@@utube7930 a very light english pro - forget his name - mentioned the impact of weight with all the small sprints needed to stay with bunch. His point was that an extra kilo every time you sprint out of a corner or off the top of a climb is a lot more for him at 55kg than big 80kg rider. Of course bike weight effects small riders more on the climbs too but he reckoned that was less of an issue. I reckon the rule should be the bike can't be less than 14% of the rider's body weight.
If the bike were heavier, it would very marginally make bigger riders more competitive up hills, because the bike is then a smaller proportion of their weight (and a bigger proportion of a tiny rider)
Excellent interview! I'd love to know more about your wind tunnel rotor size tests. I just listened to an Escape Collective interview with JP Ballard at Swiss Side and he said that they recently published a measurement with different size rotors in the wind tunnel and they were all "within the repeatability of measurement", meaning little to no difference at all. Did your tests show that as well? It sounds like you were advocating for as small as you can get but maybe I misunderstood. Thanks!
The subject from 22:00 is really interesting. I don't know for sure who first discussed this, but Jan Heine of Rene Herse cycles published (in 2009) the results of an experiment using a power meter and rough/smooth surfaces, and from this coined a concept he called 'Suspension Losses' . It's a shame he is never credited in the modern Pro/gear scene.
The mid wits at the UCI are pretty dumb, regarding the crazy tool to measure the "angle" of the brake levers. The solution so simple its ridiculous. Just get a slide measuring ruler with one adjustable end and a scale in cm or mm's. Have the rule state that the difference between the measurement at the lever hood/bar interface can be no more than 2 cm (example) compared to the distance of the closest point at the lever tips. Example: inside width at the bar/hood is 38cm, set the levers to a minimum distance of 36cm inside width. Easy to measure and easy to for teams to check.
Instead of increasing the weight limit they could simply make cameras and sensors mandatory. I don't want heavier bikes, a lighter bike feels better to ride up(down) to a certain point.
1990 to 1996, most of the contenders at PR were on bikes with suspension. Mostly front Rockshox. But sometimes full, front and rear suspension frames. The use of suspension ended in 1996. It was not banned, but it was an interesting story. Mapei were on Colnago bikes, and Mr Colnago would not let the team use suspension forks, as he hated the look. The riders were very unhappy about this, and felt that they were going to be at a significant disadvantage. Colnago used the straight steel “Star” forks. In the race, Mapei (by far the strongest team) took a 1-2-3, which should have been a 1-2-3-4. That was the end of suspension use in the 90s.
One issue is location. The mid west is sedimentary geology, sandy. The west coast is mountainous. We ride on rocks. A rigid bike is fine for the prairie but not for the west.
@@larryt.atcycleitalia5786 no, that’s not what I mean. I mean full Rockshox mountain bike suspension forks on road bikes.pezcyclingnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/roubaix94-rock-shocks-920.jpg
I'd be interested to know what aero gains (if anything) there are from running 'aero' DA CLT900 rotors (and at 30 /40/50/60 kmh) vs conventional drillium style rotors like Trickstuff Dachle UL. I could see it being large in some strong gusty wind conditions even at lower (30kmh) road speed.
I agree with Dan about the need to bring data to bike racing so it is more exciting to watch, but I also agree with you that consumers actually hav to enjoy riding these bikes and will not appreciate having to push an extra 2 kg up a long hill on a club ride. If you opened up the road racing world to prototypes, recumbents would quickly wipe out the upright bicycle as they should. Who wants to watch antique cars or a horse race when you watch real cutting edge engineering. Foil boat or keel boat? 50 knots or 8 knots? All this effort going into making a horse more aerodynamic so it can go 55 km/hr for 2 watts less when some university students can glue up a fiberglass shell and hit speeds approaching 90 mph is a sobering realization. Bike racing today is an equestrian sport...
32:00 nice detail there, classic forks with ends shaped like a hockey stick bend are actually really good for sprinting as well, in my experience at least
With a portable metabolic unit such as a Cosmed K5 you might be able to measure metabolic rate increases on the cobbles versus the road. This could help to account for some of the kinetic energy losses on the cobbles.
Is it insane to suggest putting rim breaks on the front and disc on the back so there is better breaking performance but aero losses with disc are mitigated by having it at the back where the aero losses aren’t as bad?
About 70% of your stopping power comes from the front wheel the disc on the back wouldn’t do much to improve overall braking. My guess is that much of the aero loss from disc brakes is the caliper, rather than the rotor. Shimano and SRAM have made no effort to make the leading and trailing edges of the front caliper aero
Agree so much on more fan interaction. Honestly its more fun to watch gopro footage from US semi pro crits than traditional coverage of pro races. Would love to see live video and power data during races etc
Data on races could be amazing. Imagine seeing the live power output of the top climbers as they push. Seeing the cda of a rider in real time. That would be electric.
We had a chat about suspension in road bikes last summer . Dan had just beaten me by 20 minutes in a 25 miler.. Anyway, Moulton had the right idea, the suspension frame with 16" wheels was aero and handled really well. I still race on one for fun , intimidating rivals with a 65 tooth chain ring 😅 Enjoyed the vid guys, interesting stuff. Some of us old cotton sock guys are willing to try new stuff but personally only if its going to improve my times, so not fussed about 12 speed or disc brakes but am fitting narrower bars and waxing chains 🙂
discuss and test suspension stems. surely, suspension stems have an impact on reducing your body shaking, and thus have some impact on the kinetic energy loss. it is suspension.
I think to be fair, road bike optimization has made it to the Iron Age. The improvement on the folk wisdom of 25 years ago is pretty phenomenal. Yes, it still has a way to go, but road bikes are night and day better than in the 1990s. Acceptance of science on rolling resistance means 21mm tires have given way to 28-30, getting close to the 32-35 where they belong; wheel tech has in practice enabled wider tires without an aero penalty, gearing is better, 1x has become an option, the old "narrow q-factor is always better" mantra has been debunked as being fundamentally harmful to big and tall people, we've figured out that typical 40-42-44 handlebar and 170-175 crank sizing was harmful to anyone who ISN'T big and tall, and partly as a consequence of all this bikes are safer, more comfortable to ride and have better handling than they did and cycling is more of a life sport than it was. The only downside is aesthetics; for example the wonderful Dura-Ace 7800 look has given way to black and plastic, often in combination; and disc brakes, as superior as they are, are kind of ugly compared to rims.
Too many facts and researched outcomes, not enough vibe and hearsay 😘 That “bar tape” comment … 100% agree! That’s has to be the next thing to be looked at.
Great conversation. I love the 8kg bike rule and the potential implications that could mean. Putting required gopro like cameras on every bike (including spares) like the transponders would make for more engagement. Yea, pog isnt going to runnone if JV isn't but if everyone is required then theres no debate
Loved this chat. I'm no engineer, but I found this really engaging and I'm heading to the garage now to add some suspension forks to my roadie.. question for you.. why did they get rid of the roubaix style bike? I have it on my gravel bike and it so good.. way more comfortable.
Great video as usual. May I ask for video from you on the "we all should be in shorter cranks" new trend? I haven't found any in your channel on this subject and would like to hear your say in the topic. Cheers
Spot on about the old steel frames with skinny tires. I"ve been thinking these two parts were a system that worked together. Rims back then being lower profile even had some give.
Yep i think we all forget how a deep blade carbon fork is orders of mag stiffer than a curved steel fork with thin section legs. They flex alarmingly when looking down on them but were surpremely comfortable. At least that's how it felt doing vo2 intervals back from the pub on a school night
@@PeakTorque one thing I always wonder about riding a Ritchey modern steel frame with aero-ish carbon fork: Are the small tubes and head tube really at a significant aerodynamic disadvantage compared to aero bikes that have 3-5 times the surface area?
@@PaganiZondaF650hp It's not really so much about surface area but about the frontal area. I don't look at many bikes but from the aero bikes I have seen, I would be surprised if the frontal area was even 2x that of a classic thin steel tube bike. Plus the coefficient of drag of an aerofoil could easily be 5-10x less than that of a round cylinder
Reducing the weight limit would achieve the same thing, as you'd have specialized bikes for different courses, rather than all rounders (like Tarmac et al). Lightish but easy to still incorporate some aero features just plays into the big brands' desire to reduce costs and have one bike to rule them all.
I admit, I am a bit biased here as I own Tarmac sl7, but isn't that actually beneficial for customers? Having one bike which can do very well most of the things? I know that my bike is not the lightest nor the most aero, but it is so close that I don't feel like I am missing something. Rather than having climbing and aero bike I have an endurance aluminium bike with more relaxed geometry for Sunday coffee rides, and commuting. On the other side I do understand the desire to have specialized equipment, but given the complexity and rapidly growing cost of having so many different variants of frames and models is one of the reasons why bicycles are so damm expensive. I would rather have big brands focused on fever do it all bikes offering better prices and have a cottage industry of highly specialized bikes... Btw I did look into the financial statements of a couple of brands and I was surprised how not really profitable they actually are.
I believe your "engineering" GCSE is called "Design and Technology". We had that for our IGCSE exams in Africa. Great convo btw, always interesting insights!
Regarding the tire size conversation, what is the evidence to show that 25/28mm tires on the track are superior to 19/22mm tires? I understand the advantage when riding over uneven surfaces offsets the aerodynamic penalty for wider tires. How does this apply to the track where the surface is smooth? Wouldn't narrower tires be faster?
"the sport needs to grow", does it though? As a former fan of actual Motorsport, I hate the "gameshow"yness of modern F1 and it has actually led me to not really follow it any more. And the fact that cycling is a little more raw and taken somewhat seriously as a sport still is one of the things that actually brought me over here. Also you are always talking about the idea that Motorsports have many things down better than cycling like marketing and technical freedom. I think that's a big misconception. Is say the design freedom in cycling may actually be higher than in modern F1 although "free form" development is not even wanted. You asked for specific prototypes for racing but the existence of such in Motorsport and the resulting cost are probably the single worst thing you could introduce to cycling. Any Motorsport series with actual manufacturer development nowadays has restricted the development to the absolute feasible minimum in the attempt to somehow get into accordance with the ever less interest and budget ideas of the manufacturers they try to attract. And most of Motorsport is now carried out through balance of performance based customer cars with 0 r&d, still manufacturer engagement is poor and teams regularly struggle with finances. There is more or less zero Motorsport left with ambitious rulesets, WRC is fine maybe but even they use standardized hybrid systems effectively cutting out r&d for the only newish tech in 20 years. I'd say Motorsport has never been in a worse state for a tech interested person and has degraded to a simply "fun-based" show mechanism. Cycling is way better of than motorsports and should so everything not to repeat these errors.
Question …. The bianchi countervail really works to offer a level of damping on cobbles , why hasn’t more been done to look at adding to the carbon weave ?
Surely the best things to instrument if you want to gather comparative data and understand how rider's soft tissues and muscle responses are affecting things with shock and vibration is stem/bars saddle, BB and then rider's helmet (fnar) and maybe try to mount an accelorometor on a chest strap (HR?) As it's strapped to the riders torso. See what the bike as a structure is seeing at (or close to) the main contact points and then see what the very top most point of the attached meat sack experiences. Obviously there's a shed load of variables (F&R) tyre width/construction/pressures, and then every component (including suspension/Rigid options) between the axle and the rider but that would need to be the approach if you want to understand vibrational losses for a bike and rider as a system.
I know he was on his earphones, but its really hard to listen to this - especially for non-english native speakers. Something to work on in the future.
@peaktorque Great podcast! I have always wondered about if the older Colnago C40 bike is actually optimized as it essentially has built in suspension as the front end has a decent amount of give on rough stuff and they were so successful on at Paris Roubaix(yes, aware of the doping), but, the fact that they were smooth and these days you can really feel it glide over the rough stuff.
Angled levers are only banned on straight bars (the cinching down (apparently) compromise the carbon). If the handlebars are made with the angle (coming to a store near you). They are perfectly legal. Not sure if that makes sense but the short of it is they're not going away.
Damper design for FS road bikes, should look at how Specialised has done it with their new Epic WC bike. Totally different air spring set up with the negative air spring tunable to effect the amount of sag. So it behaves a lot more like a hard tail than a regular FS XC bike. Pretty cool.
Big fan of your channel. I will preface this with the acknowledgment that I have zero engineering background and the below is probably littered with holes, but your discussion on energy loss due to the body absorbing energy transfer was of great interest. I recently built up a Ti rim brake Enigma. On it I added a set of Roval SLX 24’s. On the advice of my mechanic we swapped that wheelset over to my Fulcrum Racing Zeros. But whilst the Fulcrums are a stiffer wheel, the road surfaces I ride on are poor and I find the less stiffer Roval wheels are more comfortable and overall faster. I put that down to being more comfortable and less battered after a 90min weekday loop. FWIW The rovals had 25mm gp5000s and the fulcrums 28mm gp5000s and still I noticed a considerable difference in comfort
Thanks for this, fascinating as always. I think consumers being able to buy pro race bikes is a two way compromise. There are quite a few middle aged men killing their backs riding around on slammed long reach bikes.
surely if a trek or specialized built and aero full sus road bike and it started winning.. they would sell it.. so why don’t they do it? no rule to say they can’t.
I like the idea of the World tour / Conti to be raced on prototypes. I’m really not a fan of pro bikes being sold to the public, because they are not as good as they could be for the pros, but at the same time they are still way too extreme for Joe Block. I feel that many Joes aspire to ride « like the pros », and the one who can pay the 5 digits price are middle-aged unflexible guys anyway. Bike brands could really push development on the protos (except for things like socks heigh and hoods angle…) ; and still charge 10 grands for those who want to blow the bank for an Aero-Endurance-Gran Fondo Racing frame with 160 mm headtube in size M.
Absolutely no bike brands would have the budget to make custom bikes for pros (30 riders with what, 4-5 bikes each per season?) . Lots of bikes need to be sold to pay back the investment in CFD, engineering and in carbon moulds. It's the other way around: People don't buy pro bikes. Pros get off the shelf bikes.
a bit question about the tyre under tension thing, how might clincher tube, clincher tubeless and hookless tubeless perform different as the tyres interact with the wheels kinda differently? don't know if that's relevent. (i know nothing about enginnering. :p) great show.
does pedalling cadence affect efficiency over cobbles? i notice that if i ride rough terrain with a high torque / low cadence, then my body vibrates less as less of my weight is on the saddle, and more of my weight is through the pedals.
My feeling is that the myopic dinosaurs at UCI are so mentally removed from the world the likes of Dan live in, that they can't even contemplate clever ways to improve the sport, like increasing the weight limit
Sorry for the oncoming rant, however... Getting kinda bored of UCI this UCI that talk. Sure they are short-sighted, but how narrow-sighted is a regular sport aficionado is even more disturbing. There is so much cycling not governed by the UCI and also goverened by the UCI, but equally not covered in the media, at this scale discussing weight limit or lever turn-in is just mental mаsrturbаtiоn of people not knowing what to do with their life.
@PeakTorque I don't understand your issue with assioma pedals. I have my cleats adjusted so that my shoe is only 1-3mm from the crank when using that pedal so I just don't get it. Maybe the shape is a little less aero than a typical look keo but isn't that getting super marginal? Especially if Ganna rides heels up in his TT position?
I ride those pedals in part FOR the wider Q factor, as it takes a load off of my knees. Perhaps the extra clearance is necessary if he's got big feet, or perhaps it's more physiologically optimized, power wise, at the expense of a little bit of aero. To use their formula 1 analogy, if you were somehow legally allowed to use a much bigger engine than everyone else in the competition, which Ganna does by being Ganna, you'd want to make sure you were getting the most out of that engine too. Even with some sacrifices to aerodynamics from time to time. If he's in a slightly better position for him at minute 45 because his stance is fractionally wider, it may ultimately be a gain not a loss.
@@joelechoI own them because well they are awesome. Broke one in a crash, customer service sends me parts. I ruin the bearings because my dumbass rode them in a rainy gravel race. Bearings replaceable and very easy to service. There also the whole... More accurate that any other pm the market.
So... Even on a velodrome track, 27mm is faster? Wow. And where does that leave us with front tyres? Is 28 faster than 30 or 32? Is 30 faster than 28? For road I mean. I was under the impression that because of frontal area, 28 would be faster, but NorCal showed the opposite last week, and here it kind of sounded that 30 would be faster too? I'm putting 32 at the rear.
NorCal has incredible unreliable testing protocols. They don't do any duplicate testing so reproducibility is questionable. They often find strange results and don't discuss them at all. Take their results with a bag of salt.
There are multiple facets to it. Not just 1 is faster to all. For Dan it has tested fastest but that’s a complex balance of maybe reducing drag onto the downtube, may work better with the narrow fork etc, rolling resistance, vibration attenuation (yes even velodrome are not entirely smooth). It may be that if he put a 27.5mm measured tyre on the Lotus bike it would be slower. So many factors and tests involved.
NorCal didn't try mixing sizes between front and rear. They also didn't include 30 in their test. Their results are interesting, but way more controlled conditions would be needed to draw any conclusions.
Fun fact - between your solidworks cfd's hambini's and Dan's info back in the 18'-19's I managed to shave my 50k TT some 20mins while I worked in Dubai - helped I was getting fitter too - Now back in UK It's back to the mudnrocks of the pennines and mtb but it set me off on learning cfd skills myself
The UI was the WORST thing about GCN+. Look at F1. It's so much better organized than GCN+ was, and IT isn't perfect. It's still a better model. And GCN+ was never a Roku channel.
@@PeakTorque I don't doubt you. I'm just recalling every time I had to horizontally scroll through a month's worth of races to get to the most recent one. Would a calendar grid be that hard to implement? Is Eurosport something you have to stream from a computer to a large screen, or is it a channel for smart tv's? I had to watch GCN+ in a freaking web browser.
Notice that the expression Mummy daycare doesn't exist because it's seen as a womens inherent job whereas when a man looks after their child it's Daddy daycare, implying that it's somehow something extra. Bring some of your engineering rigour into areas outside of the technical.
@@Gabrielle4870 Surely, it's the child that's being cared for, regardless of the hour, which is why most people I know just call it "childcare." But all of these terms work just fine as we know what is meant. No one is being repressed by the term "daddy daycare."
The best thing about having a baby is practising... I'll get my coat.
Gotta make sure the pen is working on a regular basis
Hey, @hambini how does a robot procreate? It nuts and bolts.
Gotta love how unsentimental PT is about Dan’s children.
😂 that was the first topic! Extremely caring id say.
Children are not aero
@@paulschulman8131frontal area, I’d say children have superior aero to adults
@@sambarrett4726 not if child is attached to adult
A Baby Bjorn on front could be aero like a water bottle under the skin suit…. but w/Kg are going to suffer through the hills 😂
19:09 -- I love that he is running "wide" tires for these records -- 27.5mm measured.
Wow 8kg UCI weight limit is a 5 head move. That Bigham is out of the box
Think of the wee guys
@@ds6914 I would have to run the numbers to figure out the penalties for lighter riders. However it might be healthier to be less weight concerned
@@utube7930 a very light english pro - forget his name - mentioned the impact of weight with all the small sprints needed to stay with bunch. His point was that an extra kilo every time you sprint out of a corner or off the top of a climb is a lot more for him at 55kg than big 80kg rider. Of course bike weight effects small riders more on the climbs too but he reckoned that was less of an issue.
I reckon the rule should be the bike can't be less than 14% of the rider's body weight.
For me.the levers turned in is great for my wrists
Same. A slight till for me feels way more natural
This
I'd love to see chapters as in the Nero Show.
If the bike were heavier, it would very marginally make bigger riders more competitive up hills, because the bike is then a smaller proportion of their weight (and a bigger proportion of a tiny rider)
"Always good to chat." As is it always good to be witness to your chats. Another quality Peak Talk.
Are babies aero? I’ve heard of TTers putting camelbacks down the front of the jersey for aero gains - does pregnancy have the same effect?
A beer belly would be better 😂
I am perpetually testing the beer gut (gunt) but i cant seem to lose any weigh to test the other option
@@PeakTorque you're not alone there mate.
_”Did you put them through the airport scanner?”_ 😂 Made me LOL.
Asking the *important* questions!
I never thought about the benefits of increasing weight limits of bikes. Dan made an awesome argument for it!
Excellent interview! I'd love to know more about your wind tunnel rotor size tests. I just listened to an Escape Collective interview with JP Ballard at Swiss Side and he said that they recently published a measurement with different size rotors in the wind tunnel and they were all "within the repeatability of measurement", meaning little to no difference at all. Did your tests show that as well? It sounds like you were advocating for as small as you can get but maybe I misunderstood. Thanks!
The subject from 22:00 is really interesting. I don't know for sure who first discussed this, but Jan Heine of Rene Herse cycles published (in 2009) the results of an experiment using a power meter and rough/smooth surfaces, and from this coined a concept he called 'Suspension Losses' . It's a shame he is never credited in the modern Pro/gear scene.
The mid wits at the UCI are pretty dumb, regarding the crazy tool to measure the "angle" of the brake levers. The solution so simple its ridiculous. Just get a slide measuring ruler with one adjustable end and a scale in cm or mm's. Have the rule state that the difference between the measurement at the lever hood/bar interface can be no more than 2 cm (example) compared to the distance of the closest point at the lever tips. Example: inside width at the bar/hood is 38cm, set the levers to a minimum distance of 36cm inside width. Easy to measure and easy to for teams to check.
More technology does not make race viewing more interesting (cycling or motorsport). IMO
We need an audio version of your podcast!
Riveted for the full hour. Especially the tyre talk, having been in the automotive industry, heavily influenced by Michelin technology.
his take on weight limits in pro cycling is so based
Instead of increasing the weight limit they could simply make cameras and sensors mandatory. I don't want heavier bikes, a lighter bike feels better to ride up(down) to a certain point.
1990 to 1996, most of the contenders at PR were on bikes with suspension. Mostly front Rockshox. But sometimes full, front and rear suspension frames. The use of suspension ended in 1996. It was not banned, but it was an interesting story. Mapei were on Colnago bikes, and Mr Colnago would not let the team use suspension forks, as he hated the look. The riders were very unhappy about this, and felt that they were going to be at a significant disadvantage. Colnago used the straight steel “Star” forks. In the race, Mapei (by far the strongest team) took a 1-2-3, which should have been a 1-2-3-4. That was the end of suspension use in the 90s.
One issue is location. The mid west is sedimentary geology, sandy. The west coast is mountainous. We ride on rocks. A rigid bike is fine for the prairie but not for the west.
@@larryt.atcycleitalia5786 no, that’s not what I mean. I mean full Rockshox mountain bike suspension forks on road bikes.pezcyclingnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/roubaix94-rock-shocks-920.jpg
I'd be interested to know what aero gains (if anything) there are from running 'aero' DA CLT900 rotors (and at 30 /40/50/60 kmh) vs conventional drillium style rotors like Trickstuff Dachle UL. I could see it being large in some strong gusty wind conditions even at lower (30kmh) road speed.
I agree with Dan about the need to bring data to bike racing so it is more exciting to watch, but I also agree with you that consumers actually hav to enjoy riding these bikes and will not appreciate having to push an extra 2 kg up a long hill on a club ride. If you opened up the road racing world to prototypes, recumbents would quickly wipe out the upright bicycle as they should. Who wants to watch antique cars or a horse race when you watch real cutting edge engineering. Foil boat or keel boat? 50 knots or 8 knots? All this effort going into making a horse more aerodynamic so it can go 55 km/hr for 2 watts less when some university students can glue up a fiberglass shell and hit speeds approaching 90 mph is a sobering realization. Bike racing today is an equestrian sport...
I have nothing of value to add so here's a comment for the old algorithm 🤙
Another excellent episode, potential to be the best cycling podcast!
Glad you think so!
There could be a lot more Ultegra in the pro peleton at 8kg, unsponsored team budgets could get some savings.
32:00 nice detail there, classic forks with ends shaped like a hockey stick bend are actually really good for sprinting as well, in my experience at least
With a portable metabolic unit such as a Cosmed K5 you might be able to measure metabolic rate increases on the cobbles versus the road. This could help to account for some of the kinetic energy losses on the cobbles.
Is it insane to suggest putting rim breaks on the front and disc on the back so there is better breaking performance but aero losses with disc are mitigated by having it at the back where the aero losses aren’t as bad?
About 70% of your stopping power comes from the front wheel the disc on the back wouldn’t do much to improve overall braking. My guess is that much of the aero loss from disc brakes is the caliper, rather than the rotor. Shimano and SRAM have made no effort to make the leading and trailing edges of the front caliper aero
PT when we will see your Trinity build, looking forward to that one :)
Agree so much on more fan interaction. Honestly its more fun to watch gopro footage from US semi pro crits than traditional coverage of pro races. Would love to see live video and power data during races etc
Data on races could be amazing. Imagine seeing the live power output of the top climbers as they push. Seeing the cda of a rider in real time. That would be electric.
We had a chat about suspension in road bikes last summer . Dan had just beaten me by 20 minutes in a 25 miler..
Anyway, Moulton had the right idea, the suspension frame with 16" wheels was aero and handled really well. I still race on one for fun , intimidating rivals with a 65 tooth chain ring 😅
Enjoyed the vid guys, interesting stuff. Some of us old cotton sock guys are willing to try new stuff but personally only if its going to improve my times, so not fussed about 12 speed or disc brakes but am fitting narrower bars and waxing chains 🙂
discuss and test suspension stems. surely, suspension stems have an impact on reducing your body shaking, and thus have some impact on the kinetic energy loss. it is suspension.
I think to be fair, road bike optimization has made it to the Iron Age. The improvement on the folk wisdom of 25 years ago is pretty phenomenal. Yes, it still has a way to go, but road bikes are night and day better than in the 1990s. Acceptance of science on rolling resistance means 21mm tires have given way to 28-30, getting close to the 32-35 where they belong; wheel tech has in practice enabled wider tires without an aero penalty, gearing is better, 1x has become an option, the old "narrow q-factor is always better" mantra has been debunked as being fundamentally harmful to big and tall people, we've figured out that typical 40-42-44 handlebar and 170-175 crank sizing was harmful to anyone who ISN'T big and tall, and partly as a consequence of all this bikes are safer, more comfortable to ride and have better handling than they did and cycling is more of a life sport than it was. The only downside is aesthetics; for example the wonderful Dura-Ace 7800 look has given way to black and plastic, often in combination; and disc brakes, as superior as they are, are kind of ugly compared to rims.
very interesting idea to raise the minimum weight to add possibilities
Too many facts and researched outcomes, not enough vibe and hearsay 😘
That “bar tape” comment … 100% agree! That’s has to be the next thing to be looked at.
Great conversation. I love the 8kg bike rule and the potential implications that could mean. Putting required gopro like cameras on every bike (including spares) like the transponders would make for more engagement. Yea, pog isnt going to runnone if JV isn't but if everyone is required then theres no debate
Loved this chat. I'm no engineer, but I found this really engaging and I'm heading to the garage now to add some suspension forks to my roadie.. question for you.. why did they get rid of the roubaix style bike? I have it on my gravel bike and it so good.. way more comfortable.
Great video as usual. May I ask for video from you on the "we all should be in shorter cranks" new trend? I haven't found any in your channel on this subject and would like to hear your say in the topic. Cheers
Spot on about the old steel frames with skinny tires. I"ve been thinking these two parts were a system that worked together. Rims back then being lower profile even had some give.
Yep i think we all forget how a deep blade carbon fork is orders of mag stiffer than a curved steel fork with thin section legs. They flex alarmingly when looking down on them but were surpremely comfortable. At least that's how it felt doing vo2 intervals back from the pub on a school night
@@PeakTorque one thing I always wonder about riding a Ritchey modern steel frame with aero-ish carbon fork: Are the small tubes and head tube really at a significant aerodynamic disadvantage compared to aero bikes that have 3-5 times the surface area?
@@PaganiZondaF650hp It's not really so much about surface area but about the frontal area. I don't look at many bikes but from the aero bikes I have seen, I would be surprised if the frontal area was even 2x that of a classic thin steel tube bike. Plus the coefficient of drag of an aerofoil could easily be 5-10x less than that of a round cylinder
Comments about road suspension make me think something like a Lauf Utlaud or Canyon Endurace is really better for us all. Smooth is fast.
Reducing the weight limit would achieve the same thing, as you'd have specialized bikes for different courses, rather than all rounders (like Tarmac et al). Lightish but easy to still incorporate some aero features just plays into the big brands' desire to reduce costs and have one bike to rule them all.
I admit, I am a bit biased here as I own Tarmac sl7, but isn't that actually beneficial for customers? Having one bike which can do very well most of the things? I know that my bike is not the lightest nor the most aero, but it is so close that I don't feel like I am missing something. Rather than having climbing and aero bike I have an endurance aluminium bike with more relaxed geometry for Sunday coffee rides, and commuting. On the other side I do understand the desire to have specialized equipment, but given the complexity and rapidly growing cost of having so many different variants of frames and models is one of the reasons why bicycles are so damm expensive. I would rather have big brands focused on fever do it all bikes offering better prices and have a cottage industry of highly specialized bikes... Btw I did look into the financial statements of a couple of brands and I was surprised how not really profitable they actually are.
I believe your "engineering" GCSE is called "Design and Technology". We had that for our IGCSE exams in Africa. Great convo btw, always interesting insights!
D&T was my fav gcse and got me on the engineering path when i was a kid
Same, just thought they might've chucked it out @@PeakTorque
lol, a 'solution' to what? and time-stamps would be capitol.
Regarding the tire size conversation, what is the evidence to show that 25/28mm tires on the track are superior to 19/22mm tires? I understand the advantage when riding over uneven surfaces offsets the aerodynamic penalty for wider tires. How does this apply to the track where the surface is smooth? Wouldn't narrower tires be faster?
Nevermind. Was answered below
Top work, a really enjoyable watch
"the sport needs to grow", does it though? As a former fan of actual Motorsport, I hate the "gameshow"yness of modern F1 and it has actually led me to not really follow it any more. And the fact that cycling is a little more raw and taken somewhat seriously as a sport still is one of the things that actually brought me over here.
Also you are always talking about the idea that Motorsports have many things down better than cycling like marketing and technical freedom. I think that's a big misconception. Is say the design freedom in cycling may actually be higher than in modern F1 although "free form" development is not even wanted. You asked for specific prototypes for racing but the existence of such in Motorsport and the resulting cost are probably the single worst thing you could introduce to cycling. Any Motorsport series with actual manufacturer development nowadays has restricted the development to the absolute feasible minimum in the attempt to somehow get into accordance with the ever less interest and budget ideas of the manufacturers they try to attract. And most of Motorsport is now carried out through balance of performance based customer cars with 0 r&d, still manufacturer engagement is poor and teams regularly struggle with finances. There is more or less zero Motorsport left with ambitious rulesets, WRC is fine maybe but even they use standardized hybrid systems effectively cutting out r&d for the only newish tech in 20 years.
I'd say Motorsport has never been in a worse state for a tech interested person and has degraded to a simply "fun-based" show mechanism. Cycling is way better of than motorsports and should so everything not to repeat these errors.
Question …. The bianchi countervail really works to offer a level of damping on cobbles , why hasn’t more been done to look at adding to the carbon weave ?
Surely the best things to instrument if you want to gather comparative data and understand how rider's soft tissues and muscle responses are affecting things with shock and vibration is stem/bars saddle, BB and then rider's helmet (fnar) and maybe try to mount an accelorometor on a chest strap (HR?) As it's strapped to the riders torso.
See what the bike as a structure is seeing at (or close to) the main contact points and then see what the very top most point of the attached meat sack experiences.
Obviously there's a shed load of variables (F&R) tyre width/construction/pressures, and then every component (including suspension/Rigid options) between the axle and the rider but that would need to be the approach if you want to understand vibrational losses for a bike and rider as a system.
I know he was on his earphones, but its really hard to listen to this - especially for non-english native speakers. Something to work on in the future.
@peaktorque
Great podcast! I have always wondered about if the older Colnago C40 bike is actually optimized as it essentially has built in suspension as the front end has a decent amount of give on rough stuff and they were so successful on at Paris Roubaix(yes, aware of the doping), but, the fact that they were smooth and these days you can really feel it glide over the rough stuff.
Angled levers are only banned on straight bars (the cinching down (apparently) compromise the carbon). If the handlebars are made with the angle (coming to a store near you). They are perfectly legal. Not sure if that makes sense but the short of it is they're not going away.
Damper design for FS road bikes, should look at how Specialised has done it with their new Epic WC bike. Totally different air spring set up with the negative air spring tunable to effect the amount of sag. So it behaves a lot more like a hard tail than a regular FS XC bike. Pretty cool.
Peak Talk is what it sounds like when people from Boston say Peak Torque. Lol. Digging the show! Keep em coming.
Big fan of your channel.
I will preface this with the acknowledgment that I have zero engineering background and the below is probably littered with holes, but your discussion on energy loss due to the body absorbing energy transfer was of great interest.
I recently built up a Ti rim brake Enigma. On it I added a set of Roval SLX 24’s. On the advice of my mechanic we swapped that wheelset over to my Fulcrum Racing Zeros. But whilst the Fulcrums are a stiffer wheel, the road surfaces I ride on are poor and I find the less stiffer Roval wheels are more comfortable and overall faster. I put that down to being more comfortable and less battered after a 90min weekday loop.
FWIW The rovals had 25mm gp5000s and the fulcrums 28mm gp5000s and still I noticed a considerable difference in comfort
You'll be pleased to know that there is an enginerring GCSE
Thanks for this, fascinating as always.
I think consumers being able to buy pro race bikes is a two way compromise. There are quite a few middle aged men killing their backs riding around on slammed long reach bikes.
I was really surprised when pinarello didnt use their full suspension aero road bike for paris roubaix.
I've been shouting at the clouds about full-suspension TT bikes years!
Nice to see PT trying to impress DB.
surely if a trek or specialized built and aero full sus road bike and it started winning.. they would sell it.. so why don’t they do it? no rule to say they can’t.
I like the idea of the World tour / Conti to be raced on prototypes. I’m really not a fan of pro bikes being sold to the public, because they are not as good as they could be for the pros, but at the same time they are still way too extreme for Joe Block. I feel that many Joes aspire to ride « like the pros », and the one who can pay the 5 digits price are middle-aged unflexible guys anyway. Bike brands could really push development on the protos (except for things like socks heigh and hoods angle…) ; and still charge 10 grands for those who want to blow the bank for an Aero-Endurance-Gran Fondo Racing frame with 160 mm headtube in size M.
Absolutely no bike brands would have the budget to make custom bikes for pros (30 riders with what, 4-5 bikes each per season?) . Lots of bikes need to be sold to pay back the investment in CFD, engineering and in carbon moulds. It's the other way around: People don't buy pro bikes. Pros get off the shelf bikes.
a bit question about the tyre under tension thing, how might clincher tube, clincher tubeless and hookless tubeless perform different as the tyres interact with the wheels kinda differently? don't know if that's relevent. (i know nothing about enginnering. :p) great show.
Amazing content ❤
Thank you 🙌
Isn't the HiRide Sterra fork the solution we're looking for here as far as aero suspension forks for road bikes goes?
Are you going to make this a proper podcast on the likes of apple podcast player?
Wish I could ask dan which makes a bigger difference for tts, shoulder width or leg length
Nah, the most data driven racing is Formula E and it is also the least exiting and engaging
does pedalling cadence affect efficiency over cobbles? i notice that if i ride rough terrain with a high torque / low cadence, then my body vibrates less as less of my weight is on the saddle, and more of my weight is through the pedals.
woops...just listened to the podcast...they discuss this
Raising the weight limit is genius
My feeling is that the myopic dinosaurs at UCI are so mentally removed from the world the likes of Dan live in, that they can't even contemplate clever ways to improve the sport, like increasing the weight limit
Sorry for the oncoming rant, however...
Getting kinda bored of UCI this UCI that talk. Sure they are short-sighted, but how narrow-sighted is a regular sport aficionado is even more disturbing. There is so much cycling not governed by the UCI and also goverened by the UCI, but equally not covered in the media, at this scale discussing weight limit or lever turn-in is just mental mаsrturbаtiоn of people not knowing what to do with their life.
@PeakTorque I don't understand your issue with assioma pedals. I have my cleats adjusted so that my shoe is only 1-3mm from the crank when using that pedal so I just don't get it. Maybe the shape is a little less aero than a typical look keo but isn't that getting super marginal? Especially if Ganna rides heels up in his TT position?
I ride those pedals in part FOR the wider Q factor, as it takes a load off of my knees. Perhaps the extra clearance is necessary if he's got big feet, or perhaps it's more physiologically optimized, power wise, at the expense of a little bit of aero.
To use their formula 1 analogy, if you were somehow legally allowed to use a much bigger engine than everyone else in the competition, which Ganna does by being Ganna, you'd want to make sure you were getting the most out of that engine too. Even with some sacrifices to aerodynamics from time to time. If he's in a slightly better position for him at minute 45 because his stance is fractionally wider, it may ultimately be a gain not a loss.
@@joelechoI own them because well they are awesome. Broke one in a crash, customer service sends me parts. I ruin the bearings because my dumbass rode them in a rainy gravel race. Bearings replaceable and very easy to service. There also the whole... More accurate that any other pm the market.
Extra round wheels 😂
Well noticed that part 😂
Well noticed that part 😂
Thank fuck for inteligent and interesting cycling engineering chat... cheers gents... a cure to GCN drivel.
airpods
Great chat/info that you can't get anywhere else!
At around 12:40 you say something about bar tape being ridiculous. How so? I haven't thought about it that much.
Because we could imagine a sort of material that is grippy and still easy to clean. What is the point of barre tape ?
@@drym3943 That makes sense. I assumed people used the tape mostly to customize the bar diameter and get extra cushion.
Imagine a spray-on bar tape.
So... Even on a velodrome track, 27mm is faster? Wow. And where does that leave us with front tyres? Is 28 faster than 30 or 32? Is 30 faster than 28? For road I mean. I was under the impression that because of frontal area, 28 would be faster, but NorCal showed the opposite last week, and here it kind of sounded that 30 would be faster too? I'm putting 32 at the rear.
NorCal has incredible unreliable testing protocols. They don't do any duplicate testing so reproducibility is questionable. They often find strange results and don't discuss them at all. Take their results with a bag of salt.
There are multiple facets to it. Not just 1 is faster to all. For Dan it has tested fastest but that’s a complex balance of maybe reducing drag onto the downtube, may work better with the narrow fork etc, rolling resistance, vibration attenuation (yes even velodrome are not entirely smooth). It may be that if he put a 27.5mm measured tyre on the Lotus bike it would be slower. So many factors and tests involved.
NorCal didn't try mixing sizes between front and rear. They also didn't include 30 in their test. Their results are interesting, but way more controlled conditions would be needed to draw any conclusions.
nice chat, especially about the future of sport.
Thanks
🙏
❤ very kind
The dad bod is working
Fun fact - between your solidworks cfd's hambini's and Dan's info back in the 18'-19's I managed to shave my 50k TT some 20mins while I worked in Dubai - helped I was getting fitter too - Now back in UK It's back to the mudnrocks of the pennines and mtb but it set me off on learning cfd skills myself
I heard LR is offering childcare services in Andorra for professional cyclists
Do we trust him? Has he been vetted?
@PeakTorque Does this count..Agents de Coureurs certifiés UCI
32:30 steel forks are better
Thanks
Very kind cheers
Only the English would claim a 'pressure normalised world record'. Just teasing. Great info as always from Dan. Great show!
Can I just have a rim brake bike with super thin tube shapes abd a triple
This session put me to sleep. What's the conclusion of all this?
The UI was the WORST thing about GCN+. Look at F1. It's so much better organized than GCN+ was, and IT isn't perfect. It's still a better model. And GCN+ was never a Roku channel.
If you ever thought gcn+ was bad ui then Eurosport Player would have given you coronary arrest.
@@PeakTorque I don't doubt you. I'm just recalling every time I had to horizontally scroll through a month's worth of races to get to the most recent one. Would a calendar grid be that hard to implement? Is Eurosport something you have to stream from a computer to a large screen, or is it a channel for smart tv's? I had to watch GCN+ in a freaking web browser.
Notice that the expression Mummy daycare doesn't exist because it's seen as a womens inherent job whereas when a man looks after their child it's Daddy daycare, implying that it's somehow something extra. Bring some of your engineering rigour into areas outside of the technical.
I actually use both those terms to remain entirely neutral.
You could be more "inclusive" and say "parent daycare" 😂
@@Gabrielle4870 fuck me can't win with you lot 😐😂
@@Gabrielle4870 Surely, it's the child that's being cared for, regardless of the hour, which is why most people I know just call it "childcare." But all of these terms work just fine as we know what is meant. No one is being repressed by the term "daddy daycare."
@darrellstyner0001 of course..I'm just taking the p*ss
You need to go see Hambini's hairdresser.