Agreed, but the place the hangups happen is in the testing - whether it's an assortment of brands (good luck getting them to agree to one standard), media, or a regulatory body, it's really hard to come up with test methodology everyone thinks represents the intended result.
One brand offered to show us how they built a really quick and easy bar flex testing jig where you hang weights off the end and measure deflection. But...so what? Now we know one bar flexes more on the end when you hang a certain amount of weight off of it vs another. That won't necessarily translate to ride feel, or performance, or durability. We could do that test for a bunch of bars and present it to you all but it would be in bad faith - I don't think any of us could claim that'll translate to consistent data. We could measure it and then ride test it back to back and present that - it might get us further down the road but now we're trying to correlate objective and subjective data and HOO BOY is that ever a tough sell (for good reason).
I'm not saying we shouldn't all expect better, I'm just saying it's simplistic to ask for weight ranges or deflection measurements. It's way more complicated than that. I know that's not the answer anyone wants.
July 9, 2024, 10:37 a.m. - Pete Roggeman
Agreed, but the place the hangups happen is in the testing - whether it's an assortment of brands (good luck getting them to agree to one standard), media, or a regulatory body, it's really hard to come up with test methodology everyone thinks represents the intended result. One brand offered to show us how they built a really quick and easy bar flex testing jig where you hang weights off the end and measure deflection. But...so what? Now we know one bar flexes more on the end when you hang a certain amount of weight off of it vs another. That won't necessarily translate to ride feel, or performance, or durability. We could do that test for a bunch of bars and present it to you all but it would be in bad faith - I don't think any of us could claim that'll translate to consistent data. We could measure it and then ride test it back to back and present that - it might get us further down the road but now we're trying to correlate objective and subjective data and HOO BOY is that ever a tough sell (for good reason). I'm not saying we shouldn't all expect better, I'm just saying it's simplistic to ask for weight ranges or deflection measurements. It's way more complicated than that. I know that's not the answer anyone wants.