As a guy who works the sales floor in a bike shop that does a triathlon trade I’m at the pointy end of the bayonet to make the stuff we buy from you actually work for the customer.
Since you Product Manager types are doing the specs for the 2009 model year about right now let me give you a reality check from the real world: No more “S” bend aerobars. Yeah, they are trendy, they look cool, and customers *may think *they want them. But they suck. Product Managers: Give us ski bends again. Matter of fact, get real cozy with the fellas at Visiontech since their aluminum ski bend aerobar is the best there is at the O.E.M. level. **If you are doing internal cable routing… **then take a clue from Felt and Cervelo. Those two fellas have it right. It works. There are a couple of you guys out there with cable routing so incredibly bad that it actually amkes the darn bike darn near un-ownable. Unfortunately for most consumers, they tend to discover that inconvenient fact after the sale has gone down. Swallow your pride and learn from the best in the business. **No more crap saddles… **or just send me the bike with no saddle at all. I have buckets of O.E.M. saddles here that I swapped out for customers at no charge because I simply couldn’t do that to a paying customer. You guys want them back? **Decent brake levers…**Dia-Compe 188’s on a $3000 tri bike? Phht. The brake lever was OK back in the early ‘90’s late 80’s when we didn’t have anything else. But now they are what they are: Cheap brake levers with no return spring. Puleeze- give us something better. **Color Please. **take a few risks on paint schemes. Carbon weave is the new brushed titanium. Yawn. If you are going to tape the bars… at least do it right side up (you know who you are…). Better yet, since I have to rebuild the friggin’ cockpit everytime anyway to make it work well and get the cable lengths right and fit the bike- just put the tape in the box with the bike. We’ll take care of it. **Fix the heads of your seatpost clamps. **The best one out there isn’t even that good. The worst are unusable. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to design a simple, adjustable, **accessible, **seatpost head allowing good adjustment of the saddle angle and fore/aft. **No more crap tires. **Speaks for itself.
OK, I’m done. For now…
One more thing Tom- Decals- no need to splash your company name all over the bike 12 times and then make up fancy acronyms for the stays… it isn’t an Energy Transfer System “ETS” or a Power Enhancement Module “PEM” or whatever you make up- it’s just a stay!
As a guy who works the sales floor in a bike shop that does a triathlon trade I’m at the pointy end of the bayonet to make the stuff we buy from you actually work for the customer.
Since you Product Manager types are doing the specs for the 2009 model year about right now let me give you a reality check from the real world: No more “S” bend aerobars. Yeah, they are trendy, they look cool, and customers *may think *they want them. But they suck. Product Managers: Give us ski bends again. Matter of fact, get real cozy with the fellas at Visiontech since their aluminum ski bend aerobar is the best there is at the O.E.M. level. **If you are doing internal cable routing… **then take a clue from Felt and Cervelo. Those two fellas have it right. It works. There are a couple of you guys out there with cable routing so incredibly bad that it actually amkes the darn bike darn near un-ownable. Unfortunately for most consumers, they tend to discover that inconvenient fact after the sale has gone down. Swallow your pride and learn from the best in the business. **No more crap saddles… **or just send me the bike with no saddle at all. I have buckets of O.E.M. saddles here that I swapped out for customers at no charge because I simply couldn’t do that to a paying customer. You guys want them back? **Decent brake levers…**Dia-Compe 188’s on a $3000 tri bike? Phht. The brake lever was OK back in the early ‘90’s late 80’s when we didn’t have anything else. But now they are what they are: Cheap brake levers with no return spring. Puleeze- give us something better. **Color Please. **take a few risks on paint schemes. Carbon weave is the new brushed titanium. Yawn. If you are going to tape the bars… at least do it right side up (you know who you are…). Better yet, since I have to rebuild the friggin’ cockpit everytime anyway to make it work well and get the cable lengths right and fit the bike- just put the tape in the box with the bike. We’ll take care of it. **Fix the heads of your seatpost clamps. **The best one out there isn’t even that good. The worst are unusable. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to design a simple, adjustable, **accessible, **seatpost head allowing good adjustment of the saddle angle and fore/aft. **No more crap tires. **Speaks for itself.
OK, I’m done. For now…
I find s-bends to be way more comfortable. I just sort of rest my hands on top of them the way you’d put your hands on your knees. But the new Easton shallow single-bends look very nice too.
Trek also does a great job with internal cabling - full length housing throughout, so it shifts very nice
Bontrager brake levers are the best I’ve used. I think these should be standard equipment. The aluminum ones are like $70. That is cheap. And they rule.
I wish Thomson would start making OEM heads for all these aero seatposts. I’d kill for an aero post with a Thomson head. I want to make one, but I’m afraid of the consequences of it breaking…
You’ve got a lot of good points here. I hope the powers that be are listening…
How about carbon aerobars with an aluminum clamping area where the stem clamps to the basebar. I find that my carbon bars tend to slip in this area and i end up with a downward facing basebar ala Ulrich style when i hit some rough roads. I tighten them down pretty good, but i’m afraid that i’ll one day crush the basebar because i overdid it.
**Color Please. **take a few risks on paint schemes. Carbon weave is the new brushed titanium. Yawn
Easy there, big fella. While I agree that paint schemes of late have gotten a bit uninspired, there are those of us who still love the ‘naked’ look of brushed Ti. It kinda says…“I don’t need no stinkin’ paint to look beautiful forever, bring it on.” Painting titanium is just wrong.
How about this , no more crummy rim tape thats too skinny for the rim, I have changed way too many flat tires on new bikes straight out of the box
I agree entirely with all those suggestions, one bike manufacturer in particular…making me take out a bottom bracket every time a cable needs replacing !
I have to agree with Jordan and Jonnyo. I prefer S-bends to ski bends. I once made a custom aero extension that i named a “C” bend, and it was the best. Too bad nobody has thought of it yet, although Vision did get pretty close with their R bend.
no, a C bend goes straight, then it curves upwards, then downwards. Imagine the opening of the “C” faces the ground. Not a very good description, I know. AN image really is worth a thousand words.
This is what I’ve always thought about the seatpost. My carbon seatpost slips way too much. I have to raise it after (or during) every long ride. Can’t find a skinny enough shim to fit in there. Next to try is the carbon grease.
I’m not at all offended by bikes with cheap saddles and tires. I’m going to put on my favorite saddle anyway, and it’s nice if I haven’t overpaid for the saddle I’m removing. In fact, this could be like pedals as far as I’m concerned: let’s just agree that you can’t guess what I want, so it’s OK to sell me the bike without. But in any case, please don’t put an expensive one on there.
Tires can be cheap too, and I won’t mind. I’m going to buy racing tires before my first race, so the training tires may as well be whatever you can get that’s cheap.
Add me to the list of people who prefer S bend extensions. The gist of what I’ve read about wind tunnel tests leads me to conclude that the aerodynamic benefit justifies the gradual maket migration to this style. All the bikes on the market are steadily evolving to ever-higher performance, and I’m not so wed to traditional appearances that I want style over performance.
Okay, how bout S-bends on bikes OVER $2500 and ski bends on bikes UNDER $2500. I’m not a big fan of s-bends either and don’t know many beginners who are fans of them besides the fact that they look cooler and faster on a tri bike. If you’re spending more $2500 and you don’t like the extensions that came with the bike you can probably afford to swap them out. You’re buying a “faster” bike so why not spec the “faster” extension style since it’s all the rage. Me, give me my ski bends any day;)
saddles, okay some are pretty nice you gotta admit. pick up a c-dale, a cervelo (well most of them) or the like and you get a killer saddle assuming that said saddle works for you, but at least it works for most. Now my Felt saddle, damn that’s evil! My old bike shop had literally a bin of OEM Felt saddles. The one good thing I liked about it though was at least it was a cheap crappy saddle so it kept the bike price down so the buyer could afford a new saddle of their choice. That being said, just ship the bikes without saddles, let the shop keep a small stock of Felt saddles for display bikes if they like, but let the shop decide what to put on there. The saddle can make or break the sale, sometimes it just ends up breaking it. If that first test ride hurts, who’s going to want that bike.
yeah, some color would be cool!
seatpost, geez, yeah, just copy a proven design and stick with it
agree on the tire front too, Cervelo, Gerard why or why do you spec those light and flat prone Rubinos on your bikes???
Cassettes! cassettes, why in the world do you spec an 11-23 cassette on a beginner bike?!?, give them at least a 25 option to start with, I mean unless you live in pancake land a 25 sure is nice when you’re tired or bonked and even heading up a slight hill. I ride a fast 40K and still ride a 39/27 low gear. When I coach people and they show up on their “brand new bike” riding up a hill at a 40rpm in the 39/23 it’s just painful to watch and sometimes even more painful to tell them that they already need to upgrade their “brand new bike”
sorry, i can’t really think of much else original, Tom’s list was pretty damn good:)
Tom,
Gotta join the chorus here as being partial TO the “S” bends. When I retrofit the cockpit of my (brushed titanium) Litespeed we used the T2 Cobra Profiles. I have used everything going back to LeMond’s Scott U-shaped bar, and this is the best and most comfortable system I’ve found. Haven’t ridden 112 with them, but… so far, so good.
Hope the IM-MOO training is going well for you.
Mark
**Fix the heads of your seatpost clamps. **The best one out there isn’t even that good. The worst are unusable. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to design a simple, adjustable, **accessible, **seatpost head allowing good adjustment of the saddle angle and fore/aft.
True story man! Seatpost clamps are the most annoying things out there.
Saddles are so individual but there should probably be an OEM saddle on a cheap bike cuz newbies won’t understand why a bike doesn’t come with a saddle. I can hear it now “What?!!, my $1500 bike doesn’t come with PEDALS or a SADDLE?!!”
That said, I actually like the saddle that came with my 2003 S32. So much as to purchase another on Ebay for $10 and put it on my road bike. It’s still there today but I’ve moved to a better saddle on my tri bike.
Yes, there are much better brake levers for just a couple dollars more.
One thing that bugs me about some of my friends bikes is that the aerobars seem so busy. Way too many screws and clamps, it looks like someone went to the hardware store and went crazy. The Vision’s seem to be the most simple. Just buy the right length and cut the ends to fine tune it.
