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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 comments05 Jun 2010A Classic Tephra.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 comments ?29 May 2010The Rift Number One.Okay, so after way too long, Mike’s ‘Rift’ is out of paint and finally able to reveal itself to the world. Powder is courtesy Spectrum Powderworks and is a “Trans Green over Faux Raw.” Even I’m impressed.
More photos over on our Flickr. Posted by warwick @ 1:02 am comments ?29 Apr 2010The Rift.Here is a sneak peek at the “Late ‘11 / early ‘12″ Thylacine ‘The Rift’ All-Mountain 29er. This one is somewhere inbetween proto and production, being for an ‘early adopter’ customer and good friend, Mike D. (No, not that Mike D.) He’s had a lot of input into this frame and is in more ways than one, a co-designer, so I’d like to thank him for his inputs (and patience) which has been invaluable. The plan for this frame is to have it available in 3×2 geometry - that is, three sizes of rear, and for each of those sizes, two front end designs, so six sizes in all. They’re not really going to be ‘production’, but the rear ends will be batch made so that we can speed up the build process substantially. They’ll also be available as full custom, because, well, that’s what we do. It’s all still a little bit up in the air at the moment, but as usual I was so excited I couldn’t contain myself, so there ya go. I feel like I just got drunk and left the next gen iPhone behind at the bar. More info as it comes to hand. Should be available after September, all things going to plan.
Posted by warwick @ 6:31 am 1 comment06 Apr 2010Shouldn’t we have dropped this guy 10kms ago?Here’s a quick snapshot of “the Elephant in the room” (I mean that in the coloquial sense, not insinuating Geoff is a trunk’d mammal) - Geoff Hughes aboard his monsterous yet still somewhat dwarfed Tephra Ti. I should run a caption contest for what the middle guy is saying to the short guy.
Posted by warwick @ 8:32 pm comments ?05 Mar 2010Generator…….AgainAfter telling us “No, I’m sorry we don’t have that info”, we got sent just now individual outputs for the generator race, which is a bit of a hoot. You can see Brett, Erin and I settling into a rhythm, then Brett’s gears start slipping so he gets all agro….you can see me with 3 minutes to go try and up the pace then failling miserably every time…..and Erin decides with 4 minutes to go that he can’t be arsed but with one minute to go can’t decide whether he made the right decision or not….and as for Dan……..I dunno Dan, wtf were you doing! Look at those spikes!
I’m actually quite shocked that of everyone that raced, I was the fifth fastest out of 144 participants, and the only riding I do is a tootle twice a week to go play Badminton! Clearly I don’t suck quite as bad as I think I do, or maybe to put it another way, I maybe should be a track rider. The horror.
Posted by warwick @ 2:16 am 1 comment24 Feb 2010Mondo GeneratorsWell I’m happy to announce that after flogging our podgy arses off for a whole 10 minutes, we managed with the help of Ray from AE Smith’s constant yells of encouragement to win the AE Smith Green Cities Generator Race!
It’s actually quite surprising for a non-pro cyclist like myself how hard riding for a measly 10 minutes can be, but as with anything I guess you can make riding for one minute hard if you stick yourself well into the red zone [literally - see my face] and try and stay there.  Yeah, it's all smiles now....  Stick it in a comfy gear and hold on!  Okay, this is starting to hurt.  Two minutes to go! GO HARD!!  Dan - Why on Earth did I sign up for this!?  Brett exiting the Hurt Box  Thanks for the Certificates, but can you just hold off on the photos until we can breathe ?  Our little mascot! I want to thank Brett, Erin and Dan for doing this crazy ride with me, and their bosses too for letting them off early on a school night to come and sit in one place and pedal their arses off - Especially Erin who I don’t think can remember what a bike looks like since he discovered girls, and Dan who was such a delight to sell a bike too I wish all customers were like him. Thanks again fellas! Posted by warwick @ 8:27 am comments ?23 Feb 2010Fast and OrganicFirst batch of tee’s are done and will go out on Friday. More the week after for those of you that were not faster than beer. You’ve got the weekend to improve your skillz.
Posted by warwick @ 2:15 am comments ?17 Feb 2010Green Cities Generator RaceThis Monday at 3.55, Brett, Erin, Dan and myself are going to be at Green Cities 2010 slogging our guts out for 10 minutes on crappy bikes with no clipless pedals to generate as much Megawattage™ as possible without losing our lunch. As a lame bribe for the guys I’ve decided to do a T-Shirt which in some ways has absolutely nothing commemorative about it, but in some roundabout way kinda does. Brett and I were kicking around some ideas via MSN and in my usual scheme of taking too long to do simple things I came up with this -
Of course the four of us get them for free, but I thought I’d offer them up to you mangy lot and see if they appeal. The deal is simple. They’re Australian made and grown organic cotton T’s by Certton, available in Jade and in sizes S [46cm] M [50cm] L [54cm] and XL [58cm]. The measurements are of the garment, measured flat armpit-to-armpit. Get your fave T out, lie it down, measure it up. Couldn’t be simpler. There’s always a downside, and for this because the event is Monday, if you want to be in the first batch you have a whole 48hrs to put your hand up. The advantage of being the early bird is you get early bird pricing [$35] and of course, you have a fine beer drinking t-shirt that no other stiff has and can proudly proclaim that if you are lucky enough to own a Thylacine, then you are clearly Faster than beer. Email us asap if you want in. Posted by warwick @ 8:09 am comments ?03 Feb 2010Great Success!
This sort of thing is what custom bikes are all about. Geoff got in contact with us initially back in April wanting a custom Ti frame. In between bouts of being a goody-goody working for some NGO making sure the bad guys don’t bork things up, we exchanged lengthy emails about bike fit, what he was riding now and what issues he was having. I was horrified that at 6ft 6ins, he was riding a stock carbon frame and in his words -
It was difficult because he was trying to fit on a bike barely big enough for me at 6ft 3ins! Initially he was going to get fitted up by Steve Hogg, but the timing didn’t work out, so to coincide with his global galavanting, I managed to track down a fitter in DC who was recommended to me by a ‘pro bike fitting’ organisation who shall remain nameless because, to put it mildly, they’re utterly useless. The fitting I got back was that ‘old school’ method of fitting big guys - the one where the biggest downtube you can get is 660mm so you make the head tube angle 74 degrees, keep the chainstays as long as someone 5ft 9ins so they can pop wheelies when climbing, you know, just for fun. There were alarm bells going off bigtime, and I couldn’t with a clear conscience make a bike to the specs’ I was given, they were that wrong. So in a tip of the hat to the good parts of globalisation [the part where our bike fitters crap all over those in the US], I got Geoff to send in a shed-load of measurements and gave them to Chris @ Bike Coach to interpret them. Between what I thought was right and what the numbers told Chris, we came up with a frame that frankly breaks all the old rules. Check out some of the numbers -
Now, even the most confident bike designer [unless you're Leonard Zinn perhaps] has got to have some trepidation in doing a bike like this. The vast majority of bikes are fairly averagely sized, and not being a ‘Specialist’ other than the fact that I’m not a little guy myself - and with the inertia of ‘tradition’ - bikes like that are always going to be exciting to do. I’ll just let Geoff sum it up -
Thanks for your faith and patronage, Geoff! Posted by warwick @ 8:27 am 2 comments
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