"you didn't answer the post. in typical ST fashion you polarized the gist of my post"

what specifically would you like me to answer? you said rubber for the smaller wheels are difficult to find. no, that's not true. it's easy to find. it's not ubiquitous but, as i said, neither are good tubulars. so, sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. using your argument, both tubies and small wheels are out. the value of these products are trumped by the fact (according to you) that their technical value is not equaled by their ubiquity. that's your thesis, it's your prerogative to buy your bikes with that in mind, and that's fine. for you. but there are a subset of athletes you can't identify with and they do have a significant problem your simplistic solution doesn't address.

as to the design issue, no, you're wrong, a downward angled stem on a large wheeled bike won't work. the stem will be very short to even come close to fitting, and a negative twenty five degree stem will not come close to getting you the decline in elevation you need.

but, as i said, you can carry the day by providing that geometry that will work. otherwise, i must conclude that your off the cuff post is weightless. i'm sorry to write so harshly to your post, but your thinking is what gives comfort to bike manufacturers that are too lazy and stupid to provide the products our market needs.

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

what is wrong with a little toe overlap ?

if you can't live with toe overlap at all by all means enjoy your 650 wheeled bike ! or, enjoy the process of a custom design to see if you can't get er done thru a relaxed head angle and adjusted rake. i am not seeing a problem and my point is not polemic. individualize, ya know?

"see if you can't get er done thru a relaxed head angle and adjusted rake."

a little toe overlap is okay. a lot is not. there are plenty of free parametric programs out there on the web that'll help you generate your design. there are also plenty of trail generator programs. that'll get you started. with these programs, you can let us know exactly how relaxed the head angle should be and how much offset one should have. seventy degrees? fifty five millimeters of offset? would you like to ride that bike? do you have any idea how much wheelbase that will create, relative to the size of the rider?

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

well dan that is a pretty comfy challenge - let me again say nobody does it better. let's just stick with the orbea's geometry, for now. obviously, a 650 bike is going to be able to be lower than a 700. if you are a runty little guy, and you absolutely need to be super low in front then hey guess what - the 650 wheeled bike is for you !! boy, that was hard. the question is, does it NEED to be for everybody ? who gets to say whether the height attainable on the orbea "works" or not ? " works " for whom under what circumstances ? how do you know a short negative 25 degree stem isn't low enuf for rider XXX who wishes to use their husband's 808's?? it is lower than a stack-o-spacers and and uprising stem, so why wouldn't it be a possible option for some ?

the orbea's design, then, is lazy and stupid ?

maybe it is, and maybe it isn't. it is different from yours. seems a mite over the top to assume people who hold a different view than yours and have come to slightly different end designs from yours are absolutely wrong, lazy and stupid. well, maybe not if you are a designer with a well established profit motive to demean them, a bully pulpit from which to preach, and legions of adoring fans who hang on your every word . . . . . . . . . . . . good work if you can get it, to be sure.

" ? do you have any idea how much wheelbase that will create, relative to the size of the rider? "

i am familiar with these programs, and i have used them. the answer is - a little. sometimes a little is all ya need.

as an aside, this issue is a hot one in mtn bike design for 29ers, as you may know - and that is where i have enjoyed playing around with it. interestingly the problem there is the reverse from tri, in that the motivation is to get bigger wheels under people and get them to work. oddly, it turns out there is room for different opinions on the design issue !! lots of people have input, lots of people have reached workable compromises, mass market brands have taken a back seat to smaller personal levels of service, and mostly people agree that individualization in design is a good thing for enthusiasts. funny - the results that occur when one party isn't selling the design process as a commodity.

Good lord t-t-n, you are as thick as a brick. You seem to have missed the point of the article completely. So here, let me help you, if you are short then 700c wheels are not good because they result in too many compromises in the frame build. Wow, that was hard. I'm no bike designer but it seems rather simple, about the smallest top tube you can make that will work with 700c wheels is around 50cm. If you are of such a height that this length top tube is too long then you need a bike with 650c wheels. It also results in a tall head tube and bars that are very high relative to seat height. You say that a little toe overlap is no big deal. Sure, try it on an out and back course on a narrow two lane road and then lets talk about overlap. Your whole problem seems to come down to "I can't find a 650c tube in outer mongolia so it's no good". Ever heard of stocking up?

"let's just stick with the orbea's geometry, for now... how do you know a short negative 25 degree stem isn't low enuf for rider XXX who wishes to use their husband's 808's??"

go into your parametric program and figure out the wheelbase of the orbea versus, say, the kestrel, in this XS size. then figure out the "stack": and you'll measure that by running horizontal lines through the BB and the top of the head tube and measuring the distance between them. this measure will tell you the difference between these bikes in terms of how low you can put your aero bars.

you can answer your own question, and then report back to us. it's your thesis, it's your post, you do the math. or maybe somebody else here will do the math and come to your rescue. otherwise, you're really not supporting your own position with anything but unsupportable guesses.

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

well turtle - with their 48 cm top tubed tri-bike orbea is just as thick as me. maybe you should give them a call - they obviously do not know squat about bikes.

this is silly. obviously there a point where a person is so short a 700C wheel becomes unworkable. w-h-e-r-e that point is becomes the issue. and for whom. the article in question has it set for riders around 5' 6". lots of bike companies have it lower. lots of riders have it lower. they have reasons for that. in the case of clever and custom design i have it a lot lower. at the least, it seems reasonable to go with a level of overlap without resorting to name-calling. during this overlap a rationale discussion would include various compromises to educate and inform. information and education and understanding of compromise and design are - i thought - the antithesis of "thick". i stand corrected, thanx !!

Hey Timothy,

While I think I understand your intent that in the original article Dan mentions what should be proper bike design neglects to say WHY some manufacturers choose otherwise (other than just being lazy, not dedicated, etc.)...it seems you keep pushing the 650 vs 700 debate (see Dan, I've even eliminated the "c" or "cc" now, it is just easier with no description) when that really isn't what the article is about.

With that said, I really have enjoyed this thread. This is the Slowman of old (bold and assertive and demonstrating to those who don't understand forward geometry ala QR of '96 era), and t-t-n who is a very open minded thinker (probably more so in the past 7 years since he orginally thought all the "tri-bike" bunk was nonsensical fodder for the foolish) attempting to point out one very small area that could have been included in the article (and not a debate on wheel size).

Continue on with your regularly scheduled program....

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Craig Preston - President / Preston Presentations
Saving the world with more professional, powerful, and persuasive presentations - one audience at a time.

craigster. thank you for that. it is not my intent to get into the polemic 650 v 700 issue. indeed, the entire gist of my original point was that the issue is NOT a "X vs Y" one, as the article suggested but rather one of compromise and need/design - and that dan had omitted any such discussion in the article.

to dan on his kind offer of pursuing some numbers - thank you no. it is disappointing, frankly, that you would suggest it. i obviously have not claimed that a 700 wheeled bike can be set up as low as a 650 one. equally obvious is the fact that a negative rise stem will be lower than a positive rise one - that is hardly "speculation". the issue is that the article and your subsequent posts in the thread make claims to 'fact' issues which are in truth your opinion. you resort to namecalling and demean any difference from that opinion, and disallow any discussion of overlap or compromise as "absolutely wrong", stupid, or lazy.

why you do this, i admit i do not know. as i have mentioned in analogy, the world of 29er mtn bikes debates the exact same issue from a different angle - but does so without such polemic rancor. the only thing i can figure is what i have already noted - you offer a rigid design product for money, it is thus in your interest to lay claim to it and denigrate any deviation from it, you have this forum and your paid "bike tests" as a forum to do so with a willing audience, and you take advantage of that to your profit. good for you.

i like the way the 29er guys go about it better - but that is me. as craig noted if the article had at least touched on the trade-offs, alternatives, rationales, etc of anything outside slowman-think without resorting to cheap-shots i would have no quarrel with it. as it is it stands mostly as an ad for dan's design product. call it what it is.

"with their 48 cm top tubed tri-bike orbea is just as thick as me. maybe you should give them a call - they obviously do not know squat about bikes."

i have given orbea a call. a fair number of times. recently. i just wrote about their tri bikes in some detail. they make wonderful bikes. they make even more wonderful road bikes. they are a fine company, and their company structure is unique and laudable, specifically the co-op model. their component house brand, zeus, is older than campagnolo, and has a fine tradition. read my overview of their tri bikes, i think you'll find i consider this a first rate builder of bikes.

that said, this company is wedded to its mediterranean tradition and, no, it does NOT in fact know how to address the problem of the female triathlete. either that, or it chooses not to for market reasons. that's its prerogative.

here are some facts for you. the 48cm orbea ordu has a head angle of 70.5 degrees. the bike you yourself ride probably has about 6cm of trail. much more trail than that, the bike becomes very sluggish. what fork offset goes into this orbea model? 43mm? 45mm? 48mm? even with 48mm the trail is 67mm. you have to use 55mm of offset to get to a trail calc that's similar to the handling you have in your bike.

so you get a bike that you have to "argue" with the entire bike ride, because of all the trail. if you can find a fork with 55mm offset -- which is not available unless the manufacturer makes it itself -- the bike's wheelbase is so long that you're driving a tractor trailer. instead of both wheels arcing in tandem, the bike is pivoting around the rear wheel.

the top of the head tube of this bike sits, as well as i can tell, about 50cm above the bottom bracket or more (orbea's geometry information is very scant). meanwhile, the kestrel airfoil pro's head tube sits precisely 43.7mm above the bottom bracket. so you're talking about at least a 6cm difference.

about that downward-angled stem solution you prefer: the typical -25 degree stem in the industry is the profile H20. the problem with using this stem versus a standard -17 degree (roughly horizontal to the ground) is that the typical stem has a clamp that sits over the steerer that is 3.5cm to 4cm from top to bottom. the H20 is closer to 5cm top to bottom, because this stem has a large major diameter (the extension tube is oval) for structural reasons. this makes the stem taller to begin with, and while this stem works very nicely in its longer lengths, when you use the H20 in a short size, say, 6cm or shorter (certainly necessary with a 700c bike jury-rigged to fit a smaller woman) you don't actually get much in the way of a negative elevation. maybe a half-cm.

what you'd really need if you want that small-sized 700c bike to work is a look ergostem, and you'd have to position it so that the stem is extremely short and points almost straight down. but you still have all the handling issues described above, coupled with an extremely short tiller, and a steer column sticking up right where the woman's face is, ready to smack her in the face while going over a bump unless it's mitred short.

other than all that, you're right, build this bike with 700c wheels.

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

I know I'm over-simplyfing it but all I'm getting from you is that although 650c wheels are perfect performance and design-wise for small (lets say sub 52cm) frames, it's better to design a frame with all sorts of compromises just so it can use 700c wheels which are (in your opinion) more convenient.

That sort of logic would have quashed the growth of 29'ers that you so enthusiastically support for people of all sizes.

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___________________________________



http://irondad06.blogspot.com/

http://irondad.blogspot.com/

"to dan on his kind offer of pursuing some numbers - thank you no."

i reckoned as much, and as you see i ran the numbers for you. this one is like global warming. there is no debate. there is no other side. except by those who want things to be as they always have been, and ascribe to tradition and nostalgia a value that outweighs science and reason.

i'm sure you see all this as harsh treatment for you. but the facts are what they are. it's not at all hard to obtain 650c rubber, unless you expect it to be at every bike shop. if you're a 5'4" female and that's the measure of your convenience quotient then, yes, you ought to be on 700c. but let's all tell ourselves the truth, that you'll be riding a dog for however long you own that bike in order to be able to get your 700c on impulse.

i'm writing about what technically works, and separating that from what technically doesn't work. it dishonors the companies that spend the money and take the time to make these women's sizes properly to do otherwise. for the past 25 years it's been a struggle to get bike and accessory companies to make tri specific products, instead of just putting the model name "triathlon" on a road bike product and marketing it to triathletes. yes, i've had my foot on the neck of these companies for 20 of those years and, no, i'm not going to stop now.

it's not just orbea i'm going to criticize. kuota is one of my larger advertisers, and they don't make a 650c bike for triathlon. as is the case with orbea, they make very fine bikes. but they're not a good option for those shorter than 5'6" and i'll be writing that. i have several advertisers who'll be getting that treatment from me. i have a brand new advertiser coming on line that i'll pretty much savage in this small bike overview. but you're right, it is about the money for me in one sense, because people read these reviews because they're honest appraisals. it doesn't seem to cost me advertisers, it seems to get me new advertisers. maybe more magazines ought to consider this editorial model.

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

thanx dan.

it looks we have come full circle ! i believe that my very first sentence was that your case for the 650 wheeled bike was well stated. and so it is.

uhhhhhh, but.

in stunning and impressive and oh-so-intimidating detail you describe a series of compromises. these compromises existed long before you came around, sir. history shows very very clearly their actual real-world results are nowhere near so dire as you enjoy painting, however. " tractor trailer " ??? riders getting " smacked in the face " ?? and so on. my o my. you fail to note that riders have - inexplicably - ridden 48 and 50 cm 700C wheels bikes around for decades with these ominouss traits - and lived to tell the tale. some of them quite rapidlly, even. you would think these bikes have been like john deer tractors, weighing their poor riders to the mud, reading your colourful prose. to repeat, yes there are a few design compromises that take place over the small-bike transition. most are livable, some are on balance preferable, none are anywhere near as dire as you like to paint them - and probably most importantly none of them make you richer.

anyway, i especially liked the bit where you go to the most klunky stem ever made, to bolster your point. complete with impressive specifications ! nice.

and, that part where you dismiss ' market reasons ' as being insignificant or inferior. do you mean market reasons, as in what-people-prefer-to-buy-and-own-and-ride ? imagine !!!

you are a good and smart bike designer, dan. and one hell of a salesman. and a self-promoter/co-opter of design philosophy par excellence. it made you rich in a bizness that it is very hard to get rich in. sometimes you really do lay it on too thick, tho.

i reckon it is getting a wee mite off topic, but i do applaud you for your editorial model. again, tho - lets not go crazy. that german mag TOUR does the same thing.

you set up a over-dramatized proprietary vision, position yourself as both saviour and authority to the buying public ( like that bit about "the industry" needing your foot on their neck - drama !! ) and basically force them to come thru you for your blessing for sales. nice work. that you can pull off being a paid bike-testor in a magazine to do little more than generate support for your design product is nothing short of masterful.

you will please pardon me if the soupy syrup of it all makes want to puke now and again. carry on, by all means. out.

You are absolutely right, in the past people had to make do with a lot of stuff that was sub par or didn't suit their needs. Then along came someone with an idea or solution that worked better. And there have always been people too thick to see the future and realize that the way it was in the past does not mean that it should always be so. I will leave you to your horse and buggy and telegraph.

"these compromises existed long before you came around, sir."

you're right. the safety bicycle has been around for 100 years. but the aero bar is quite recent. it's been around 20 years. the aero bar is not a component. it is the basis for a new position. and that required a new geometry, and that geometry is new, and i have been around to witness all of that.

while the problems attending small road race bikes exist, it is in fact quite possible to engineer road bikes for smaller women. no, they do not handle well, but they fit, and they handle well enough. you'll note that throughout this decade both trek and cannondale have made 650c wheeled bikes for these women, because they recognize the engineering problems. but these bikes still have a hard time because tradition is hard to buck. but that's road bike design. the article on slowtwitch that prompted your starting this thread confined itself to the problem of smaller tri bikes. tri bikes have to be both shorter in the cockpit, and lower in front, and these problems haven't been around for 100 years.

the shorter cockpit problem: the virtual top tube relative to the saddle height is a ratio that is fairly typical for men. your virtual top tube is probably in the neighborhood of 72% of your saddle height (BB to top of saddle). it's frequent, however, for a woman to have a top tube 75% or 78% of saddle height, because of the restrictions placed on the design because of the size of the front wheel. this problem even exists in road bikes, which is why trek's WSD bikes have seat tubes as steep at 76 degrees (to push the front of the bike, and its front wheel, forward). the problem is made more urgent when considering the tri bike for this group of riders.

the height problem: consider most tri bikes for men. my own road bike has a 19cm head tube. my tri bike has a 16cm top tube, and i have to resort to your remedy -- the downward angle stem -- to get it to fit. if men's tri bikes have head tubes 4cm or 5cm shorter than their road bikes, what are women supposed to do when their own 700c road bikes have 9cm head tubes?

QR just this past year changed its tri geometry. felt just changed its tri geometry, pretty radically. giant changed theirs even more radically. trek just abandoned "lance geometry" contained in the TTT in favor of the equinox TTX, and repudiated their own view, held during the 90s, that road geometry was probably okay for triathletes. many more companies are changing their thinking this year, and it'll be evident in september's interbike. the fact that companies have been around awhile doing things a certain way does not mean they are immune to change when change is required.

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

Sorry, but I am one of those small females that really appreciated someone making the time and effort to highlight the problems concerning small bikes. We don't get a lot of attention when it comes to this issue. It's been unfair to all these people (mostly women) to have a bike companies issue "women bikes" when they are really men's bikes re-badged. I've ridden 650c since 1991 and live in France where 650c just does not exist yet.good girl scout here-I'm prepared! Best part with these small bikes-I get down the hill faster than the guys-wanna feel my brakes? YIPPEE!

uhhh, dan. i think i have been pretty clear that if you NEED to be that low, 650 wheels are a great way to get there. you can put the slide-rule away. not everybody who rides a bike 50 cm or so needs to be that low, or at least wishes to be. the market has shown that 700 wheels do carry some preference among some riders who could otherwise be on 650's, and some bike companies understand that. not sure why you insist on the polemics. you disappoint me in that, honestly.








this topic is more fun, then:

"" the fact that companies have been around awhile doing things a certain way does not mean they are immune to change when change is required. ""

like i said, dan - you go.

just like TOUR mag you have parlayed yourself into the arbiter of what-is-required. gerard has mentioned on this very site that in order to see sales in europe you need a good test from TOUR - your bike needs to be stiff as hell and light. it doesn't matter if you think a more compliant bike might be better, or even that racers win on those more compliant bikes. TOUR needs to have blessed your bike independant of any real-world application and whatever they like is what goes.

you have done the same thing for yourself and your design-product in the domestic tri-world - in some cases to the point of blantant conflict-of-interest that is frankly stunning. you have parlayed the influence of your design-product thru this website and its legion to be a force that must be appeased, on the exact model of TOUR. experience doesn't matter, results don't matter, alternative views don't matter, compromise doesn't matter, and as we saw in the article that started this thread - any acknoledgement of the validity of anything outside of the product DAMN sure doesn't matter. in dan and his vision we trust. in his own words - he has his righteous foot on the very throat of the industry for us !!

you are in fact a genius. i feel like sending you some money right now. praise jesus.

In the words of Deiter from "Sprockets" on SNL circa '90... "You have become tiresome."

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**************
Too f@ckin depressed from various injuries to care about having a signature line.

Sponsored by Blue Shield PPO.

Chris Rock: A bunch of girls think that you don't need no man to raise no child... shut the f**k up with the bullshit! Yeah, you can do it without a man, but it don't mean it's to be done! Shit! You can drive a car with your feet if you want to; it don't mean its a good f**king idea!

I'm 5'7" and currently ride a custom Serotta with a 53 ST and 52 TT on a 700c and have toe overlap. Sure, I was able to emulate a position on a cheap nashbar frame for city riding but it handles nowhere near my Serotta. I also know a friend who assumed all it took for tri geometry was to push the seat forward and put on a forward stem from Profile. He crashed on his first ride. Badly.

I was able to score one of those cheap cervelo one's for 500$ and my size came with 650 wheels. Since then all I ever see on the classifieds here and elsewhere are CHEAP used 650's. Sure, my LBS doesn't have a wide selection of tubes/tires for 650 but the used market is amazing. I agree there are disadvantages to smaller, less common wheels but I also am dismayed by the majority of industry to ignore or think of women or short-torso riders as an afterthought. My LBS is a Giant dealer and their 2007 women's line of bikes are a joke. One extra size smaller (XXS) and women's specific shifters, smaller handlebars etc. It seems pretty obvious to me that the industry likes one wheel size to keep costs down. At least there are people like Slowman who are trying to get a change out there. Whether its good or bad, its still up to you, the consumer to dictate what the market wants. Slowman isn't buying all the bikes in the world, we are.

I am a small rider, I have two 49cm Olmos both with 700s on them, love them. The key for me was finding a frame that fit me well. I can get pretty low on these bikes and am comfortable, with a very small amount of toe overlap (which has never been an issue, even in crit & road racing). I think that with so many variations in torso vs. leg lengths, evey smaller rider will have to look at many options to find one that fits them well - there are many combinations of wheel size, frame size, stem etc., that will yield many different set-ups.

I liked the article, if only as a reminder that if I do decide to buy a tri frame, that it would serve me well to check out 650s as part of that research.

AP

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"How bad could it be?" - SimpleS

that seems pretty reasonable, andy-p.

only on ST can a guy get slayed as unreasonable for suggesting more choice, flexibility in design, understanding of compromise, balance of needs, and individual assessment is a good thing. love it. sacred cows, blind allegiance and dogma ? not here. :)

it reminded me of something else, too. when i think of most 650 bikes under women i see at tri's, it strikes me that most of them are set up with a stack-o-spacers and even significantly upturned stems. not sure what the point is in that set-up, but i bet that it is true in a lot of places . . . . . . . . . . . . . does the couple cm difference in lower headtube height still matter like dan sez if the set-up includes 8 cm of added on rise? i reckon so.

I've actually found wheels to be cheaper for the 650 size. For example, on ebay, the 650's don't seem to sell too high because there aren't as many folks out there looking for them. They move slower at retailers too, so if you have the patience to wait for a sale and aren't too picky you can get some nice deals.

The biggest issue I've ever had riding a 650c bike is when I flatted on a training ride, the mis-installed my only spare and pinch flatted it on inflation. I was on a frequented bike path, but none of the folks that stopped had a spare 650 tube (of course they wouldn't.) luckily a dude on a recumbent happened by and hooked me up and saved me the long ride.

Timothy...ok...enough.

This thread has degraded from the original content of the article (about designing small bikes in the tri market) into the 650 vs 700 wheel debate, now into cultlike culture? WTF?

While some can see the original intent of t-t-n's initial post, this thread could have been nipped in the bud if both Dan & Tim didn't raise up on their haunches willing to butt heads to the death. A simple "the article was not intended to show WHY some manufacturers don't pay attention to the details I mentioned, but yes, what you mentioned is probably one of the reasons they don't" answer would have worked.

Open a new thread and ask what makes triathletes follow the trends, methodologies, etc. they do. For what it's worth, I haven't seen t-t-n on such a crusade since he just peppered Frank Day with machine gun like roadie cynicism prior to his (t-t-n's) PC experiment. He is not a troll...although it appears as though he needs someone who knows/respects him to cruise up there to cheese/yah-hey-der land and b!tch slap him around a bit until he snaps out of it ;-)

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Craig Preston - President / Preston Presentations
Saving the world with more professional, powerful, and persuasive presentations - one audience at a time.