Read up on XD-15 metal. It’s used in aircraft engines. It’s very strong and won’t wear easily. It’s stronger and cheaper than any coated race could be. This is why I’m a huge Enduro Bearings fan. Great engineering and prices.

From what I’ve been reading on angular bearings, they are a better solution. I think we need some good debate on angular vs radial too.

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Yea, I thought it was ironic than Ben comes on here strutting about SLF's clear design cues and how they aren't original...

In a previous life part of my job was to evaluate bearings for 'high performance' applications. We had direct contact w/ companies like SKF, Timken, NTN...etc. and would always laugh when they came by with their latest 'coated' bearings. The coating would work great for about 2-5 minutes....and then disintegrate in our testing and usually show worse than std ABEC-3 steel bearings after that. Keep in mind the capabilities of our test put about 10% of the power/torque that our actual application did. We always were nice to them, offered to run the tests, and politely asked them to go back to the drawing board.

Not saying that the coating wouldn't work for a much lower force environment like a bicycle....but I'm not putting my wallet on the line to test it out.

I would have thought that if a manufacturer such as Shimano thought this type of product offered a performance benefit of any worth it would be part of their range. //

And you would be completely wrong about that assumption. When companies get really big, bulky, and have several levels of middle management in them, they lose that nimbleness of product development. At one time I thought the same about Campy when Shimano was the little nimble player in the market. How could campy not see the value in index shifting, and for so many years that they never really got back into the game until they lost most the market share. How did Shimano not see the value in carbon cranks when FSA was eating their lunch? Companies just get so big and assume all is good, even though people are ditching all kind of parts from their groupos for other niche parts that are better and cooler. Speedplay blew away all the guys and just slipped in this pedal that now is kind of the standard, all from just a little start up pedal in San Diego. Why one of the big guys didn't buy them a decade ago astonishes me, but that is the nature of folks that just think what they got is best, all the time.


SO don't look to the big guys for the next best thing, they almost never are the ones that bring it to market. And to all that think you cannot get patents on stuff that has been around, you are wrong. There were aero bars and disc wheels in the late 1800's, along with a pedal that looks a lot like a speed play. Pete Pensyres used aero bars in 1985, but Scott got a patent on the bars and position later on. Just because someone has made something in their garage and a few people use it does not give them the exclusive, or preclude someone else that comes along later to patent a product like it. Someone actually has to pay all the money for a patent first, and then wait for challenges to that, so it can be done.


And for those of you asking/demanding what the aerobes is, come on now. This would be so complicated that the +/- would overwhelm any results, as Kiley pointed out. I think at this point the best we can hope for is to measure friction loss/gain, and make decisions based on that. And even there I have to wonder if the measuring tools are sophisticated enough to measure such small differences.

Because the friction reduction of the pulleys is likely smaller than the margin of error in wind tunnel testing doesn't mean that asking the question am I paying money to gain less in friction loss than I am losing in aerodynamic drag is invalid....

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Ed O'Malley
www.VeloVetta.com
Founder of VeloVetta Cycling Shoes
Instagram • Facebook

Of course the question is valid, I'm just questioning if any real absolute answer can be achieved with todays technology. I don't believe so, but perhaps there will be a computer model at some point that answers the questions of such small numbers.

Its just when you have to have a person peddling the bike at the same time as you measure stuff like this, well it gets very tricky to ferret out the tenths of watts or .cda one way or the other..

If Specialized can measure the difference between S-Works 6 shoes with Boas and S-Works Sub 6 shoes with laces and a cover and can tell the difference in drag, then we should have data on pulleys. Use a dummy with pedaling legs and run the scans with the pulleys and without.

Seems pretty simple? No?

Also, the forum has a quote tool. It makes it a bit easier to read than copying and pasting responses and then posting your thoughts in bold.

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I think that this begs another question- if we cannot measure the performance benefit of oversize pulleys because if there is one it is beyond the sensitivity of our technology, what is the sense in paying $500 for them?

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Ed O'Malley
www.VeloVetta.com
Founder of VeloVetta Cycling Shoes
Instagram • Facebook

The A2 Tunnel resolution is 1 gram of drag. Don't tell me we "can't" tell the difference.

Oversized pulleys might be a fad. Time will tell. If Shimano and SRAM saw value in them, they would make them. To those saying corporations are too big, blah blah blah, no, they are actively looking for ways to make money. That's the whole goal of a company. Perhaps they don't see any performance increase on oversized pulleys to make it worth manufacturing them.

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Define "resolution" for me. Do you mean that they could say with confidence bike A has 1 gram of drag less than bike B after accounting for all sources of error and variability? Or does it mean the balance reports drag in 1 gram increments?

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Ed O'Malley
www.VeloVetta.com
Founder of VeloVetta Cycling Shoes
Instagram • Facebook

Not 100% sure. I asked Geoff what's the lowest drag number difference he could detect in the tunnel. He told me 1 gram.

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I do agree with Monty that large companies can often lose the ability to really innovate for a number of reasons, even when they academically understand it's in their best interest. I have experienced it first hand more than once. But my experience with it has been with much larger companies than Shimano or SRAM.

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Ed O'Malley
www.VeloVetta.com
Founder of VeloVetta Cycling Shoes
Instagram • Facebook

Right...but the purpose of Shimano and SRAM is to make bicycling faster, better, and more efficient. This is all they do every day.

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Make Inside Out Sports your next online tri shop! http://www.insideoutsports.com/

I have no idea if SRAM or Shimano suffer from this problem- I suspect they don't. But I have seen huge sophisticated engineering-driven companies stop innovating around their core businesses. They become too comfortable doing what they've always done. Culture becomes one where being responsible for a mistake hurts your career more than doing nothing. Chasing short term stock price increases incentives for r&d cost reductions, cost cutting to boost p/e ratios... All sorts of stuff.

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Ed O'Malley
www.VeloVetta.com
Founder of VeloVetta Cycling Shoes
Instagram • Facebook

I'd argue that Shimano, SRAM, and Campy are all pretty darned innovative, and have each launched some start-up-company-grade stuff. Index shifting was a game changer. The STI lever was a game-changer. Wireless is a game-changer. Campy....um....er...they went to 11 first (though they were hugely innovative back in the last century).

Or in the case where someone else beat them, they fill the space pretty quickly when they sense they've been beaten to market on something significant.

By comparison throwing a few extra teeth on pulley wheels is pretty small potatoes.

Quote:

How did Shimano not see the value in carbon cranks

What is the value in carbon cranks? A Shimano cold-forged Dura-Ace crank is a damned beautiful piece of engineering. It could be argued that Shimano doesn't follow fads. They're not going to use carbon...because carbon. Or add extra teeth to pulleys for the thinnest of thin efficiency margins while sacrificing other attributes.

We can, you'd just need a party with means and/or interest to conduct the testing. I am pretty sure I could figure out how to rig up the mannequin legs and feet and get them to rotate around the bottom bracket at 90 rpms, and all this with error margin between runs significantly less than a gram of drag (call it ~0.1 grams of drag) without removing the testing apparatus. I have that interest but not the means.

CeramicSpeed should have both, but then why would CeramicSpeed conduct complex, expensive tests to show how much or little aero drag the size increase of the oversized pulley adds incrementally to the system. The answer is surely not "less", so there is legitimately no upside to them performing this test and releasing the results. The risk of honesty here is simply too much. They'd rather publish substantive marketing advertorials on frictional gains; acqui-hire the only person/outlet with standing to discredit their internally validated claims; and fly around the world fondling customers' ball bearings at expos. CeramicSpeed even allowed BBLOEHR to use their pump for free! They deserve a medal.

Same with SRAM/3T and 1x. We are supposed to believe that 1x is a big aero gainer when nobody who is pushing the 1x road configuration -- these are the companies who are eulogizing the front derailleur in other verticals; selling high-end aero road bikes without front derailleur mounts; and cooing about the weight reduction potential of 1x while alluding to aero improvements nobody has substantiated -- is incentivized to actually conduct testing that carries only the potential to discredit the conductor. Why test a realistic 1x use case (e.g. no FD, 52T w/ 11-36T or 11-40T) relative to a realistic 2x use case (e.g. FD, 52/36 w/ 11-25T or 11-28T) when you can just assert that the front derailleur hanger itself causes more drag than the entire down tube? There is nothing to be gained by showing that 1x is actually pretty much aero equal to 2x under common use scenarios, so why perform the tests?

Besides that, nobody in triathlon gives a shit about tiny increments of aero, especially when those are increments are actually losses. Now, frictional gains -- those are definitely cool. Haven't you seen Jeff Yingling's instagram? Cool. Very cool.

Well, now there's a Freudian slip!

Peddling versus pedaling; indeed it's hard to ferret out the difference when the marketers are the ones representing the company in question.

Well put. I suspect any differences fall within the margin of error, leaving it as a marketing exercise.

ETA - from the photos I've seen, most of the men's top-10 KPR use standard pulley wheels inc the top 4.

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29 years and counting

I don't know exactly what these do but I love the look of them! And style might just be enough for me and other triathletes!

I watched the comparison video between the special pulley setup and stock, my first thought was that the freehub on the bottom image was a bit stiff. Like it's full of Phil wood Grease or something?

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I reject your reality and substitute my own!
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