you sure about that?
This is what's wrong with The Industry™
- Thread starter Electric_City
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NO, TY
This isn't aimed at you personally. I've been guilty in the past myself...
But why don't people just go out and enjoy the ride?
I saw a buddy that I hadn't seen in a couple of months when he finished his ride. Him and his other buddy were so focused on Strava and who set their own record, that I just walked away.
On here and in real life I hear people say things like, 'I lowered my reat tire pressure by 2psi and adjusted the LSC one click and dropped the seat 6mm. According to strava I'm 3 seconds faster than last lap!".
I feel people are just missing the ride for what it is.
When I stopped giving a fuck about what gear I was in and my heart rate and cadence and the other bullshit (all before strava came along) I started riding SOOOO much better.
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Absolutely. You think its cheaper to make your high end product shittier as an alternative? I can think of a few examples where the crap product is more expensive to make than the high end one and only exists to provide an upgrade pathway (remember the days when the coil Boxxer Team was cheaper than the air sprung World Cup?).
As much as I like Transition bikes, they even stated the increased weight of the new SBG aluminium bikes was for durability and to increase the upgrade value and appeal of the lighter carbon bikes.
With a shock, they don't develop the base model and then a series of upgrades to the top end. The start at the top and then have to since a bunch of R&D into making it shittier for the base models. It would be different if they deleted the piggyback or something, but if they're removing the LSC adjuster and blanking off the port its probably more expensive than just leaving it there.
Deliberately sabotaging the low end models so people don't opt for them is smart business but still shithouse to do.
I hear ya. Different strokes for different folks. Do what makes you happy.
Some people really get off on all those details. Others are just happy that things "are good enough". I think you are in the latter category. I have riding bros of both and all types. And we all get along somehow.
But ask me to ski with a knuckledragger (snowboarder) and I'm like eff that!
True that. I get sucked into thinking too much sometimes about the bike, and not enough about the trail. Its a hard trap to avoid when 99% of bike media is basically just trying to sell you something to cure a problem that you didn't know existed (and usually creating 3 more problems at the same time).
QFT.<snip>
But ask me to ski with a knuckledragger (snowboarder) and I'm like eff that!
Do you work in product design and manufacturing?
aren’t you the one who started this thread, which bitches about things wrong with the industry, instead of just riding whatever and enjoying it?
I try to not work as much as I can.
Nope.
Because pretty much all the conspiracy theories you're spouting run directly contrary to how the economics of manufacturing works.
Clearly the blanking off the port one is probably a bit hit-and-miss. Lets say the parts involved in the LSC adjuster cost around $15 per unit and the installation maybe another $15 if its done at the time of shock assembly. The SKUs for the other parts remain the same, they literally had to add 3 parts to block off the LSC adjuster, then generate a whole new product line to satisfy an OEM-only demand for a shock with one less adjuster. I haven't seen OEM pricing on a DPX2, but in the past the DHX 5/4/3 were so close together it made no sense to not install the 5.
The other statements aren't conspiracy theories at all. That's straight from the product managers.
It literally costs the end consumer $200 - $700 to modify a suspension unit to the top end spec, which could be done for ~$50 at the discretion of the product spec manager. Thats the shitty part. My point is that I'd rather get a crappier seat and handlebars any day (i'll probably change those parts for personal fit anyway).
When you're talking per unit cost as an end consumer sure. But as a product manager $3/unit OEM pricing sure as shit makes a difference when you're ordering ten thousand of them.
And regarding the "other statements" - wow, a whopping 1 company.
So make the bike $4003 and give me the LSC adjuster is what I'm saying. Beats me paying $4000 + $550 retail for it.
Please tell me you believe that companies regretfully choose the budget suspension offering in order to save that precious OEM margin and make the bike more affordable for the end consumer. I'm sure the head of every major company curses the fact they just can't stretch the budget by $50, absorb the price difference or go over the retail price point to put a halfway rideable damper on a bike.
You're saying they'd never spec something on lower models deliberately in order to increase the marketability of the premium model?
Intriguing. Your opinion of these kind folk is certainly more rosey than mine. Perhaps I've misjudged our benelovent lizard overlords.
Ooh, ooh, I got one!
So, I just got my new XTR brakes, with the new ISpec EV standard.
Also got the new shifter, also ISpec EV.
Neither the brakes NOR the shifter came with the little adaptor to mount the two together.
What the fucking fuck.
Edit: I’m not the only one
https://www.reddit.com/r/MTB/comments/a31ss2/how_tf_are_we_supposed_to_mount_the_new_ispec_ev/
So, I just got my new XTR brakes, with the new ISpec EV standard.
Also got the new shifter, also ISpec EV.
Neither the brakes NOR the shifter came with the little adaptor to mount the two together.
What the fucking fuck.
Edit: I’m not the only one
https://www.reddit.com/r/MTB/comments/a31ss2/how_tf_are_we_supposed_to_mount_the_new_ispec_ev/
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I hear ya!I hear ya. Different strokes for different folks. Do what makes you happy.
Some people really get off on all those details. Others are just happy that things "are good enough". I think you are in the latter category. I have riding bros of both and all types. And we all get along somehow.
But ask me to ski with a knuckledragger (snowboarder) and I'm like eff that!
I ride- and I make adjustments. I just don't feel that every trail I ride needs major adjustments. A click here or there is cool. But it seems some people will sit trailside and rip their fork apart to change the viscosity of oil and shimzzz and then bitch about the oil reacting to their seals differently and causing stiction for fuck sake.
Ps. Technically JonKranked started this thread.
Pss. Forget the knuckledraggers!
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Fuck Shimano and their ispec bullshit. I've learned my lesson with the Ia-Ib incompatibility.
again, simply not how the economic side of things works. rarely, if ever, does an increase in cogs correlate 1:1 to an increase in MSRP. they don't care what you don't like and wanna upgrade. they've got a price point to hit, and that's a major driver of the cogs budget for any given model
regretfully? wtf? product managers have a budget to hit with their cogs based on the price point for any given model. this is one of the biggest drivers as to what gets selected for a given build spec. your problem is that you're only looking at per unit cost. per unit cost is part of it as it directly translates into what your cogs are, but they're also looking at at total cost across the entire quantity of bikes they need to spec. so that $3 per unit cost difference extrapolates out to $60,000 when you need to buy 20k units.
and that "precious" oem margin? what in the serious fuck? believe or not, bike companies are businesses, and are run as such. if they want to stay in business, they have to turn a profit.
believe it or not, high end bikes only make up fraction of most bike companies' sales. they're gonna move much higher volumes of lower end models, and that's where they're gonna give more focus because it's a bigger impact to their bottom line.
not never, but unlikely. general business rule - as price goes up, sales volume goes down.
in the one specific case you mentioned, that's one of the inherent challenges of manufacturing carbon bikes. tooling for carbon is very expensive. and you need tooling not only for each model, but each size of each model. (this is one of the drivers of the high cost of carbon). so yea, they're gonna wanna move the carbon over the aluminum because they need to hit their ROI.
rosey? do you have brain damage? i'm trying to explain to you the reality of business economics, which you clearly have a lot of VERY wrong understandings.
Here's a good example. My 2017 Alu Capra has 165mm of rear travel while the high end carbon model had 170mm. They achieved this by putting a shorter stroke shock on the bike. This shorter stroke shock is a 222x66 shock. This shock length doesn't exist except as OEM for the Capra. I have confirmed with YT that if I put a standard 8.75 x 2.75 (222x70) shock on the bike I will get the full 170mm of travel the bike is designed for.
I have no evidence of this other than deduction, but.... I think they went through the trouble of having SRAM make a random length shock just to reduce the travel on the cheap alu models so that people would say, "Oh shit! The carbon bike even has more travel! I guess it really is worth that extra $1000". I can't come up with any other reason for the weird shock stroke.
They absolutely did, and did again for my ‘18 Capra AL, which was 170mm in metal and 180 for plastic. I’m not too mad though, as I did a 180 conversion on the front which slackened it a bit with the 170 out back.
IMO a lot of the earlier carbon enduro bikes cracked as riders (including large ones) mostly used them as free ride/ park bikes rather than enduro race bikes. Now all the brands are struggling to differentiate between carbon and aluminum, as the weight diff for a properly-designed (non-cracking) frame is like 2/3 lb between the 2 materials.
Santa Cruz CC vs C is a similar artificial penalty.
And all these companies will keep doing this stuff, cuz you know they idolize Tesla.
IMO a lot of the earlier carbon enduro bikes cracked as riders (including large ones) mostly used them as free ride/ park bikes rather than enduro race bikes. Now all the brands are struggling to differentiate between carbon and aluminum, as the weight diff for a properly-designed (non-cracking) frame is like 2/3 lb between the 2 materials.
Santa Cruz CC vs C is a similar artificial penalty.
And all these companies will keep doing this stuff, cuz you know they idolize Tesla.
I'm not mad at all. That bike was a steal. I'm probably gonna secret Santa myself an x2 (that's how it works right) and ride off into the sunset with an extra 5mm of travel. It's a great example of of what @toodles was saying though.
I have a similar suspicion regarding the valve stack that came in the Lyric RC that was OEM on that bike. I think SRAM made it feel like poopoo so people would drop some money to upgrade to the fancy RCT3 fork. They could have set up the damper the same as the RCT3 just without as many nobs but noooooo they put a crazy heavy valve stack in that made it feel super harsh.
Yeah mate, I understand economics just fine. You're the one who said it was a conspiracy theory that cheaper stuff is deliberately made worse to increase the value of the high end stuff, when it has clearly been done many times by many manufacturers and is a well-known strategy in marketing/sales across many industries. Deliberate throttling of CPU power, "stability" tweaks in software, locking out of functions etc, all COST manufacturers money to implement just to make the top end product more valuable.
The bike industry is the same - do you think RS couldn't replicate the shim stack from the RCT3 Lyrik in the RC? They actually had to put in "moar shimzz" (at a cost) to make the cheaper model harsher.
But please, feel free to inform me of the economics theories that debunk my conspiracys. My tinfoil hat makes it hard for the knowledge to sink in.
This has intrigued me, as most enduro races I've done have been on DH park trails. If it's not intended for DH park trails, then why is the race there? I think a lot of people are using them as "occasional" park bikes, hopefully not day-after-day, but that seems to be right in line with the idea of the bikes.
The harsh shim stack on the RC is for giving the customer the ability to have a locked out like fork when the compression dial is fully wind in. It is indeed a discutable feature...
That makes 3 of us lol
Because fuck-bumps.
you're the one who said it was *purely* for this reason. which is nonsense.
all these examples have minimal, if any, impact to the manufacturing processes.
sure, the shimz cost a little extra, but that's offset by other simplifications / cost reductions in the damper. besides, the difference between the two is more than just a handful of shimz and a removed adjuster knob.
this part is correct.
no, it's not. they don't add a feature / manufacturing step and then undo in a later step. they just don't add it in the first place. why drill a hole only to close it off? just don't drill it in the first place. removing manufacturing steps / process is the fastest / most direct means of cost reducing features on a component. sometimes in order to achieve this you need may need to use some fundamentally different subcomponents in an assembly (ie: the rct3 vs rc damper), but you're still going to wind up with a less expensive - and reduced feature - product in the end. sure, it may seem "inferior" by comparison to the more expensive / higher priced version, but that doesn't necessarily make it a "bad" product.
getting back to my point, yes, a bike company is going to spec lower end components on lower end bikes to primarily meet certain price points, not primarily because they want their highest end bike to look better by comparison. even bike companies who's main focus is on the high end - like yeti, whose price points on builds are roughly a thousand bucks (give or take $200) apart (even across different models). surely that's not a coincidence. and not primarily to make the most expensive one look a little better.
You're aware that is 100% exactly what they did do right? They actually drill the hole, and then plug it.
In my first post, I literally said there's more than one reason for doing this.
You what? They literally cost money to implement those restrictions. Might not be much, but its not free to do.
They put cheaper parts on to make a cheaper bike? You don't say? Fill us with wisdom oh great one.
Funny you mention Yeti actually - they developed a carbon frame at two pricepoints. Want guess which one is lighter? I'm sure its a cheaper carbon process that is being used in the non-Turq model, but I bet there's a strict standard to make sure that the cheaper one is always heavier than the more expensive models. Can't accidentally have cheaper frames being indiscernible from the top end stuff. Making cheaper stuff less desirable is a legit business tactic, its just frustrating.