That is almost certainly true if the individual in question hasn't already taken to heart all the advice that is out there re. aero positioning. If they have, however, then optimizing equipment choice can make just as big of a difference.

What would it cost to develop a test protocol, reserve wind tunnel time and conduct our own slowtwitch wind tunnel test? What if enough of us kicked in money, donated bikes and time, and paid for the testing? Is this feasible?

Cervelo has often talked about their wins in the prestigious German Tour magazine tests in their ads, so why wouldn't Scott be allowed to do the same?

Why are you asking me??

So Cervélo and Specialized pulled out...OK, but why didn't they test the Dean, this is one of the more popular euro offerings to date. Also, I wish they tested the Canyon TT bike.

I was a bit surprised that the Focus TT bike didn't test better since Andy Walser was supposedly involved in the project. Also, once you remove the Plasma 2, the bikes that placed 2-6 seemed to close to really matter.

If the Plasma 2 is so good then is the Giant TT superbike of Team Highroad/Rabobank that much better??

Dave in Va

The Walser TT bike bases its aerodynamics on the narrow BB standard. Once you default to the regular BSA BB then much of the aerodynamic advantages are lost.

Regarding the Plasma2, from what i understand the pros prefer to use the Giant TT bike because they found the headtube of the plasma2 too tall to achieve optimal position. Scott are apparently redesigning the headtube lengths for these pro cyclists to help them get lower.

I’m sure - think that they are afraid of not being as good as they proclaim (especially Cervélo with their P4).

Are you sure?

Did you contact people at those companies to know that this is the case?

Did you contact the magazine to verify their "testing" protocol?

Do you know that magazines have paying customers - in this case bike companies - who pay for the magazine to be published. Are you aware of the influence that these companies and advertisers may have on editorial?

With due respect, you need to be very careful of what you say in matters like this, because all is not what it seems on the surface.

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Steve Fleck @stevefleck | Blog

Demerly has floated that idea A LOT over the last 6 months and even wrote an article about it. He wanted to do a Slowtwith aero test. Everytime the question has been posed Slowman is noticeably absent in the response (to my recollection but feel free to correct me if that is not true). My guess is that it would hurt ST's ability to sell ads to bike companies who didn't perform well who would ultimately never agree to whatever protocol is agreed upon. To develop the protocol would be fairly cheap as TomA and those guys have probably devised one in their heads already BUT the professional engineers and wind tunnel engineers would undoubtedly say that the protocol was incomplete. Let's say you wanted to test 10 bikes. I think a2 charges $450 per hour plus an additional cost if you use their people for set up. So you are at $4500 for just 1 hour with each bike which would never be enough time to make an adequete determination. The test could easily be 10 times that cost once a protocol is developed plus travel expenses for those involved. The only way to make that happen is corporate sponsorship which will almost always mean giving up something (likely control over the protocol if the sponsors are the bike companies) for the money.

What we should do is set up a donation drive and see how much money we can raise over the next year. If we don't hit the goal then everyone gets their money back. Slowtwitch probably has the most credibility to do something like that but I doubt we could raise that much money with only the hard core people really giving a hoot about the data. Most people on ST are lurkers who are ammused by these discussions but are unlikely to pony up. We should try and see though. We might be surprised at the results.

Well one reason must be that the German distributor of Cervelo (and Zipp for that matter) just su'$s!

It is indeed true that I (1) wondered why Specialized & Cervelo would withdraw the frames but even more why (2) Tour didn't just go to a local bike shop an got two frames. Even it were only a P3C it would have helped. Then again they might argue: Why give then (possibly positive) exposure if they don't cooperate.

A real neutral tester would have bought/borrowed the frames in order to minimize the possibility to accused of manipulating the results. In a world driven by money however...

If you have to ask, you can't afford it? ;-)

Seriously, most wind tunnels seem to charge $750-1000/h for bicycle testing, and at least at TAMU you could easily test two bikes per hour at multiple yaw angles if the bikes were all configured ahead of time. So, figure at least $5k for 10 bikes for wind tunnel time - however, first you need to have the bikes, then you have to get them and the testers to the wind tunnel. That means you now need to budget for shipping costs, airfare, rental vehicle(s), food, and lodging for a couple of nights as well. In addition, if you were interested in measuring small differences, and/or if you felt it necessary to test with a pedaling rider aboard (which could readily obscure any small differences, due to their inability to precisely recreate their position each and every time), you would need to test each bike multiple times, ideally after removing it from the wind tunnel mount and then replacing it so as to account for all sources of variability. That $5k therefore could quickly become $20k or more...not a huge sum, by any means, but more than most individuals or entities would be willing to throw at the problem.

As for a protocol, I would suggest yawing the bike from 0 deg out to 20 deg or so (i.e., beyond the highest yaw angle you think the average consumer might typically experience), then back to 0 deg, then out to 20 or whatever deg in the opposite direction, then finally back to 0 deg. This would allow to not only check for hysteresis in the drag-yaw angle relationship, but also allow to test for asymmetries due to, e.g., an offset down tube as on the new Quintana Roo.

I am asking you nothing. This was a general question and you happened to be the last person in the thread.


sy

I’m not discounting your test but is it possible that you’re influenced by the placebo effect? I realize that a blind test is not possible.

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Duke

Then why not edit the subject line so as to avoid such confusion? (Also, please stop top posting).

It wasn't a life and death situation. Relax.

Could you describe the mechanism by which this placebo effect would work?

It wasn't a life and death situation.

Herbert,

For some this is life and death! :)

Here's the thing - and this is from my non-technical view. The testing and the numbers are great, but from what I can tell the differences between many of the top bikes, with the rider aboard are so small that my guess in a real world situation on the road, they would not matter that much. That the type of differences we are talking about here can easily be over-come in other areas and with better training.

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Steve Fleck @stevefleck | Blog

Cervelo probably spends more on advertising than most of those companies combined. Does that mean that we should be even more skeptical of the editorial claims made in their favor of which there are many? By your logic it would seem so and I don't disagree. Frankly, I'm with TomA as an equal opportunity skeptic. Only TomA is convinced that the differences are significant while I think they are marginal in the real world. The search, while fun, is a bit futile given the variables.

Would you say the same thing about wetsuits? ;-)

Cervelo probably spends more on advertising than most of those companies combined

Maybe. The funny thing is that Cervelo got to 2/3's of the way to where it is now by not advertising.

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Steve Fleck @stevefleck | Blog

I don't see how for a couple of reasons:

1. I can't WILL the power meter to read higher or lower while I'm pedaling and doing the test. In fact, the way the test is run, I have absolutely NO idea what the results are until I download and process the data.

2. In 2 actual TTs I did while borrowing the P3C, the magnitude of improvement in my times matched what was expected from the testing results. For equal power, I actually went faster...go figure ;-) In fact, every time I raced that P3C in the ~1 month I was able to borrow it, I set a PR on each course...now, in at least one case I had done it on more power than the year before, but even correcting for that, I was faster for a given power...and by the same magnitude as in the testing.

3. Being the "CheapAssEngineer^TM"...do you think I REALLY wanted to know that a much more expensive frame was significantly faster than my P2K? :-)

It's funny...if I had to pick a "seat of the pants winner" after doing the test runs and before looking at the data, I would've said that the P2K "felt" faster...but, the power meter doesn't lie...and that further emphasized to me the fallibility of human perception, or "feel", in making these sorts of determinations.

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http://bikeblather.blogspot.com/

Would you say the same thing about wetsuits?

Possibly. With wetsuits it's even more complicated. With a bike, you can put it in a wind tunnel on it's own and get some numbers. You can't do that with a wetsuit. You have to put someone in the suit and then they have to swim. That's why it's very hard to really rank wetsuits. One person could do some timed tests. You could do it enough times to get some consistent data. You would then get a ranking on those suits. Then someone else could do the same test and there is a good chance that, that ranking would be different - possibly very different. That's why with wetsuits, it's all about fit, because generally speaking the wetsuit that fits the swimmer the best, is the one that will test the best and thus be the best performing(faster) suit. In a way it's similar to bikes in that when you put the rider on the bike, those test numbers from the rider-less bike go right out the window!!

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Steve Fleck @stevefleck | Blog

Man can land on the moon and you think man can't figure out that a bike frame is faster?

Holy shit there is someone even more cynical than me

=)

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Kat Hunter reports on the San Dimas Stage Race from inside the GC winning team
Aeroweenie.com -Compendium of Aero Data and Knowledge
Freelance sports & outdoors writer Kathryn Hunter

Now what if you took care of those other areas AND did better training AND had the best frame. This argument comes up all the time. It's not an either or. It's not like if you ride a Cervelo, Felt, Ridley, Trek (that's alphabetically ordered) that you somehow can't also train appropriately and also worry about the other details.

The *ONLY* time this isn't true is in cases of financial limitations - i.e., a p1 & the extra cash pumped into coaching/training camp/etc. is probably a better overall investment than just spending the same total dollars on a p4 if you can only spend the sum total cost of the p4.

But if that's not the limiter, then it becomes a moot point. Or, if time, and not money, is your limiter, then you can't necessarily train more/better/etc.

So there's a balance to all of this. But, for many people, this is never an either/or question. Especially if we are talking about the difference between equivalently priced frames.

There is one other example that I can think of, and that's pro athletes being paid. For example, if bike company X will pay you $X but makes aerodynamically inferior bikes to company Y that won't pay you, then you need to do the math on how much of an advantage in races the Y bike is vs. the X bike, and how much of an advantage in races is everything that you were able to do with the $X you got to ride bike X. It's not good math to ride a Cervelo in races if you have to work a job to pay for it instead of spending that time training/recovering properly.

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"Non est ad astra mollis e terris via." - Seneca | rappstar.com | FB - Rappstar Racing | IG - @jordanrapp

Slowtwitch blasphemy! You mean you can't just buy speed?

I am willing to put money on the fact that you can take 2 athletes who are reasonably similar in morphology, experience, and ability, and put them head-to-head in an Olympic distance tri - one on a P4 and one on any 'decent' < $2k tri bike... any difference in finishing times will primarily come down to quality of training, transition times, how they feel on the day, pure HTFU, and any number of other factors - before the difference between the two bikes becomes a factor.

As has been said before, there's absolutely nothing wrong with buying nice things because you like having nice things. But all this endless back-and-forth over identifying what bike is truly 'the fastest' puts the lie to the idea that the guy who just dropped $5k or more on the new hot tri bike 'just likes having nice things'. At least on Slowtwitch, it certainly seems that people are buying P4's and the like because they actually want to be faster. A ridiculous idea in my opinion. That extra cash would better be spent on plane tickets to a training camp, or more frequent massage, or even a nicer road bike that gets you out riding more. All those things would likely have more effect on your finishing times in a tri than a marginally more aero frame would.

It's not good math to ride a Cervelo in races if you have to work a job to pay for it instead of spending that time training/recovering properly.

Jordan,

But that's what more than a few Pro triathletes do anyways!!

. . my wonderful wife being one of them! :)

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Steve Fleck @stevefleck | Blog