Yes.
Is the 2019 rim frame a new design or just different paint jobs?
Moderator: robbosmans
Not sure why you think it's so "puzzling" that it gets dinged for being rather harsh. It is aluminum after all. Aluminium is light and stiff for sure but it is also very unforgiving, and in unsuspended form that will come through on anything but the smoothest of roads. Trek has done a nice job on its design and I assume it's available at a pretty good price point, so good for them. What's more suprising to me in most reviews, regarding anything bicycle related, is the lack of "dinging". It's like the reviewers are under the rule of... "Mama always told me if you can't say anthying nice, then don't say anything at all", or in magazine review speak... "Don't bite the hand that feeds you". I kind of want to hear the negative stuff more than a bunch of fluffy "You're ok, I'm ok, and doggonit people like us" stuff. Tell me the stuff the manufacturers would never dream of putting in their marketing "white papers".jfranci3 wrote: ↑Fri Jul 27, 2018 3:59 pmSaw one review where it rides well another where someone actually dinged it for riding poorly on 28c tires @ 70psi (??) https://cyclingtips.com/2018/07/2019-tr ... lr-review/ . How often does a bike reviewer actually ding a frameset for something aside from a lack of a feature? James Huang doesn't usually just retype the press release and isn't an idiot, so this is puzzling.
It had to have been an oversized frame or stiff seatpost / stem / bars thing. I had problems with my stock Trek carbon wrapped AL seat post and AL bars, it was brutal with road tires on my Crockett CX bike, even with lot of pole exposed.
You certainly have a point there. But for those who may not want to go beyond a 25mm road tire on good roads, a nice frame can be comfortable while not having to run fat low pressure tires at the expense of road feel. For sure, if BarcaLounger comfort is your primary concern, then that’s a different category of bike.jfranci3 wrote:...We're living in an era with 25mm+ tires and low pressures, the question now is if frame compliance even matters.
Quoted for correctness. Also, I recommend reading the two articles linked.jfranci3 wrote: ↑Fri Jul 27, 2018 8:31 pmYou're not riding a block of AL or Carbon. You're riding a bicycle made out of AL or Carbon/resin. Between you an that AL or Carbon frames are your padding, the saddle, and the post. Between the bump in the road and that frame are the tires/air and wheels. Focusing on the frame, you can shape a frame in round tubes (which we did prior to 2009-ish, using stocked sizes then drilled out the middle with the narrowest part needing to be at the edges) OR you can toss that stock round pipe in a form and shape it in a mold.
Cervelo says the frame only determines 5-10% of ride quality https://www.cervelo.com/en/engineering- ... de-quality When you ride a carbon bike, you can feel the difference. A lot of this is the vibration frequency of the material and how much of it there is. AL is terrible here, which is why we hear about road buzz and no one has an AL fork. The size of the frame also matters as a smaller frame will be more rigid for the most part. Also very important are the difference between front and rear compliance, if you put a soft riding rear on a rigid front setup (or vice versa), the ride will feel brutal as your body isn't being moved in unison with your back and arms compensating.
Yes, hydroforming gets you shaping can sculpting. Putting a bend in that shape length-wise or making it non-uniform round-wise will weaken it bending in that direction. This allows you to make a hydroformed frame have better ride qualities. If you look at the Emonda frame, the top tube is flat on top, which allows the frame bend that direction than other directions. It is also arched, again allow some flex lengthwise. AL is still AL, so it doesn't bend as well as steel or carbon, but you can bend it some without failure.
The material and the shape both matter. You can make a shitty riding carbon frame without trying. You can make a shitty steak with the wrong technique and you can make a great meal with shitty beef and the right technique. Think of everything as a spring. Larger diameter tubes, shorter lengths, and thicker walls are stiffer. More pieces coming together at the same point results in stiffness (hence the lower seat stay movement, lower seat post bolts, and d-shaped seat posts). From your seat to the tire, all those spring matter and will compress when you put weight on them in some combined spring rate.
Steel bikes ride better because the tube diameters are narrower along with steels ability to bend - the cost of these narrow tubes is the stiffness.
We're living in an era with 25mm+ tires and low pressures, the question now is if frame compliance even matters. Here James brings to light a good point with some help: https://cyclingtips.com/2018/04/jra-wit ... ll-matter/ (also on their podcast). Basically, if your running modern tires on modern pressures, you'd need a device like Treks bendy thing or Specialized spring thing to notice the difference in ride quality on most bumps in single direction, single event compliance tests. The exactly angle of impact and series of impacts would likely matter.
Metal frames simply feel different than carbon. Carbon can be fairly amazing at smoothing road vibration; aluminum less so. It doesn’t make it bad. Expecting a $950 frame to compare closely to a $4000 frame is unrealistic.