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04 Jul 2010Welcome to the Bike Industry. Part 769.With alarming re-occurrences of shorter and shorter intervals, there seems to be always some sort of bike industry related retardedness that I have to prevent from crushing my soul. Whether it’s the parochial attitudes of parts wholesalers, the incessant retroism of the custom crowd, or the repeated denigration of design as an important part of creating custom bicycles (?), there’s always something to keep me amused, shocked, or running to the toilet. About a month ago, I posted a fairly inane comment regarding a frame with ‘faux’ truss forks, putting forth a fairly benign challenge for anyone to come up with some engineering backing up the design.
This is a Pereira, but it could easily have been a Mclung, or half a dozen other builders paying ‘homage’ to the design. I commented -
And then came the comments from the peanut gallery. It’s tone is akin to chiming into a Christian forum and proclaiming “What proof do you have?” (Names have been deleted so I don’t get emails along the lines of “how dare you repeat my public comments” or something equally absurd. Except my own because whatever I say online is exactly what I’d say in reality).
Actually yeah, I do. Firstly, I’m questioning the validity of the design. Despite the exchange and despite the fact that Pereira did not come up with the design, nothing was put forward to change my hypothesis. Secondly, I did not attack Tony, yet the fanbois are very quick to jump to his defence. I’m sure he’s a grown-up and I hope that like any professional, he’s mature enough to accept some questioning regarding design. It happens in every other sector of the design community, but more often than not, people can’t tell the difference between a ‘personal attack’, and a ‘call for debate’. Thirdly - and almost most absurdly - one poster reportedly with a degree in ME is espousing ignoring any engineering! That’s kinda like a doctor letting the patient treat themselves. “Just go with your gut feeling! I’d trust that over my 7 years in school anyday!” The pearler was left for last. Apparently, if you question a design, and then someone supposedly to be qualified to assess said design says “Just ignore the facts” apparently that’s a big win for the originator of the design! It’s like being forced to watch an American teen movie and everyone is high-fiveing eachother because someone farted. Of course I have to put this disclaimer in because that’s the atmosphere of the custom bike industry. I’ll say this once, so if you don’t get it, read this next part 10 times so it sinks in :
And now my critique of the fork design. In case you’re as bored reading as I am of typing, it doesn’t do anything worthwhile short of look like something that was made 100 years ago. Even a five year old could be shown what a truss is and how it works, and this fork design is not a truss. There’s no question that it would add to the ‘feel’ of the fork, but any strength addition….I’d like to see the sums. Nobody has been forthcoming as of yet, but naturally I’m very open to constructive assessments of any interesting designs such as this that people seem to take for granted because “it’s retro cool”. Including my own. Tony mentioned that he believes that without the struts the fork would’ve broken, but the forks are not dissimilar to what was being ridden 20 years ago and there wasn’t much issues then; not to mention the increases in tubing and casting technology today etc.. Has he taken them off and repeated the process of ’seat of the pants’ testing to back up his ‘beliefs’? Has Mclung? Has anyone else? Not to my knowledge, and that’s the point. To my Industrial Design brain where for years we were taught to be self critical, to critique ours and eachothers worth minus the ego, I’m always surprised at peoples’ defensiveness. I don’t really see where the personal attack is and I’m surprised when people take it that way. If something is done on a bike ‘because it looks cool’, then that’s great, but I can’t advocate the attaching of some performance gain because of ‘a belief’. My philosophy when it comes to what I put into Thylacine Cycles is fairly function based. I really like retro-styled bikes (including the frame and forks above, they’re gorgeous), but I can’t stress enough how much the unwaivering, unquestioning mentality of some people grates with me. This kind of dialogue is the exact same thing that people who questioned the fact that “hey, maybe the earth isn’t flat”, or, “L. Ron Hubbard is the next coming and we must give him lots of money” would’ve had. I can’t abide that, and in the bike industry which appears largely built on bullshit, smoke, and mirrors, I think it’s really important that we engage in some sort of real and positive questioning of what’s going on. It happens in every other part of our lives, so why not our bikes? *edit* If you want to know what a real truss fork looks like, the only one doing it even vaguely properly is Jeff Jones. I contacted him recently and he does actually have plans for a steel version of his fork, which would be one to look out for. ps: I had kangaroo for lunch today. It was tasty. Posted by warwick @ 7:27 am 6 Responses to “Welcome to the Bike Industry. Part 769.”Leave a Reply |
July 8th, 2010 at 8:08 pm
Funny stuff, Warwick.
Most people don’t want to argue, because they don’t want to change. Or maybe they want to argue because they want YOU to change, but not because they are willing to change themselves.
As an aside, I suppose you could go onto an atheism forum and post “Where is your proof that God does not exist” and the answers might be wordier, or more intellectual, but no better, than the answers on a Christian forum.
Humans (in general) believe what they believe, and they’ll be damned if you can change our minds.
July 9th, 2010 at 5:53 am
Unfortunately the onus is on the believer to justify their beliefs, not the one questioning. ‘Proof’ is pretty absolute - it’s either there or it isn’t, otherwise it’s a placebo, a Linus blanket.
I’m seeing attitudes like this more and more, in every walk of life. We’re so detached from things and place our faith in so many things rather than actually going out and finding out about how stuff works, where it comes from, how it’s made etc., we ‘Merlinise’ really simple things so we don’t have to.
If I hear another American on TV call even the simplest thing “A Miracle” I’ll projective vomit.
Anyway, ‘question’, people. That’s all I’m sayin’! :o)
July 15th, 2010 at 6:08 am
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance
Carl Sagan’s book “The Demon Haunted World” is a wonderful discussion about this phenomenon.
A more light-hearted reference would be Mototune’s website at http://mototuneusa.com/thanx.htm - this site has been an endless source of debate in the motorcycle community. Enjoy!
July 28th, 2010 at 7:04 pm
I’ll play. I’m intrigued - why do you think it doesn’t work structurally? Is it because there’s no steel tubing connecting the fork blades to the tubes attaching below the stem? Perhaps you’ve already discussed this elsewhere?
Cheers,
Rob
Ps: I greatly regret not eating kangaroo while I was in Australia, thankfully (strangely?) I managed to find some here in Canada.
July 29th, 2010 at 12:48 am
Hey Rob,
It’s simply because the entire structure is not a truss. The ‘outer legs’ are not attached in any meaningful way to anything else, simply meaning they’re not able to transfer or dissipate any stresses. They’re not even attached to each other! Take a look at a Jones fork, or one of Rich Hunter’s Unicycles and contrast and compare.
August 16th, 2010 at 8:03 pm
Hey Theylacine,
That makes sense to me, thanks for the reply! It does seem strange that even the two fork legs aren’t connected together.
Cheers,
Rob