Giant introduce an awesome innovative new standard.

Yay another ridiculous standard that offers no value!!! Hope this one dies a quick death!!


My nightmare bike is:
Tapered steerer tube - 1 1/4 - 1.5
142 or 157mm rear axle
15mm front axle
84.5 BB...


Would greatly appreciate it if other companies simply choose to ignore this non "standard"
 
Nothing too revolutionary there, some road bikes have been using 1 1/4" headsets and steerers for a little while now. Giant have just put their twist on it, I suspect just so they can go "Look at me! Look at me!"

Seriously, if those little baggy pants, hat backwards 20" kids can figure out a standard that works across the board what the hell is wrong with the mtb guys, FFS.
 
Yay another ridiculous standard that offers no value!!! Hope this one dies a quick death!!

Absolutely... sadly, Giant are way too big a player in the bike industry for this NOT to take off. Their OEM purchasing power alone will make it happen, which really is annoying because it's a completely retarded standard. Almost every other standard that's been introduced has actually presented SOME kind of tangible benefit, whether it was significant or not... but this one really is ridiculous.
 
if this new standard was set by santa cruze... im sure everyone would be fist pumping going fuck yea this is awesome. 30% stiffer steering wooo...

who cares, if it improves the stiffness of the bike its a step forward.. get off the anti giant/any mainstream bandwagon... product improvement comes from new ideas, i doubt they would release a new design without thourough testing and adjusting before throwing it onto their bikes.

yours truelly, telling it how it is with no bullshit or sugar coating xoxo
 
Yer its a getting a bit silly now, makes it real retarded to get pretty much any spares unless its Giant branded.
 
Hmmmmm doesnt seem sooo bad - Would forks come in that standard, or (as I'm guessing) have a reducer cup to 1 1/8"?


Bring on standardised seatpost dia's....
 
Fucken sweet. I've still got an old 1.25 60mm Answer Atac in a box somewhere. Everythings come full circle, and I'm back ahead of the curve.

IIRC 1.25 was developed by Gary Fisher so he could use ti rigid forks without the flex that the original 1 inch standard produced when using ti steerer tubes.
 
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From what i've gathered over the years with any new "innovation" is that some other guy will always come up with a way around it, just takes time. I think Chris King are already setting up mix sets for the 1 1/8 and 1 1/2 headsets, I know that you can get Fox and Rockshox in the tappered steerers as well. I think the 15mm Front axle is a good idea, and it seems that quite a few companies are embracing that as well. I know all this because i just got myself a trance x3 and it features many of these "innovations", just making sure I can upgrade safely :D
 
1.125 and 1.25 inch upper steerer tubes aren't the same. 1.25 is the resurrection of a long dead "standard", and unless you've got shit hanging around from 1993, you've got buckleys of getting a different length or rise stem to suit yourself, unless giant happens to make something you like.
 
if this new standard was set by santa cruze... im sure everyone would be fist pumping going fuck yea this is awesome. 30% stiffer steering wooo...

who cares, if it improves the stiffness of the bike its a step forward.. get off the anti giant/any mainstream bandwagon... product improvement comes from new ideas, i doubt they would release a new design without thourough testing and adjusting before throwing it onto their bikes.

yours truelly, telling it how it is with no bullshit or sugar coating xoxo

Yeah sorry that's just bullshit. Entirely bullshit. 30% stiffer than what?! If you want to talk about the steering stiffness of a fork, separate it into two parts:
1. The steerer tube itself
2. The crowns, stanchions, lowers and axle.

Now given that this new standard uses the same size diameter at the lower bearing race as the existing tapered standard (Frustum - 1 1/8" upper to 1.5" lower), the crown will be the same and therefore no stiffer, and unless the rest of the fork below the crown was changed (which it has no reason to be), the entirety of the fork other than the steerer tube will be no stiffer than an existing Frustum setup.

Now let's look at the steerer tube - to actually twist this tube alone, ie apply so much torsional load with your hands on your handlebars, any amount that even bears relevance to the amount of torsional deflection you find in the rest of the fork - which has no reason not to be identical to an existing standard - well it's not even worth considering because even a 1 1/8" steerer tube is IMMENSELY stiff in pure torsion. And now we have yet another standard that we don't actually need, making it harder to find stems, headsets, decreasing production volumes of all parts involved and thus increasing the costs of production and more importantly, storage/distribution costs.

So let's get off the "you're biased" bandwagon mr Giant Glorydays. Please don't bother accusing me of being anti-Giant or anti-mainstream, I'm just anti-stupid.
 
Yeah sorry that's just bullshit. Entirely bullshit. 30% stiffer than what?! If you want to talk about the steering stiffness of a fork, separate it into two parts:
1. The steerer tube itself
2. The crowns, stanchions, lowers and axle.

Now given that this new standard uses the same size diameter at the lower bearing race as the existing tapered standard (Frustum - 1 1/8" upper to 1.5" lower), the crown will be the same and therefore no stiffer, and unless the rest of the fork below the crown was changed (which it has no reason to be), the entirety of the fork other than the steerer tube will be no stiffer than an existing Frustum setup.

Now let's look at the steerer tube - to actually twist this tube alone, ie apply so much torsional load with your hands on your handlebars, any amount that even bears relevance to the amount of torsional deflection you find in the rest of the fork - which has no reason not to be identical to an existing standard - well it's not even worth considering because even a 1 1/8" steerer tube is IMMENSELY stiff in pure torsion. And now we have yet another standard that we don't actually need, making it harder to find stems, headsets, decreasing production volumes of all parts involved and thus increasing the costs of production and more importantly, storage/distribution costs.

So let's get off the "you're biased" bandwagon mr Giant Glorydays. Please don't bother accusing me of being anti-Giant or anti-mainstream, I'm just anti-stupid.

Good Point S.

That is the most rational arguement I've read so far, disregarding the Pro or Anti Giant fan boys.
 
Also, one of the major reasons full 1.5 wasn't popular with major manufacturers was because they had another stock unit of stems just for one model, when they could use the 1.125 stems they already had in inventory for other models. I've four full 1.5 steerer tubed bikes, none of which is from a major company. Smaller aftermarket companies such as thompson or cromag won't bother with this for pretty much the same reason. Giants are in the vast majority of cases sold as price competitive complete builds, so an expensive aftermarket stem for just one brand isn't very likely. A least one other major company such as specialized would have to begin to use this, across a few models, and giant would need to expand its use across their models as well. There's a german magazine test which measured stiffness of all the current steerer tube standards which has been linked to on most major boards, I'd like to see giant substantiate their 30 percent claim with some comparative testing they publish against the 1.5/1.125 or full 1.5 setups.

If bending and and not torsion is an issue, which is what the german article tested, why not stick with full 1.5. The stems I've been using are about 30g heavier than their 1.125 equivalents, Thomson and Truvativ, and they've been around for ever. I can't say how much heavier the head tube and top cup may be in comparison.
 
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valid points, although having a larger bottom bearing theoretically means it should withstand higher loading and shock loading before failing. as for the steering stiffness your probly correct, it wouldnt do anything. quite possible the wording was shit and its actually the front triangle thats stronger because of it. more material = more weld, bigger diameter means more surface area to spead the loads put onto that bottom cup and bearings throughout riding. at the end of the day you could always run any type of forks as you could run a reducer sleeve on the tube, put a sleeve into the frame or get a bearing to suit. innovation is a wonderful(sometimes) thing as it is what drives improvement.

ok so this might be stupid because its different, though if its as shit as everyone is harping on about then it will flop and will be forgotten about, if its good well then we will all benifit in the long run. either way its a win for us riders. they tried something new and doesnt work then they learn where they went wrong and improve further.

and s. i wasnt having a personel attack at you, was an in general statement that alot of ppl seem to jump on the anti mainstream bandwagon. im neither for now against any particular brand. but i saved myself over 6 grand from buying a glory and amazingly happen to beat ppl on 10k+ bikes so cant be too bad.
 
Not so amazing......

valid points, although having a larger bottom bearing theoretically means it should withstand higher loading and shock loading before failing. as for the steering stiffness your probly correct, it wouldnt do anything. quite possible the wording was shit and its actually the front triangle thats stronger because of it. more material = more weld, bigger diameter means more surface area to spead the loads put onto that bottom cup and bearings throughout riding. at the end of the day you could always run any type of forks as you could run a reducer sleeve on the tube, put a sleeve into the frame or get a bearing to suit. innovation is a wonderful(sometimes) thing as it is what drives improvement.

ok so this might be stupid because its different, though if its as shit as everyone is harping on about then it will flop and will be forgotten about, if its good well then we will all benifit in the long run. either way its a win for us riders. they tried something new and doesnt work then they learn where they went wrong and improve further.

and s. i wasnt having a personel attack at you, was an in general statement that alot of ppl seem to jump on the anti mainstream bandwagon. im neither for now against any particular brand. but i saved myself over 6 grand from buying a glory and amazingly happen to beat ppl on 10k+ bikes so cant be too bad.

And Chris Jongewaard or Steve Peat would whip your ass on a Huffy.
Does that make his bike better than your amazing-value-fluffer?
 
valid points, although having a larger bottom bearing theoretically means it should withstand higher loading and shock loading before failing. as for the steering stiffness your probly correct, it wouldnt do anything. quite possible the wording was shit and its actually the front triangle thats stronger because of it. more material = more weld, bigger diameter means more surface area to spead the loads put onto that bottom cup and bearings throughout riding. at the end of the day you could always run any type of forks as you could run a reducer sleeve on the tube, put a sleeve into the frame or get a bearing to suit. innovation is a wonderful(sometimes) thing as it is what drives improvement.

ok so this might be stupid because its different, though if its as shit as everyone is harping on about then it will flop and will be forgotten about, if its good well then we will all benifit in the long run. either way its a win for us riders. they tried something new and doesnt work then they learn where they went wrong and improve further.

and s. i wasnt having a personel attack at you, was an in general statement that alot of ppl seem to jump on the anti mainstream bandwagon. im neither for now against any particular brand. but i saved myself over 6 grand from buying a glory and amazingly happen to beat ppl on 10k+ bikes so cant be too bad.

The "larger" bottom bearing actually ISN'T larger than the current tapered standard - it's the same size! The point isn't that this standard is "shit" (which it isn't, it'll work alright), it's that it's pointless because it isn't going to actually offer anything new in terms of performance. The problem is that because Giant have introduced it, it WILL stick around simply because they have the purchasing power to make that happen - they are the only company in the entire industry with the clout to pull off this kind of stuff.
 
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