See likes

See likes given/taken


Posts you liked

Pages: [1] 2
Post info No. of Likes
Re: Lightcarbon: New LCR017-D (or Yishun R1058-D) I've had to delete a couple of comments over the past couple of days... just a friendly reminder to keep discourse respectful and avoid personal insults and name-calling. Lots of places on the internet to go and talk shit if that's what you want to do, just not here. Thanks.
June 19, 2024, 07:21:59 AM
1
Re: Yuanan Carbon fiber wheelsets middle year discount promotion Leon: The Unprofessional
September 07, 2024, 12:44:02 AM
1
Re: Affordable lightweight frameset (not Winspace SLC 3) Brands command a premium, for what benefit?

With Giant being the exception (a brand that owns / is the factories), you have factories that make frames for brands, and brands distribute and sell. Each layer needs to eat. The further away from China, the more expensive the layer, and the less relevant (carbon bike market is now so commoditized with all frames looking the same and within 5w of each other). Therefore, the closer to the factory, the better the value & the less bullsh1t.

It is telling that Pinarello has frames made in china and they paint them in Italy. You can get real custom... because of the paint. Factor is the same: their frame looks open mould, but you get to really tune... the paint.

There's something to be said about where the expertise really lies. Take carbon layup. Is it Specialized that's really the expert, or Specialized suppliers? I dont have the answer, but it's important when thinking about light frames: as of now, T700 is ghetto. T800 is the gold standard, most legit carbon things are made with it. And then you go into fancy territory, with T1000, T1100, and increasingly, you see exotic things like M30, M40, and others. As brands brand (ie differentiate), there's also the question of how much a brand is making shit up (what does specialized's Fact carbon actually mean? Ditto with Pinarello's different carbon tiers). T1000 is "known" (rumoured?) to cost about 2x T800, so you will NOT see a frame made with T1000 for $500. If T1000 and $500 are seen on the same page, it means they (at best) INCLUDE T1000 in the frame, but it could be 1% - obviously, that's unregulated, Chinese are known to basically lie, and, maybe most importantly, you can't test it yourself -. The biggest benefit of higher tiers is you can use less of it for the same strength, so frames get lighter.

And so, you're left with the usual questions:
- Do you want to pay extra for a brand? The Chinese market now has brands, including Specialized equivalent brands (ie social media fluff fest). As a westerner, i'd say buying a Chinese brand is the worst choice possible: you pay a premium, but you're not in China, so you can't flex at the cafe your branded bigcock frame that nobody knows, and you can't lean on the bigcock bike shop for help / maintenance / support / warranty / i spent money here please be make me feel important and refer to me as your lordship.
- If you buy a western brand, (1) you (usually) get to rely on your local LBS, (2) you get a frame that's been QCed (questionable truth), (3) and if you buy something high end, you buy a vibe around layup technology, ride properties, the secret sauce that makes it so that when you jump on a specialized, your hair grows back, your biceps get more defined, and the ladies look at you like "ooh myyyy". (3) goes back to my point above on who actually has the layup know how.

So, a rational actor will wonder: how much more over an equivalent spec (features & weight) OEM frame am i willing to spend to benefit from 1-2-3?
- If you buy an OEM frame, you have to trust that (A) the factory / broker actually exists (people on this forum still using paypal insurance scheme to send money to Farsports is money down the drain, as far as i'm concerned), (B) they will ship you what you ordered (when Airwolf on Aliexpress sells you a frame for 12 dollars made of full T1100, spoiler alert, they're lying), (C) they will ship you a frame that's not a dog, and that's been QCed enough (Light carbon shipping cheese, Tavelo with undersized BBs whose shells crack during install, and all the horror stories you can find on here with Airwolf, tantan, workswell, and so on).
- On (C), because a seller will usually tell you not to worry, then ship you swiss cheese anyway, you have to factor in an element of risk: more often than not, seller A (after careful consideration on your part to choose that seller) will ship good frames, but occasionally, they will fuck up, at which point you need to be qualified enough to understand where they fucked up, and complain. Also, let's be honest, in many instances, people complaining about frames is USER ERROR, or such trivial niggles that the factory should indeed ignore the noises you make. And you have to complain loud enough, to a seller that is honest enough / has enough of an incentive to listen and help.

And so, this forum is invaluable in helping identify (a) where the value is, (b) good sellers, (c) and bad ones.

For light frames, it depends on what you deem light (and what tyre clearance you need). A lot of 2024 frames are around or below 1000g in Medium (starting with the Velobuild 268, which really is the standard of value). SP Cycle claims a 880g frame (30C, R025-SL), Yishun has an endurance frame at 900g, Long Teng claims their chonky boy 301 is 980g. I havent mapped out the lighter side of the market, because i'm over 80kg myself, but i would say: reach out to OEM with a good reputation on this forum, ideally order 2 frames and build 1 for a friend (or more), as you will command better care and attention, ask questions, accept the risk that no matter what you do, you may have problems to solve, but deal with someone who will more likely than not agree to help you rather than ghost you, and have fun.

Or buy a Giant TCR, ofc, once you've swallowed the upfront cost, rarely do people regret buying a branded frame.

Notes:
- on light carbon, recent precedents make them look bad (1 example of awful cheese carbon, 1 example of a down tube you could deform by hand, off the top of my head, but they generally have great reputation, and they're linked to Yishun (if i'm not mistaken), which also has great reputation.
- on tantan, plenty of people report horror stories, but they also OEM for big brands, and they are huge (assuming a constant error rate, the bigger you are, the more errors). As such, and because perfection is an ideal, nor a reality, they're probably still a good counterpart.
- Airwolf has an error rate so high it makes errors part of who they are, so you probably dont want to buy frames from them. But i've been buying cockpits from them, and i love their cockpits. So even that is more nuanced than just "avoid airwolf"

What do i know? I've been riding bikes for a long time, most of my friends ride bikes and many of them are champions, and i've built 9 chinese bikes in the last 2y.

These opinions are my own and as a matter of course, i tend to agree with what i say, which doesn't make it truth.

October 01, 2024, 03:02:53 AM
1
Re: Magene P505 PES Base Spider Powermeter
No it's actually a lot more complicated than that and it's also a reason why other single sided PM brands/models don't offer L/R balance. The PM only knows if one side is putting power or not, that's it. To conclude that the other side is always putting exactly the same power skews the L/R stats. If you buy the assioma UNO (which is pretty much the golden standard for PM accuracy) you'll notice they don't provide L/R balance for that reason, because it's not possible to get accurate data. That's also why in the assioma app you can specify a L/R power balance if you know you're always outputting 45/55 for instance. This way the uno won't simply *double* your power but will use this ratio.

Think about it this way, with your logic you could be doing one-legged workout (where you only have one leg clipped in) and the single side power meter would think you're applying power on the other side when you don't even have a foot clipped on the other side. Single side powermeter will never be accurate for L/R balance because it can only tell if one side is putting power or not.

I've had assioma duos. During high intensity workouts/sprints it's very common to get an imbalance on the power because people tend to have a stronger leg/side.

Well, that is not quite correct. You are talking about a one-sided pedal based power meter - there you are correct; they double the one-sided reading to get total power. Which of course is a "guesstimate" since that only works if you apply power completely even. And since it truly is a one-sided measurement, it cannot provide any L/R-balance.

But a spider based power meter does not do that. It sits, as the name suggests, at the spider or the axle if you prefer that. Therefore, it does not only get the applied power from one side (as in on a crank or pedal reading) but from both sides as it sits in between. And since it also knows which side of the crank is currently in the down/up-stroke movement, it can attribute that power to the respective side. It is not 100% exact as in a dual-sided crank/pedal reading, since you could influence the reading for example by pulling on the pedals. However, the amount of power you can apply by pulling compared to pushing on the pedals is so small, it really does not matter much. Furthermore, as I mentioned before, pulling on the pedals should be avoided anyway since it is energy inefficient.

To pick up your example with that one-legged workout: doing that on a spider based PM, like the Magene here, will actually give you correct data. And will also show quite a hefty L/R imbalance depending on which foot you keep "inactive".

What a spider based PM cannot measure (and therefore will also not show up in their data), are the other cycling dynamics stats like Seated/Standing Position, Power Phase (PP), and Platform Center Offset (PCO) as they are truly pedal dependent measurement. Hope that makes sense and clears up a few misunderstandings?

October 04, 2024, 11:41:02 AM
1
Re: Di2 on Sale I've seen 860€ for the full groupset on bike24
November 19, 2024, 05:39:36 AM
1
Re: Can we migrate this forum to a modern forum? I'm tired of the broken pages.
Sitar_Ned is the forum's administrator. You can reach out to them via PM or email.

I do support the idea. The software is really dated and things break a bit too often for my taste. Not sure how much capacity they have to actively maintain the forum and/or a migration.

Honestly, not much capacity at all. It's just me and I am in no way a web developer or webmaster. Just a simpleton Arkansas mountain biker that somehow figured out how to get this forum up 10 years ago.

I know the broken pages are annoying... and I am sorry about that... I do try to fix them immediately when they pop up so please do let me know.. I really appreciate it. I do have plans to upgrade to the latest SMF version to fix little issues like that but I'm sorry to disappoint anyone but there are no plans to "modernize" the forum in any way. No desire to have some modern mobile-friendly, super slick, dark mode interface. Chinertown will remain old-school looking with zero ads and zero optimizations for Google search. My main goal going forward is to keep AI out of the forum as much as possible. That's just my jam but I do understand if it isn't for everyone.

That said, I am certainly open and interested to hear everyone's input/advice/ideas and really appreciate it.


June 06, 2025, 06:52:42 AM
1
Welcome to the New Server... If you're seeing this, you are on the new host/server.

Unfortunately, approximately the last 48 hours worth of posts were lost. Sorry about that.. it was planned to be like 12 hours tops and then little unexpected things kept popping up delaying going live with the new server. Definitely a learning experience.

The positive side is that Chinertown is now on a (hopefully!) faster, more reliable, modern server. The SMF version has also been updated to 2.0.19 so we will see if the broken pages, slow downs, and error messages are fixed or not.

Hope this all goes well!

June 17, 2025, 02:27:00 PM
1
Re: Speeder Cycling SC-R55D If someone is interested in a full SC-R55D in size 51 (I am 178 cm) with Ultegra Di2 and XM carbon wheels - 1000 km, send me a private message.

I sell it for buying a Time Trial bike for an Ironman.

PS : Sorry for the off topic.

PS 2 : France and Belgium but also Europe with shipping.

July 13, 2025, 04:21:30 PM
1
HEZO 3D Printed Cycling shoes Not Chinese. I saw these in TraceVelo's Eurobike content on youtube and immediately went to their site to check them out. Seems pretty freaking cool! They currently dont ship to the USA but all you European folks get a chance to try these out.
Neat 3d scanning to create a custom shoe, gravel or road, and they are machine washable. The only downside I see with the Fidlock lacing is accidentally knocking the buckle off while walking around or in a crash. Love the design of being able to pop them off to remove your shoes though!

Has anyone gotten ahold of these yet?

https://www.hezo-cycling.com/

July 16, 2025, 12:25:39 PM
1
Re: Zen Carbon Wheels Have Landed 40/45 994g First Impressions Out of The Box After going through this thread I contacted Zara and have been messaging back and forth with her on instagram. She's been super helpful and quick in her response.

55/60 light weight rim with UD Gloss finish
Carbon 3.1mm spokes
SR270 Hub

Expected weight: 1300gr

Price: $785 incl shipping and pre-paid taxes 

wheelset should be coming in 2/3 weeks (Netherlands)

A little leap of faith in regards to the quality (given the lack of references on this company), but the first impression is promising.

July 17, 2025, 01:49:37 AM
1