderful country full of intelligent, urbane people (especially Tunis, the capital). The government is moderately repressive, and there are problems with islamist movements and there's a high tolerance for antisemitism, but overall it's still a fabulous place. Tunisia has a free trade agreement with the EU (again, IIRC) and a highly skilled workforce that speaks one of the major languages of commerce (French). I applaud Look's decision to manufacture frames there. Easton, Spinergy and many other US companies manufacture composite bicycle parts in Mexico; no one complains about that. Tunisia is at least as good as Mexico (and I'd bet that the average Tunisian worker is at least as highly educated than the average Mexican worker--and I've met some very smart Mexican workers).
Mainland China is a fine place to make carbon bicycle frames. Taiwan has an enormous amount of experience with carbon (mostly via tennis rackets) and, from what I hear, there's no shortage of composites expertise on the Chinese mainland, either.
Conclusion: Most people (a) have no idea what they're talking about when it comes to engineeering, and (b) have no idea that they have no idea. And that's okay. Just ride your bike and enjoy it. I heartily endorse Chas' sentiment that "Cycling is a whole lotta fun and people should buy whatever bike gets them excited."
Cheers,
Jason