Bike Designers STOP Making Bikes Without Seat Tubes!
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- čas přidán 19. 05. 2024
- Why are bike brands so keen to get rid of the seat tube? We have seen many recent examples of bike manufacturers switching to all manner of wild designs, but Jack Luke has had enough!
Jack takes to his soapbox to tell us why this trend needs to go away and why “challenging the norm” is a strange obsession.
What do you think? Are bike brands making things too complicated? Let us know in the comments.
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What do you think of bikes without seat tubes?
Geometrically the triangle is the simplest, strongest and lightest structure you can make absolutely no reason not to use it.
It's an engineering mistake. Triangles are amazingly strong and that's why you see them in construction all the time.
Removing the seat tube, as you said, means everything else has to be extremely beefed up to make up for a key structural part of the frame. It's actually lighter to have the seat tube then to remove it because of how much extra material is needed to make up for it not being there.
This was all done in the 90s and they even tried to make BMX frames without seat tubes...🤣 What a fail that was!
This is people trying to make something different without actually paying much attention to the engineering side of things.
Where do I put my second bottle?
I've ridden a bike without a seat, but never a bike without a seat tube.
Pleasure rider 😅
Imagine forgetting the seat tube is absent and blindly reaching for that water bottle . . .
You forgot to mention the infamous Triathlon Bike Frame from US-Company „Kestrel“. Back in the late 80‘s. Don‘t remember the exact name of the frame, but it was a striking, eye-catching design. And it has been said back then that it provided more compliance than a standard frame (which is important for triathletes).
how about no downtube? Was it the Slingshot that had a cable instead of a downtube?
tri bikes
Jack…please…I beg of you….show some passion. 😂 Well done mate!
A bike frame is essentially two triangles (I get that the head tube is the flaw in that statement) and triangles are the most rigid structures possible. Removing the seat tube makes it a parallelogram which is the opposite. Designs that remove the seat stays, the top tube and even the down tube have been proven to work absolutely fine, not so for the seat tube. I agree, it’s a dumb idea.
I actually have a Kestrel Airfoil which you featured more than 14 years ago. I'm just missing a wheelset!
BikeRadar
Kestrel Airfoil Pro SL review
Published: November 5, 2010 at 4:00 am
Our review
The spec isn't brilliant for the price and its rigid ride will be too rattley for some, but the Kestrel's a distinctive bike with real personal best beating potential.
Ride & handling: Impressively stiff and stable speed machine
The missing seat tube dominates the look of the Airfoil, and it also dominates initial expectations of the ride. We were expecting a pliable and comfortable seated sensation from what looks like a very large carbon leaf spring formed by top tube and seat stays.
We couldn’t have been more wrong though, as the Kestrel feels standout stiff in every direction - including vertical compliance. The plus side of this stiffness is obvious when you squeeze your shoulders against the bars, press on the pedals and feel the chain lock against the road . . .
As for aero perfomance I believe hiding wheel behind seat tube should work better. But this video wasn't necessary. Let them design what they want just don't buy what you don't like.
I do like the look of the Baldiso, while they are swimming in a sea of peculiar looking seat tubeless bikes, that one works aesthetically.
As said, really not any performance gains in terms of weight or comfort, as they've had to strengthen other areas to compensate, but it's nice to see some art for the sake of art in road cycling.
Besides, tyres are going tubeless, so why not frames?😂
What happened to his Perücke?
How can this video be made without a shot of the Kestrel KM40 Airfoil or any of the spinoff Kestrel bikes???
Also, start offering rim brake groupsets and rim brake wheels.
aero has got to be worse without the shield for the wheel. Every aero focused thing shrouds the wheel more, not less (see the ceepo shadow r)
That's a very good point, and something I hadn't considered. If anything, bikes have got /more/ seat tube in recent years! Jack
Mixed feelings? Nah. Sheer incredulity at the abandonment of the perfect design.
No structural sense in omitting the seat tube. Stiffness losses outweigh anything gained.
I would pay good money not to own a bike without a seat tube. It looks awful and then exposes the tire. No extra bottle cage mount.
Do any of these kickstarter bikes ever come to anything? I think you have to be pretty brave to take one on.
The development of the Superstrata was a saga indeed….from delays, redesigns and downgraded components. Did they ever get Carbon wheels?
Its so they can sell you some proprietiry shaped sest stem.
Feels like people don't like physics.
Will you stop them if it become one of bike radar's sponsors?
BikeRadar's sponsored content will never include a value judgement. Our reviews are 100% editorially independent and will never be for sale - no exceptions. You can learn more about how BikeRadar makes money here: www.bikeradar.com/news/how-does-bikeradar-make-money/
Jack
How does one lower the seat post and to what does one affix a front derailleur to? Silly sausage designers
Beam bikes in tri dude
If the bike is safer, stiffer, more aerodynamic and lighter, why not? Most of the actual trends we cherish nowadays were revolutionary years ago. Although this seatpostless bikes appear to be one of the many tech flops in history, it's always positive when bold peolple dare to adventure on unknown grounds, but never count with my money to do so!
The removal of the seat tube makes the inherent design of the frame MUCH weaker. That strength needs to be brought back with other means like good mechanical design, manufacturing and quality control. The bike industry has a generally abysmal record of that, especially the last 2.
Most brands did such a terrible job of making on-size, round holes for their bottom brackets that they gave up and went back to threaded.
Imagine accidentally hitting pothole at 45 kph and the bike end up exploding
If people don’t buy them, they won’t make ‘em.
Simple.
BikeRadar STOP Writing Titles Without Correct Punctuation! (Did they ever start?)
A classic case of a title needing a comma (or a colon or dash would work equally well). Either way, you've fallen foul of the 'Let's eat Grandma' rule, where punctuation is needed to indicate the vocative case. Typical journalists!
We uphold our writers to the highest grammatical standards on BikeRadar.com... but CZcams is the wild west 😇 Love, Jack
😅 anyone disgusted by the designs
@3:28 that photo is totally fake. look at the saddle
This is a very small hill on which to die. I'd prefer not to see the triathlon monstrosities
I've made a career out of making mountains out of bike tech molehills, and nothing can stop me! Jack
It’s ugly