In my recent
Predictions article, I guessed that we'll be seeing more user-adjustable frame stiffness on production bikes in the near future, with a few existing examples of the approach thrown in for posterity. While this could be a very cool feature to add to a frame, I personally don't see it as critical or even worthwhile for most people, as there are already enough complications to wrestle on modern bikes.
That said, I'm probably wrong and you're all going to tell me why, so I figured I'd put it to the people and get a sense for how many folks would jump on the opportunity to tweak their chassis to suit terrain, ride style, and rider load.
This could be seatstay/chainstay bridges, swappable axles, or even some sort of external bracing like we see on some motorsports chassis.
Just fun, fitness and eliminating stress.
Get off my lawn...I know
Ah well, another curmudgeon here.
BRO!!!!!!!!!!! Run for President please
Without the "good innovation" like suspension, tubeless, disc brakes, hell even indexing, we'd all still be riding fully rigid clunkers and that really wouldn't be anything like as much fun.
if youve seen any of the videos of dudes on klunkers, drifting gravel roads you can tell theyre having an absolute blast.
You see in 30 years from now, someone on the internet is going to be telling others how good they have it, and how its way more fun now than it was then.
I've been riding, wrenching, racing for over 25 years, and I dont have any more fun now, than I did on my first canti braked, full rigid Nishiki. In fact, the exposure now is way more than it ever was, now I need to be doing mach chicken down some super steep, loose line to get the same thrill.....
its always been fun, theres just more consequence to fu$&ing up now
I think it’d be rad if everyone had a 1995 Hardtail that properly fit them to ride the “boring” trails on every now and then, maybe after hitting a bowl…makes riding boring trails much more exciting.
Does anyone have a 55cm Bridgestone MB1 they can sell me?
my views might not be as extreme as yours, but i do have both a long travel bike, and a short travel bike so I can have my version of fun more of the time
Have fun out there, and dont forget youre helmet!
Give me a modern bike with *gasp* a small motor and I will ride more varied terrain for longer and by my metrics have more fun. Bring me a nice gearbox and magic-grippy tyres and I'll have more fun in the absolute quagmire out there right now than I am having right now.
Give them what they want! Let a few people pay for the privilege to do the R&D and market research the vendors didn't do. The fast followers can have their next designs all CAD'd up with a smidge extra clearance in case greater cross-sections are desired, watch for the first signs of consensus on stiffness, then tell their overseas factory that handles the lay-up design to proceed accordingly.
Naturally, while all that's happening, we'll switch to 40 mm rims for greater tire stability and throw out everything that was learned about frame stiffness preferences.
-tyre pressure
-suspension pressure and rebound
- flip chips
Things I understand but don't really know how to set:
-compression
-bottom out
-bar roll
Things I don't understand and don't want to think about:
-fork offsets
-steering damping
-stiffness
“A PinkBike commenter has recently discovered that people who are nothing like him also ride bikes. He was amazed to realize that there was someone in his own town who is literally twice his size who is also good at bikes but keeps breaking frames because they aren’t designed for people like him.”
“Startled, his first response was ‘well just loose some weight you fatty’. A few days later he met the larger rider in question on the trail and was immediately thankful that his username @pewpew805 is not connected to his actual name.”
A PinkBike commenter made a snarky and self-rightous comment deriding other users for stating their opinions on a post without realizing the irony that the post in question was literally soliciting their opinions.
San Franciscans don’t tend to like statistics, but here you go:
frac.org/obesity-health/obesity-u-s-2
In theory, some brands are already sort of doing this with their frame sizes (Norco mentions having their larger bikes be stiffer, as they're likely heavier riders IRRC).
If my frame came with adjustable stiffness... I'd probably try it out, just for kicks, and see if I have any preferences on it. But unless I somehow find a frame that has very very wrong stiffness in the first place, I doubt I'd notice it much.
Also I'm not sure we need a subset of riders that won't yield because they need data on their latest frame stiffness adjustment setting.
Flipchips and frame stiffness. I don't care. Give me bottle mount's on Enduro frames. A steep seat tube about 80°. Big bearings and that's essentially the bike I buy if it got external routing. Your fancy stuff can't make up for it if you can't even nail the basics. It's like shopping for a new vacuum but you soon realise that the new stuff is just marketing and can't even solve the simplest problem of them all. It's all marketing if you can't do a basic job..
I have the V5 with the adjustable seat stay bridge and once I tried the soft one, I liked it better and never went back. But I’m also the kind of person that cut off parts of my trek session to make the rear end more compliant.
However I typically choose bikes known to be more compliant now.
Those great Magura yellows that you can make the seat stays flex 10mm with!
Already accomplishable with suspension settings, tire choice & PSI.
Long story short: If there is a difference in ride feel between a steel frame and an aluminium frame, that difference is entirely caused by the specific design of the frame and doesn't really have anything to do with the material itself.