trends in frame-building ?? in poem form.

[jerk]

isp yay or nay?

bb30 awesome or ghey?

integrated hsets for sure or no way?

what do you poets have to say?


jerk

[e-RICHIE]

i'm a 10 year plus threadless cat.
love 'em atmo.
and since i am also a dedicated steel girl, 1" is the ideal for steerers.
your nonferrous mileage may vary.

bb30?

that's for industrial made stuff atmo.
i am not sure what issue it solves.
heck - i make 'em and race 'em.
but i don't measure 'em.

just sayin'.

[Tom Kellogg]

All of our steel forks are 1.125" threadless. Lighter, stronger, stiffer. It does require that we make our own steerers though. Kind of a pain.

Headsets? Always in full view. Sorry, but integrated is just too big looking for my old tastes and they are just too risky. If the head tube is not perfect, you can't fix the frame. Period.

BB30? We have done one of them. The customer seems to love it, but I don't really see much point. My FC-7800 seems to be pretty stiff and pretty light. Just watch, I'll be proven wrong any time now.

[e-RICHIE]

All of our steel forks are 1.125" threadless. Lighter, stronger, stiffer. It does require that we make our own steerers though. Kind of a pain.

that's interesting atmo.
are you reaming the crowns or using 1 1/8" parts? if
you use this dimension, doesn't the steel set and lug
size(s) that allow for it add to the avoirdupois atmo?

[steve garro]

BB30 will get rusty and dirty. it will no longer spin, only dirt when you look in. after your peek, a hammer you will seek, to remove the junk from within. steve.

[Tom Kellogg]

that's interesting atmo.
are you reaming the crowns or using 1 1/8" parts? if
you use this dimension, doesn't the steel set and lug
size(s) that allow for it add to the avoirdupois atmo?

When we can get a crown that we want in the 1.125" bore, we will use it. For example; our Brevet/Touring crown is a 1.125" version of an Everest crown that is really wide. In this case, we will actually fabricate a steerer, starting with a relatively thin 1.125" tube and adding a butted section. Usually though, we will use standard 1.0" crowns and fabricate an adapter/internal butt with a thin OS steerer. Takes a bunch of time, but it works like the nuts.

Head tube size. Here, we make our own stuff. Since we fabricate all of our own lugs anyway, we use head tubes and lug stock which allows us to end up with smaller head tubes than what you buy stock. I think it looks better than the pretty big stuff that you usually see. Yes it saves weight, but not enough to write home about.

[suspectdevice]

The "old" standards aren't going anywhere. 1.37x24 is good enough for plenty of things, 27.2 has long been mastered. 1.125" forks and headsets all have reached pretty lofty heights.

If there is an advantage to using newer standards, I'm all about it. We lower our overall bike weight with integrated headtubes on the road bikes, and I get better weld contact area with the larger diameter headtube. We could shave a half pound off of a complete road bike by going to BB30... But it would also necessitate me eating the cost of new dies for new chainstays and seatubes to keep the rear end stiffness the same. Our road bike is already the stiffness I want. I don't want it any stiffer. No need for an ISP, as I want our bikes to fit in a bike box quickly and easily for the racers we design them for.

For things that HAVE to by shiny and fancy and new, and get sold mostly by marketing features, all this new stuff is great. Standard frame components and designs are totally dialed in now though.

Take, for example the full suspension xc frame we are doing. It has a tapered headtube, 92mm direct fit shell, semi-isp, fancy concentric brake mount co-pivot location (With fancy Licensed name!), molded composite linkage, pasta maker and brazeons for one of those stupid gravity dropper posts.

Some of the crap is on that bike because I wanted it, or needed it. Some of it is there to help out on the showroom floor. We will make hundreds of these, and need to enthuse average bike-shop dunderheads and conservative international distributors...

On the other hand, I have a DH race bike with an ISP, internal transmission, tapered headtube and a steel rear end. These aren't things the market wants... but they are things that I want. At $8k a pop with the transmission and suspension attached, we will only sell a few, all made and tuned to measure.

A bike company or frame builder can't be everything to everyone, nor does it need to be.

[e-RICHIE]

this should be a sticky atmo.

A bike company or frame builder can't be everything to everyone, nor does it need to be.

when i first looked around, framebuilders set the trends and were
at the vanguard. but so did and was steve pucci. what happened?
atmo, the mid-late 80s mtb and americanization of the bicycle industry
re-shaped all that preceded it. that spilled over to road machines. and
before you could say RGM-RS Limited Edition Watch, it was all over for
our niche and community. i am glad it has self-resuscitated, but i still
sense many f'builders dance to the industry tune rather than their own.

[EnginCycles]

i still
sense many f'builders dance to the industry tune rather than their own.

Since i am building a BB30 bike i guess i drank some Kool-Aid. Does this mean i am "all about it". Heck no. I love threaded BB shells and will always use them by default. I was curious and my use for this shell is not a hardtail and i think it will improve the bike. Needed improvement? probably not but still i think it will have an advantage.

Tom I am confused why you need to make the steerer? The True Temper MSRD-LT is crazy light and saves tons of weight in the steerer department. If you are turning a steerer on a lathe this steerer is surely stronger. Look into it and you will find nothing lighter (including 1"). Not for everyone but with a cast crown i bet it will work in almost all applications.

I agree with E-Richie (even though i am building this bike). I always liked his comment "why are you doing what you do?"

Cheers,
Drew

[zank]

my tune...



rats, can we still embed videos?

[hampco]

there once was a hermit named dave

who repaired old bikes in his cave

he said with a grin

as he wiped the chamois butter off his chin

"if it was up to me jerk's frames would use ISP, integrated HS (or three), but the BB30 for an option I would save"

[Tom Kellogg]

The True Temper MSRD-LT is crazy light and saves tons of weight in the steerer department. If you are turning a steerer on a lathe this steerer is surely stronger. Look into it and you will find nothing lighter (including 1"). Not for everyone but with a cast crown i bet it will work in almost all applications.
Drew

The TT MSRDLT is quite a bit heavier than ours is. Our butt is almost exactly the same (within a couple of thou) but the TT top section is heavier than it needs to be. If you just run the numbers from "tried and true" 1.0" stuff, you are really comparing apples to ... well anvils. Traditional 1.0" steerers came out of the need to have an 0.060" wall with a 1.0" OD to fit a .875" quill. Once you get rid of quills and oversize the steerer, yield numbers go way up if you change your force vectors appropriately. A friend of ours who builds about five frames a year did run the numbers in a straight forward way, and came out with what he figured would be a sufficient set of gauges for an oversized steerer. The thing weighed a ton. He forgot that he wouldn't need to worry about what a quill wedge does to the ID of a steerer.

[EnginCycles]

The TT MSRDLT is quite a bit heavier than ours is. Our butt is almost exactly the same (within a couple of thou)

From this i am assuming you are having this tube drawn for you and not "making"(turning on a lathe) it from straight stock?
-Drew

[Jason Musgrave]

TK what are you using for a head tube, and is your steerer enough lighter than 1" to make up for the heavier HT?

[Tom Kellogg]

From this i am assuming you are having this tube drawn for you and not "making"(turning on a lathe) it from straight stock?
-Drew

TK what are you using for a head tube, and is your steerer enough lighter than 1" to make up for the heavier HT?

We don't have the horsepower to bore them out. Our lathe is a '64 11.5" South Bend tool room lathe. The bed and post just don't have enough rigidity to enable a long enough boring bar.

Since we make our own lugs from scratch, we can do whatever we want with them and the head tubing. The combination of the lighter steerers and super light head tubes that we make ends up with a lighter front end than a traditional 1.0" frame has. Of course, the drawback for us is that it takes way too much time to do each frame this way. Everything is fabricated. Nothing is cast except for the crown. It works, but at the same time, it sucks.

[Too Tall]

my tune...



rats, can we still embed videos?

Woops. Hang tight. I'll add the ability. Take a sec. or two (ignore the guy behind the curtain ;) )

(cough) Ta da.

[zank]

you rock, coach.

I say pick the kind of bike that makes you want to be a framebuilder, learn it inside and out, try to make it better, and present it to the public. Have a solid reason for each innovation you introduce. Build it better and they will come.

[Tom Kellogg]

So, would you see this kind of open discussion from the traditional, old-line Euro Builders? I intentionally exclude Dario from that group since he is SO much different from those I would put in the group. My intention is not to put the Euro builders down, but it seems to me that the American tradition of builder cooperation is somewhat unusual. Although I am sure that some of us keep some secrets, but for the most part, we are pretty open to helping others. I know that I have gotten a lot of good advice from a long list of builders and in return, I have helped others with things that we have figured out. Maybe I am wrong, but I doubt that there is as much of that cooperation going on over the pond. And maybe that is why most of the American builders seem to make really good stuff. Cool.

[jerk]

So, would you see this kind of open discussion from the traditional, old-line Euro Builders? I intentionally exclude Dario from that group since he is SO much different from those I would put in the group. My intention is not to put the Euro builders down, but it seems to me that the American tradition of builder cooperation is somewhat unusual. Although I am sure that some of us keep some secrets, but for the most part, we are pretty open to helping others. I know that I have gotten a lot of good advice from a long list of builders and in return, I have helped others with things that we have figured out. Maybe I am wrong, but I doubt that there is as much of that cooperation going on over the pond. And maybe that is why most of the American builders seem to make really good stuff. Cool.

agreed. the most wonderful kumbyfrcknya thing about it is evidenced in this thread. i started this thread just as a stupid test thread to see if the sub-forum was working for our esteemed leader and it morphed into a really cool conversation.

thanks guys-

jerk

[csbmo]

i gotta say that i too got all warm and fuzzy reading this thread.
thanks gentlemen.