the jerk says...

[jerk]

you know what needs improvement? lots of things....here's the jerk's short list:

tubular tires. as of right now there is one 80 year old frenchman still making decent tubulars. the rest, made my 11 year old thai children are horrible in every way. where are my tubulars? fat ones! treaded ones? fast ones? silk ones! cotton ones....pyrimide treaded ones etc. etc.

tubular rims...now rear wheel dish has really screwed us.....modern rims need to weigh over 400 grams and they still build a weak crummy uneven rear wheel. where is my offset drilled tubular rear rim? the jerk is calling john burke as soon as the booze wears off.

cranks....jesus h christmas- cranks just keep getting worse and worse. the bottom brackets get more and more drag with every generation.....and the cranks get further and further apart. this sucks. just make us a decently light crank with a stupidly low q-factor and gigantic loose ball bearings....reverse engineer the godamm dura-ace ten pitch track bb if you need to.

seat posts....carbon seat posts are really dumb....cool to look at but dumb. now that doesn't keep hiim from using them on occasion...but the jerk likes to raise his saddle in the course of a season. the jerk doesn't want to flip the clamp around and use a god damn torque wrench every time he needs to adjust his saddle. likewise, what is the deal with the selcof/wr compositi posts? why do you need an open ended wrench to adjust them? didn't campagnolo figure out how to make a pefect seat post in 1983? (not that they still use that design of course)

front derailleurs....the jerk doesn't have it but there has to be a better way. the front derailleur sucked in 1935 and it will suck in 2005....

forks...carbon forks are great and all....but bikes don't handle as well as they used to. please fork manufactorers where are the custom raked forks? let the builders have control over the balance and handling traits of their bicycles again!

[amg]

well said, jerk. As far as tubulars go, aside from Mr. Dugast, Veloflex tubulars are still made in Italy and are of exceptional quality, IMHO.

Antonio :beer:

[oracle]

yes

veloflex tubs = good

the crit, the roubaix,

i even like conti sprinters

oracle

[BigMac]

Jerk:

Quality tubular tires are indeed a much lamented item in today's cycling world. The last really good tire was the Conti Comp 25, not as smooth as the best French sewups (Clement Champione Seta's and Wolber Champione del Monde), but far more durable and better riding than anything ever produced elsewhere. The fact that Veloflex is considered good quality speaks volumes for either the infusion of clinchers in marketplace or perhaps the dearth of actually good sewups. Heck, the Italians never built good sewups, ever. The Vittoria's back in their Italian-production days were well below Clement and the better Wolber's in their respective heyday (60's-early 80's). The Veloflex are basically Vittoria knockoffs produced largely by the old Vittoria workers. BTW: I'm not sure if Andre is still producing sewups, I thought he was overseeing the work of 1 or 2 others who are actually performing the laborious task. Dugast has also never produced a sewup from scratch, most are produced with old stock casings from Clement, the old french Clement not the resurrected Asian version. If fresh casings are not available, he recycles used Clement's and occasionally Wolber's. I was told the Clement silk casings are almost indestructable, often requiring only minor repairs from punctures/road hazards, etc, but the threads themselves almost never decay or fatigue. The cotton cased Clements and Wlbers can only be recycled 2-3 times. Andre has tried a couple of newly produced casings on a couple of accasions but apparently was dissatisfied with quality compared to the vintage French casings. Most pro teams that race on Dugast tires (cyclocross in particular), supply him with the vintage Clement sewups for him to recycle.

An assymetric drilled sewup rim would be a great appreciated gift from the cycling God's. Don't even care what it weighs, just make sidewalls parallel, rim round and true, no deep-section aero crap and weld the joint. Under $100/pr would also be appreciated but not absolute requirement as long as they build it properly.

Cranks are indeed junk. Bring back the Mavic 631/635 and the old Ritchey Road Logic cranks. Forget the spline drive, nobody needs it, just standardize the square taper. Larger bearings would be appreciated but w/o using the DA-like outboard bearing design, this would require a larger shell which would inturn make for compatibility issues with all current and vintage frames -- that is not a good thing, imo. Phil BB's last 30k miles between rebuilds, that's good enough for me. The outboard bearing design is also a good one and should still allow low q cranks if they are properly designed. Clearly there is not a single current crank vendor who considers q-factor as relevant, that is VERY bad.

Seatpost problems? Ritchey Pro, 1-piece cold forging, 19mm setback, 2-bolt clamp with a true infinite tilt adjustment -- no serrated clamp design like most models including Campy -- with 2 bolts securing saddle you don't need serrated clamp to insure no slipping. Also no glued-on heads to fail. Ok, it's only available in black these days, take a couple hours to strip the black anodizing and polish it. At $40 its one of the greatest bargains of all-time.

FD's have like you said always operated with marginal speed and relaibility although the linned and ramped 'rings have helped immeasurably. Untill someone comes up with a larger gear range rear-end, we're probably stuck with fd's, such as they are. Avoid triples and this becomes less objectionable. Wish someone could develop a Rohloff Speedhub at 50% less mass w/o any loss in relaibility and a better shifter setup...rear dish would be eliminated along with fd's, now that would be progress worth embracing!

Bring back the F1 fork in its' original form. Maybe offer a 1.125" steerer if needed for demand. Alternatively, just use a steel fork, much better than most of the cf junk anyway. Most builders who've been in business for 20 years or more still have the mandrel for bending blades and often a stash of old workable 531 blades or SL/SP blades. I don't think most of the newer steel alloy blades could be bent w/o a several ton hydraulic bender and could possibly compromise their structural integrity if one were to have such equipment. This is particularly true of the various heat-treated steel alloys. I don't know that this is as much a builder issue as a tubing vendor issue. I suspect however if just one company were to offer workable steel blades, many of the more skilled, experienced builders would be standing in line placing orders.

All things considered, that's a pretty short list of requests. Certainly brakes, derailleurs, brifters, hubs, bars and even chains are of exceptional quality, often far better quality than days gone by. I've personally got a pretty good stash of fine sewups so my biggest request would be a quality assyemetric drilled sewup rim and low q cranks..the rest would be nice but of lesser import imo.

Ride on!

[vaxn8r]

Here here!

Well stated both of you.

[amg]

BigMac:

Hey, I'm relatively new to tubulars so even a decent tubular is a big step-up in performance compared to a high-quality clincher. Since I was not into cycling during the hey day of sew-ups, I can only compare to what's currently on the market.

Antonio

[gt6267a]

i've been wondering about the FD deal as I completely agree that it does work as nicely as desired.

i have seen a number of cross bikes with only one chain ring and a 42 up front. i have not seen anyone running a road bike like this. i am wondering though, with 10 gears in back, could one not setup a rear cluster to handle most situations?

BigMac, you talk of this in your post. What would you consider an adequate gear range? a campy 13-29 with a 42 big ring covers a lot of ground ...

[BigMac]

I suspect most folks, myself included, would spin-out of a 42/13 top-end w/o much effort. Something along the lines of say 11-30 in rear and something like 48T ring up front would be more to my liking.

The idea of the Rohloff-type setup is far more appealing for several reasons. First and foremost is the elimination of the rear cogset, 10 or more wide, which is cause for so many rear wheel durability and design compromise issues. No rd pulley cages to get bent or snag trail tundra either. A properly designed internally geared hub can be shifted at anytime under any load, including while stopped at signal light if necessary. The total gear range of the Speedhub design is equivant to most mtb triple setups, much more than is necessary for road standards. It would be very possible to have 14 closely spaced gear ratios, never having any overlap and all equally spaced, if desired. That cannot be said of any setup that features 2 or more rings up front and the necessary fd. The only real downsides to the Rohloff system is its mass (1750-1800g on average), wide gear spacing intended for mtb's not roadies and the Grip-Shift like shifter that only fits on mtb bars -- road bar ends are larger diameter than mtb bars. I'm not holding my breath waiting, but a close ratio Rohloff Speedhub weighing <1000g with brifter gear change mechanism would be my dream setup.

Ride on!

[Climb01742]

bigmac, you're darn knowledgeable. would you mind penning a short bio, just a few lines, sharing how the heck you got so darn smart. many thanks. :beer:

[jerk]

big mac-
well put. i was never a fan of italian tubulars either. fortunatly i still have a stash of old clements and wolbers as well as some dugasts-which are as you say built out of old casings. i've heard the old man had brought on some help. hopefully this will keep the faucet trickling.....

internal geared hub eh? 7-8speed is all you would really need....although bigmac you and i would have to scrounge up some long track cranks.....some of my pursuit racing buddies are on 177.5 and 180 record track cranks so they do exist....talk about a clean looking bike. sort of a throw back to the english path racer bikes...sure they were built for time trials but alot of them did use sturmey close ratio three speeds....(some of which were fixed gear threes).

we'll have our offset rim soon i hope.

respectfully in the first person singular at your behest,

jerk

[Too Tall]

Jerk and Macwizard, you had me after ...."well put" ;)

Just for giggles give some fatherly advice. My new race wheels are a Nimble Crosswind tub rear and Nimble Fly tub front. My plan is to race these with Veloflex Crit tubs and use Tufo Elite Road tubs for training.

Since I'm paying the tab that's my choice. Dugast tubs just are not on the bill. Any comment or suggestion on my choice appreciated.

[gt6267a]

jerk : 7-8speed is all you would really need.... i am curious to know the details of this setup? which rings would you use and cassette?

as i'm 5'7" so i'll pull it off with the 170 cranks ...

[jerk]

by 7-8 speeds the jerk was referring to bigmac's theoretical road internal geared hub....imagine something like a rohloff or a shimano nexus or even an old three speed hub that was light, strong and had the usuable gear range of a modern road bike. given all the redundancies and cross over gears on a modern 2x9 or 2x10 drivetrain this said internal could probably get away with being a 7-8 speed and not loose any of the small steps.

if the jerk was only allowed to have one chainring- probably a 48 with a 13-26 10 speed cassette....although ever since the jerk installed his pmp 50/36, it feels like the 36 is getting much less use than i thought it would.

[oracle]

48 teeth might be fine in beantown, but i'd want a 42 or 44 on there in the event that some sustained climbing entered into the equation. unless it is really steep, i actually prefer to climb on a 42 or 44, and it is pretty fast on the flats and rollers as well.

and gt: on a cross _racing_ bike, it is fairly easy to utilise a single front ring, as generally the same range of gears is not necessary, as on the low end, running is often faster than pedalling, and on the pavement sections, there is a limit as to the distance, as well as the fact that most bikes are floating along on tubs with low air pressure, so the higher end of the gear spectrum is generally not needed. it is also (and primarily) far less likely that you'll drop a heavy, muddy chain.

love,
oracle:beer:

[victork]

Couldn't agree more. I dumped my Campy Carbon Post for their Ti one that has since been discontinued in their new 2004 line. Campy needs to listen to the Jerk.