Scientists have created a new metal. A new metal that is four times tougher than titanium!
This new alloy sounds like a cyclist’s dream come true. After all, it’s an alloy of titanium and gold – so it must be phenomenally expensive!
You may or may not remember that bike frames were once made of metal. Steel in fact. Weird.
Reynolds 531 was the steel alloy tubing of choice for over fifty years. A small sticker on the down-tube signified quality and expense; in turn satisfying the cyclist’s irrational obsessions.
Then it was discovered that aluminium alloys could be produced and shaped to allow stiffer, lighter frames to be made. Luckily these were chunkier looking – an obvious indicator of better-ness. Let’s face it. There are two reasons cyclists buy new gear. To make them faster, and to make them look faster-er. What’s the point of having the latest kit if no one else knows? Exactly. None. It’s no accident that bikes and kit are always adorned with more meaningless slogans than a beat box from the 1980s.
Big beats!
Then there was titanium – a stronger and therefore lighter material. Appropriately for the cycling industry frames made of this material are also quite expensive due to its comparative rarity and difficulty to work with. But just as this exclusive material seemed to be the pinnacle of frame building carbon fibre took over. It is stronger / lighter and also, of course, expensive…
Cyclists will buy anything if they think there is some minor advantage to it. Frankly, there doesn’t even have to be an advantage. Just some mumbo jumbo that sounds vaguely plausible. And this brings us on to the cerebral disconnection that is L-shaped cranks…
Yes, sometime in the early eighties a set of cranks were successfully marketed which, instead of the conventional straight crank arm, chose to add a right angle. Now, anyone who didn’t spend physics lessons flicking paper pellets at the back of the teacher’s head, (actually the whole pellet venture demonstrates an innate understanding of Newtonian mechanics so no major slight there), will know that this is a ridiculous idea. The claim was something to do with levers and forces. Something along the lines of a perpetual motion machine I guess. This kind of thinking requires a certain insulation from the hostilities of reality. All that rational detail can be a total distraction from the purity of an idea. An idea so simple it seems almost too good to be true! You can see a detailed explanation here and judge for yourself. The term flat earth comes to mind. If a school child can explain why this is at best a waste of materials, and yet cyclists went out and bought the bloody things what does it say about the cycling industry? Well, not much I’m afraid.
Maybe you’d like to pop over here to fund the Z-Torque crankset?
