13 Oct 2010

I’ll preface this post by saying I like Cannondale. Their Hollowgram SL cranks and Lefty forks are unbeliveable pieces of gear, and given my druthers I’d be all over them. Bizarre from a company that along with Klein pioneered the use of Aluminium primarily in the road scene in the late 1980’s to produce a set of cranks that are lighter and stiffer than anything, and a fork that looks like it shouldn’t work terribly well but turns out to be not only plush as hell but also lighter than anything out there by a not insignificant margin. They’ve triumphed with these components where others have failled - or like Specialized - co-opted (think Lightning cranks.)

Unfortunately, where they have failled from where I’m sitting is aftermarket sales and service. Essentially, there isn’t any. With masses of apologies for my customer Phill who has been waiting 4 months for any sign of a fork, I’m now told there essentially isn’t any 2010 forks to be had, and 2011 forks will be available in……January. WTF?

This is just such rubbish. The custom bike industry doesn’t impact on the sales of off-the-shelf bike businesses largely because those interested in custom bikes are of the exact opposite mindset of those interested in Tupperware. They want individualism, and they generally want the good stuff, regardless of where it is or who makes it….generally. Nobody has ever posted on an internet forum “Help! I can’t decide between a Thylacine, IndyFab, or Cannondale!”.

So why not embrace us custom dudes and sell us your damn forks already?  It will make you look much sexier than you are, it will elevate even further your cache, you’ll sell more forks and cranks…..where’s the downside?

Okay so recently I got into a spot of bother for telling companies how they should conduct their business, which I guess is fair enough in some respects because generally I consider myself pretty crap at running them myself. However, being impeded when all you want to do is keep customers happy and sell the good stuff gets really, really tiring, really really fast. If it was an isolated incident you’d probably be happy to go “Yeah whatever, you’re a bunch of dicks” and move on, but sometimes running a custom bike business seem more like being in a war (where you can’t actually buy any bullets - sorry, out of stock) than doing something that is fun and - you know, because bikes are freewheeling, happy-go-lucky things - free and happy. Perhaps it’s just like any other job then? 10% excitement, 90% dealing with other peoples’ shit?

Regardless, I shalt continue fighting the good fight and waving my money in the air in the hope that some people might actually want to trade it for some forks. Or cranks. Or headsets.

*EDIT* Son of a Motherless Goat! I just spend an hour bagging out on Crack’n'fail, and now they’ve gone and nicked my graphics! ;o)

Posted by warwick @ 1:27 am

24 Sep 2010

2010/2011 pricing is now available for those that are interested - drop us an email. Prices have gone up approximately 15% across the board, but this had been offset somewhat with the high Australian dollar for Australian customers.

Leadtimes will also no longer be given. As a rule, expect 12 weeks but it could be anywhere between 8 and 16 weeks. This is because I am not running Thylacine as a full time business and I don’t want to create a stressful environment for myself or my contractors. Essentially if you can’t wait 4 months for a frame that will still bring a smile to your face for the next 15 years, don’t order one. If you need your new frame for a particular event, order it sooner to avoid disappointment.

For our Road frames, we are now no longer doing just frames - these will be sold as a Frame/Fork/Headset package only. Forks are coming from 3T and are painted to match the frame, and Cane Creek will supply our headsets.

Off-Road, our Mountain frames will still be available as frame only, or as a Frame/Fork/Headset package.  Forks currently are Fox only (Rock Shox may be available by next year) and headsets again are Cane Creek.

As always, we can source any parts you may like, as well as do complete bikes for those that want them. In the past I was running lean margins on the parts we sold but this will no longer be the case as they will incur a retail margin. I will always try and do better than local shop prices, but essentially building a complete bike and ordering every single part from a boatload of potential suppliers is a complete time sink.

These are the biggest changes for the upcoming year. The product is the same but the conditions in which they are delivered I hope will be more workable for myself and the people who work with us.

Posted by warwick @ 11:37 am

22 Sep 2010

Okay, so Floyd Landis is coming to Australia to speak at Deakin University’s “New Pathways for Professional Cycling Conference”, and as a result, you’d think they’d invited Satan or something. Landis is a busted drugs cheat, but unfortunately for him, has decided to actually put up a fight and attempt to out some of the bigger names, as well as campaign for reform. Many other pro cyclists have decided it’s in their own best interests to cop it on the chin, take the ban of however many number of years, and then come back. This year there’s a long list of returns to the peloton with the likes of Vinokourov, Millar, and a long list of others deciding just to shut up for the good of their careers.

There’s talk of Landis as being ’self serving’ but I’m not really sure where he adding to his ‘infamy’ for want of a better word is assisting that - aside from the fact that like me, anyone who can type about it, is. His presence anywhere as a vocal and active campaigner towards drug reform in cycling which to the outsider probably looks like an intrinsic part of the sport for better or worse is going to bee seen as a ‘look at me’ act, but can’t everything be seen in that light? And if not Landis to speak about these things and offer insight, then who else is better qualified?

There’s this strong undercurrent in the cycling community of Landis being a virtual Pinata for anything to do with drugs in cycling. The mere speaking about it makes him a target. Commentators such as Bridie O’Donnell and her attitudes to him speaking just smack of the whole “brush it under the carpet” / “Geez, shut UP Floyd, if we don’t talk about it, it might seem like it never happened” attitude that happens basically whenever bad shit happens. Bad shit DOES happen, and adults deal with it, no matter how a long, slow and boringly drawn out process it more than often is.

Humans have an annoying trait of burying their heads in the sand. Whenever someone says to you “I’m fairly non-confrontational” people generally stand around nodding their heads like Muppets. Rarely does someone say “Well, you should be confrontational, or else bad shit can happen and get perpetrated ad infinitum and you, my friend, will then be part of the problem”. Actually that sounds like me making friends at 3am at a party, but that attitude seems to be the norm rather than the exception. It needs to change, and even for that small mercy we should be thankful that Landis at the very least is putting his hand up and saying “Um….guys……this system is pretty shit.” At least he’s qualified.

My own personal attitude towards drugs in cycling is mixed. When you strip everything back, pro cycling really only exists as rolling advertising, and for that to be effective, you need a pantomime element. I like the panto - that’s why we watch. Pro Cycling is so all-consuming for the individual, that if you’re even vaguely aware of what they have to do to compete, you can see the allure of drugs when you basically come to the end of your natural ability but are only 1% off the pace. Add to that the paradigm of the rich drug history of the sport (beer and amphetamines were de rigeur even 100 years ago), and the fact that you’re already messing with your body in every other conceivable way and you can see how for many it’s not a huge leap. Or a leap you can easily make when you’re Directeur Sportif is giving you a nudge in the back while he shows you your bank balance. Imagine being thrust into that when you’re a Mennonite from Pennsylvania.

The big issue with Landis is selling his credibility. It’s easy in a way to cop a ban on the chin and say “Yes, I did it, I’m a bad boy, seeya in a couple of years”, but we find it harder to reconcile someone that denies black and blue but then changes their mind and then starts to drag others into the melee. To my eyes, Landis is probably seeing all these others get away with it and simplistically thinking that he can too, not being able to distinquish between his case and others. David Millar has purportedly said :

“If [Landis] had stood up and manned up four years ago, he’d be racing the Tour de France now. He’d have a different book out. He’d have not lost a penny. He’d be admired by young people. He would have a different life ahead of him…”

I’m not sure how not having an income for two years involves ‘not losing a penny’, but of course there’s a truth to this and that truth is “time heals all wounds”. In time, people will forget about the bad stuff and only remember that you ‘repented’. Read: Be a part of the circus or become a sideshow, which is exactly what’s happening to Landis. Conversely, the message from Millar, Vinocourov, Rasmussen and friends is “Just STFU, come back after your bans and pretend nothing happened”.

I see Landis as a tragic figure and I think his gameplan is pretty poorly conceived, but the reality is that Pro Cycling in a way needs Landis if it’s going to change. People love the Pantomime, but it’s a fine line when it’s being sold as something it isn’t. People only have a short tolerance for that, so it either changes or does it’s best to keep sweeping it all under the self-serving carpet in the hope that people keep looking it’s way.

Cycling is blowing it’s “there’s no such thing as bad publicity” horn, but you gotta wonder if an injection (pun intended) of the Truth wouldn’t hurt as well.

Viva Le Pantomime!

Posted by warwick @ 6:10 am

17 Sep 2010

Okay, so there are changes afoot here at Thylacine that are going to make things a bit easier for me trying to juggle everything and hopefully being able to do that juggling a bit more properly and with less, well, mess.

As of today, prices for frames are going to go up (15% on average), and leadtimes are also going to go up. (Prices have not changed since I started Thylacine back in 2003). Pricing structure is also going to change with no price breaks for different models - the costs are essentially the same and the reality is, only the function changes so I doesn’t really make any sense to support cost cutting when the materials price differential is negligible between models made from the same material.

Also, 2010 has been what I can only describe as a horror year for us in terms of our contractors and we’re cutting them back to just one for Steel, and one for Titanium. Both are located in the US so all our frames are manufactured there and that’s the way it’s going to stay for a near future (in case you were wondering).

Because of this, our leadtimes are going to go up to 12 weeks minimum because we’re not using multiple contractors. The downside to us having too many contractors has meant that we’ve found ourselves using contractors who constantly let us down in terms of leadtimes and quality control, and frankly I’m sick of cleaning up other people’s mess. It’s cost us a fortune this year and it has to stop.  We’ve been pandering to pressure to keep the leadtimes down and it’s just not worth it.

And finally because of this, I’ve also decided to cherrypick potential new customers. In the past I’d simply accept anyone who wanted a new custom frame, but as of now I’ve decided I need to build bikes that I’m interested in and that emphasise what Thylacine is about, so that’s how I’m going to roll (as they say) from hereon-in.

I’m hoping all this will mean that the day-to-day running of Thylacine Cycles from my perspective can be a less stressful and more enjoyable one, and from the customers’ perspective, it means that I can give the level of quality service and quality product I espouse on the homepage of the website.  I realise that in the past few months a lot of people have been disappointed and let down and I hope this is a positive step forward so I can design and sell the bikes I really want to, and give a level of service befitting them.

From the outside and perhaps for new customers’ it will probably look like business-as-usual, but I just wanted to post a little note here explaining the new changes in the name of fairness and transparency.

Posted by dicky @ 6:56 am

12 Aug 2010

After being asked yet again for a road frame with an Edge fork, I thought I’d put out the proverbial ‘I’m not happy, Jan’ to the guilty parties who make the life of small time custom bike builders (or maybe just ones from Australia) just that little bit more of a pain in the arse than it needs to be.

Back in late 2008, we were buying Edge components directly from Jake at Edge. He was very helpful and obviously keen to increase his business, and very keen to get Edge on our Tephra XCR test bike which featured in RIDE magazine.

Warwick,
How goes it? This is a great opportunity that we would like to jump on. What do we need to do in order to get a fork and wheels on this bike??

Before the XCR test, I was running a set of Edge 2.0 forks which they gave to me at their manufactured cost, which I thought was very generous.

Just when I thought I had negotiated some Edge wheels and forks for the test, I get handballed to this guy Peter Kyriakidis who was now apparently the new ‘Australian Distributor’.

Dear Warwick, thank you for your enquiry which Jake Pantone has forwarded to us as we are the Edge Composites Distributors in Australia and New Zealand and all sales are handled by us.

The price to you for the purchase of one Road 2.0 Fork is $615 ex GST and RRP is $981. We would need to know what rake you require before quoting a delivery time.

With regard to the wheelset, our standard builds use DT Swiss Aerolyte spokes and DT Swiss 240 or 190 hubs. The prices to you for one set of clinchers are $$3150 and $3,530 ex GST respectively with corresponding RRP’s of $5,050 and $5,650.

Warwick, please us know how we can assist you further.

I made it quite clear that I was not going to pay them a margin for showing their product on the bike, and that if they wanted the exposure, then I was not going to be the one to pay them for it - I wanted the products either free or at manufactured cost. The guy just couldn’t understand. On the phone he said to be “But Baum has to pay for their parts”, as if they were the beacon of fairness and righteousness.

“Let me make it simpler for you. Your logos are going to be plastered all over my bike, in a test paid for in lieu and negotiated over 6 months by me, and you want me to give YOU money for that exposure?”

Still nothing.

So as we were running out of time and I’d already promised the owner of the Tephra XCR Edge forks and I wasn’t going to pay 700 bucks for them, I had to give him my own set.

Of course literally within a month of the RIDE article going to print, I get a customer calling up saying “I want one just like that!”

Awesome.

So I send this Peter guy another email trying to figure out why he and vicariously Edge are trying to stooge me.

Hi Peter,
Does Edge now no longer have an OEM/Small order pricing structure?
I’ve already quoted my customer based on the previous pricing I have purchased forks for from Jake.
This bike we are currently doing for a customer is off the back of our recent very favourable review in RIDE Cycling Review of our new Tephra XCR, which featured your forks.
If I have to go back to my customer and reneg on my quote by such a huge amount, it’s not going to look good for any of us.
Can you see any possible solution?

Regards,
Warwick

Essentially I quoted the original prices I’d been given by Edge thinking they’d see the light, or at worst I’d have to get them grey market so I didn’t lose a whole pack of money for no good reason. Check the gumption of this guy.

We have quoted you the wholesale price which is the low volume price break. We would be happy to review this on the basis of a committed forward order plan over the year or for batch orders of more than 10 of each component.
Warwick, if I understand the sequence of your emails correctly, it seems you quoted prices to your customer and then enquired about the basis on which you could purchase the corresponding items. It is therefore remarkably inappropriate to imply that either Cycling Edge or Edge Composites can, or should, take any responsibility for you having done so.

At this stage, I was way past ‘Not happy, Jan’.

Hi Peter,
I really don’t understand your sales technique here.
Yes, your assumption about the ’sequence of emails’ is incorrect. I quoted my customer back in 2008 based on the 2008 “Industry Price List” prices I had, and now that the frame is ready to turn into a bike, I see here 3 months into 2009 I’m faced with a 125% price increase?
How does that exactly make me “remarkably inappropriate”?
Personally I’m finding your adversarial sales technique and gross overcharging just a bit more “remarkably inappropriate” than me trying to get a good deal for my customer.

My email was cordial and reasonable and based on the information I had, so it’s very disappointing to me to be affronted by such a reply, from someone who’s supposed to be a representation of the companies they import.

My only crime is not purchasing three months ago when I could have got the forks for a more reasonable USD185. I’ve supported Edge Composites in a very small way but a much as I can, but my custom and support appears to be frowned upon.

Is your level of courtesy based on volume of sales, or do you have some other yardstick?

Yeah, I got no reply from that one. I mean, the postie can’t deliver when the bridge has been burned down, right?

Essentially what Edge have done, I consider a particularly interesting morally and ethically questionable business practice. Peter Kyriakidis runs ‘Cycling Edge’ which is a retail outlet nee importer of Parlee, Moots et al.., so what they’re doing is deliberately pricing me out of the market in favour of some dude importer of other custom builders whom they do support. This is from the same company that says proudly on their website

In fact, we’ve been making….parts for the nation’s most fastidious frame builders…custom artisans who refuse to adopt the big box mentality. That said, their demands are higher….When you’re committed to the perfect marriage of art and engineering, you don’t settle for second best.

One thing you won’t find from Edge is a bunch of marketing hyperbola. Sure, we have a great PR and marketing department, but we’re 100% wholesome in our statements….You only have to look at who we partner with to develop our distribution to understand just how committed we are to checking every box that the entire team is worthy of representing. It’s all about walking it - and we’ve put plenty of miles in; as have our athletes.

What a bunch of crap. One rule for them, another rule for anybody else.

How easy would it have been to have sold me some parts at cost for the RIDE article, and allowed me to purchase Edge parts just like my US counterparts do, direct and at equitable prices, rather than handball me to some @$#%&@ with no long term brand building ideas short of ‘how much money will this sale make me?’.

Instead, I haven’t sold a single Edge part, and instead opted for Easton for our road builds (and now 3T).  It’s cost them sales and goodwill, all so some retailler can protect his over inflated bottom line.

Well if you’ve read this far you deserve a medal, but I hope it gives some insight of literally as a small business person what you have to deal with, month in, month out.

It’s the absolute height of irony of course, because it’s these companies that rely on small builders to give them the cachet when they’re start-ups, that are the same ones to reject them when the OEMS come calling.

Mmmm…..wholesome.

Posted by warwick @ 11:52 am

08 Aug 2010

I gotta say that upfront I don’t know much about what constitutes an ‘All-Mountain’ race. For me, an ‘All-Mountain’ bike is one you put up with it’s lack of climbing prowess for the extra grin factor on the way down. I can’t really see how you can feasibly have an ‘All Mountain’ race, because as any road racer will tell you, you can’t make up the time you lost on the climb on the downhill. I can see the attraction though - as DH and XC have become more polarising and more specialist, that leaves a whole bunch of people that aren’t really either, looking for somewhere to shove their competitiveness.

One such guy is obviously Mark Weir.  He seems like a pretty classy rider in that SoCal bogan kinda way, but as a guy who’s mantra (on of them anyway) is ‘you have to earn the downhill by riding up’, I can’t abide any sooky-la-la-ing from a rider of his Stateside calibre :

Weir would like it if Downieville was slightly more skewed toward the downhill portion of the race. As it stands, the overall all-mountain winner is decided by overall time, and even with the downhill win, Weir found himself close to eight-and-a-half minutes away from Giant Factory Team’s Carl Decker, who raced a 29in-wheeled Giant Anthem X cross-country bike.

“The cross-country was a blowout by super horsepower,” he said “It should probably be based on a point schedule. He [Decker] won the all-mountain on the climb. It was a great ride and he’s a great rider, but the margin was huge. You shouldn’t just have to ride the downhill; it takes the race out of the race.”

And so to does losing the hillclimb portion by - wait for it - eight and a half minutes.  But that’s the perspective of the typical American rider in their own sandpit.  They’re kings of it until someone knocks them off, and then they either cry it was unfair, or have a little cry into their beers.  It was the same when Craig Gordon went over to the US enduro scene where Team Trek had dominated for years, and then he handed them their arse. (and put himself in hospital, but that’s beside the point!).  It was the same when the World Cup circuit was created and dominated by Europeans in vast amounts in all disciplines, leaving the Seppos (and us for that matter) crying in a puddle. (Yes I know Decker is North American, but he’s also not a guy trying to climb on a 6″ travel bike)

It’s a matter of perspective whether or not in a race where the net elevation gain/loss is zero, whether or not the downhill section was simply ‘ridden’, or whether or not the loser couldn’t climb for shit.  How can you reconcile what is more valuable?  How on earth could a ‘points system’ make anything more equitable?

Honestly, I can’t see how an ‘All-Mountain’ race could possibly work. Mostly because the entire concept of ‘all mountain’ is a non competitive act, but also because it’s built around guys who can’t climb to save their lives but whom relish the downhill. Isn’t that just a downhill race with an annoying bit tacked on?  What about have it all downhill, but only mildly downhill, with a few short climb pitches you can probably power over anyway?  I was yawning just typing that.

So, I decry the sandpit sandbaggers and their stupid ‘new class’ of racing - but wait - I have an alternative!

The Mountain Bike Septathlon™ or MTB-Sep for short.

What it is, is riders race every off-road discipline know to man - XC, DH, Trials, BMX, 4-Cross, Singlespeed, Cyclocross, and the winner truly takes the crown of ‘All Mountain’ Champion.

Coz lets face it, who wants to the the local champion of “Mild Downhill bit where the uphill part doesn’t count because Weir had a sook about losing that bit by 8 minutes”?

I’m definitely on a winner.

Posted by warwick @ 8:46 am

28 Jul 2010

I’m sure there’s a metaphor in there somewhere.

Posted by warwick @ 5:26 am

25 Jul 2010

Honestly, I don’t understand mainstream bicycle manufacturers. Almost every road bike we’ve ever done, the customer has shown us his current bike and the seat has been slammed all the way back on it’s rails, and yet manufacturers still think a 73 degree seat angle is still a good mean.

This is Cadel Evan and George Hincapies bikes, courtesy of the journalistic geniuses at cyclingnews.com (btw fellas, these aren’t the same frame). See the saddles? Slammed all the way back on the most layback seatpost I’ve ever seen.

Now with tube based designs, there is a limit obviously to how far you can layback the seat tube angle, and how short you can have the stays, before the tyre crashes into the seat tube, but with carbon? No such excuse.

And the short chainstay myth? With any given material, through wall thickness and shape optimisation, you can make any length chainstay as stiff or as flexible as you like. Length has almost no bearing on stiffness, so any designer really can create any length chainstay they like and still have it stiff.

All this boils down to then is simply the inertia of a paradigm devoid of meaning, from companies that are so scared to do the right thing that they will only be as different from one another as they dare.  In the process, they bring along the baggage of a time when bicycle design is more about cost optimisation than anything meaningful like real world ergonomics and individuality.

So thanks BMC and all you other Tupperware manufacturers for keeping this nice point of differentiation between yourselves and us custom guys. It makes the job just that little bit more rewarding.

Posted by warwick @ 1:12 am

04 Jul 2010

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 -

Find me a structural engineer that will concur that those struts to anything whatsoever and I’ll eat a kangaroo.

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).

Thylacine Cycles said:
Find me a structural engineer that will concur that those struts to anything whatsoever and I’ll eat a kangaroo.

What A Pear said:
Warwick,
I’m pretty sure that any structural engineer would concur that they do something. I have nothing but experience to believe that those forks wouldn’t hold up without them. I’ve raced my own version of this bike at 24 hours of Moab (a rocky and punishing course) and ridden it all over Oregon for a few years. I can’t imagine that the fork would have held up to such use without the struts. But, then again, I’m not an engineer. I’ll have to ask one.

Fanboi001 said:
Über-cool, as always!!!

Denouncing Engineer said:
I have a degree in mechanical engineering XXXX. They do something, but I would trust your real world experience over my text books…they don’t call it a B.S. for nothing! Fucking hot bike bro.

Oblivious said:
All I can say is……WOW, that’s beautiful!

BigGob said:
I wonder if Kangaroo tastes anything like Crow?

Spewhi said:
Crow/Kangaroo… Both probably taste like your foot. I’ve been lucky enough to have the second Roaring 29er that Tony Built. Essentially, it’s the been my “go to” bike for the past year and a half. While I won’t say anything about the fork specifically I will say that mine is the best riding rigid mountain bike I’ve ever thrown a leg over. The ride qualities of the frame (geometry, mat …

Thylacine Cycles said:
Yeah, I’m eating crow with all the wonderful counter arguments such as “I wouldn’t trust my ME textbooks”, “I won’t say anything about the fork specifically”.

What A Pair said:
Warwick,
Reviving this after two months? What’s the point? Truly it really doesn’t matter whether they do anything or not. People like the way it looks and the way it rides. What else matters? You got a bone to pick?

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 :

None of this is an attack on Pereira, it’s an call to arms to question aspects of bike design that really need it. At no stage did I attack him personally, I simply asked for a critique of the mechanical aspects of the design. THAT IS ALL.

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

05 Jun 2010

A recent customer Peter was kind enough to send in some rather nice shots he took of his brand new Tephra/Force build bike.  I should be doubly happy for the bad weather recently, because it meant Peter was stuck inside taking photos rather than out on the road getting it dirty!

More photos as always can be checked out over in our flickr repository.

Posted by warwick @ 11:18 am

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