The world of carbon fibre composites is continually progressing, and yet, the way most carbon bicycle frames are made today doesn’t differ all that much from how it was done in the 90s. However, aeronautical and automotive industries are continually investing in improved methods and processes, and the cycling market serves to benefit from just that. One such example is the recent rebirth of thermoplastic composites which have the potential to reduce costs, offer superior impact resistance, and b...
Aug 13, 2021•44 min
3D-printing is an undeniably cool way to make things, but that doesn’t mean it’s always the best way. Is a printed titanium hammer better than a welded one? Do $2,000 printed cycling shoes move the bar enough to justify their existence? What’s the point of printing sunglass frames? And was that handlebar that failed so dramatically at the Olympics even 3D-printed at all? What is definitely very neat, however, is a new trend whereby companies like Muc-Off are starting to ship products in powder f...
Aug 06, 2021•1 hr 13 min
Track events at the Tokyo Olympics are set to kick off next week with a full week of exciting racing around the 250-meter Izu velodrome. Felt is once again the official bike sponsor of the US team, and the company has supplied a brand-new bike — the TK FRD — for mass-start events that features a new aero shape and a new take on the frame geometry. But for the individual events, the American riders are on the same bike as they used in Rio five years ago. In an event where fractions of a second ca...
Jul 29, 2021•42 min
Oversized rear derailleur pulleys might be good for some marginal gains, but even the terrible watts-per-dollar ratio hasn’t stopped a growing number of brands from launching their own versions — and AbsoluteBlack’s HollowCage is now one of the most expensive ones out there (but also one of the blingiest). Speaking of looks, is a clean front end enough to justify all high-end road bikes going to fully internal routing in spite of the adjustability and serviceability headaches? And how much bigge...
Jul 23, 2021•1 hr 14 min
It’s not uncommon for custom frame builders to change direction from time to time: from lugged to TIG, steel to titanium, maybe different bike styles. But it’s far more unusual for an established builder who specializes in metal to make the wholesale switch to carbon fibre — and not just tube-to-tube construction, but moulded frames like the major brands. Yet that’s just what Carl Strong has done with his new venture, Pursuit Cycles. What’s involved in starting something from scratch? Why embark...
Jul 16, 2021•34 min
Gravel bikes were once the rebels of the drop-bar bike world, but now that they’ve gone increasingly mainstream, it’s perhaps inevitable that they’d adopt features from road racing: aero shapes, hidden cabling, similar claims about weight and stiffness, and so on. Is this a good thing? Also making a possible comeback are solid molded carbon fiber wheels — and they’re not just for fixies, kids. And what do we think you should bring with you on an unsupported 4,700 km ride? You’ll get all that and...
Jul 09, 2021•1 hr 20 min
This week’s Nerd Alert episode takes a closer look at two recent events in this year’s Tour de France. In stage 1, Jumbo-Visma rider Steven Kruijswijk finished the stage missing an entire seatstay from his prototype Cervelo, and in stage 5, EF Education-Nippo riders tackled the stage 5 individual time trial on a new Cannondale TT bike. We chat with Cervelo to find out how that bike could have possibly survived — and apparently without Kruijswijk even knowing! — and get some tantalizing tech deta...
Jul 02, 2021•1 hr 38 min
The full crew is finally reunited for this week’s Nerd Alert podcast! Now that Shimano’s new 12-speed Dura-Ace Di2 groupset has made an appearance in the wild, we dive into what we can confirm (it’s black), what we think (wiredless?), and what we hope to see (a mechanical version in polished silver!!) in the company’s new flagship road components. We then debate the pros and cons of hookless road wheels, the idea of a flat-proof tube, and finish with an extended Ask a Mechanic segment with quest...
Jun 26, 2021•1 hr 19 min
This week’s CyclingTips Nerd Alert episode is a deep dive into preventing ride or race-ending mechanicals and how to deal with them when things do go wrong. For this episode, tech editor Dave Rome rang up mechanic to the stars, Brad Copeland. As the personal mechanic for former cross country mountain bike world champion Kate Courtney, Brad is incredibly detailed in ensuring his riders are able to consistently get to the finish line. The lessons here are just as applicable to everyday road and gr...
Jun 17, 2021•1 hr 11 min
It seems everything cycling-related is fetching inordinate amounts of money on the used market these days, and so we figured it was a good time to trade in Caley and Zach for a special guest host: Dan Cavallari, former tech editor for Velonews and now freelancer extraordinaire. Dan covered Unbound Gravel for CyclingTips this year, so it only seemed right for James and Dave to run through all the interesting gravel tech with him. Wondering about tire inserts? Tire sizes and pressure? Handlebar se...
Jun 11, 2021•1 hr 18 min
We’ve chatted an awful lot lately about how tubeless and tube-type clinchers seem to be slowly replacing tubulars in pro road racing. Even though high-performance clinchers offer a big rolling efficiency advantage (as much as 12 W according to some figures), tubulars are still more popular for all the same reasons as usual: they’re lighter, they’re safer if you get a puncture, they handle impacts better, and they just have a distinctive feel that clinchers still can’t quite match. What if you co...
Jun 04, 2021•54 min
In this week’s episode, The Nerds chat about some cool parts and accessories Dave saw at the recent Handmade Bicycle Show Australia, including some hyper-expensive wheels from Partington that are trying to go head-to-head with Lightweight. Carbon wheels have gotten incredibly good at the opposite end of the price spectrum, and we make the argument that, unless you’re dripping with cash, it’s awfully tough to justify the price premium. Speaking of which, we also chat about Wahoo Fitness’s new Ele...
May 27, 2021•1 hr 14 min
In this week’s Nerd Alert episode, tech editor Dave Rome has a chat with Australian custom builder extraordinaire Mark Hester of Prova Cycles. Hester was a very early adopter of MTB-style geometry on gravel bikes, incorporating things like long front centers and shorter stems when most other brands — especially mainstream labels — were still using dimensions mostly borrowed from road racing machines. Yet as with anything bike-related, if a little bit of something is good, lots more of it surely ...
May 21, 2021•49 min
Australia’s entire population may only be roughly equivalent to Shanghai, but it has an outsized custom bike industry with astonishing levels of ingenuity and innovation. Tech editor Dave Rome recently visited the Handmade Bicycle Show Australia in Melbourne, where 3-D printing is playing a big part in setting a number of these builders apart from the rest of the world. Also in this week’s show, we chat about upcoming developments in gravel bike suspension, whether CeramicSpeed’s Driven shaft-dr...
May 14, 2021•1 hr 6 min
Indoor training is not top of the list of things most of us look forward to in the summer, but should it be? When the summer sun consistently comes out, the turbo trainers usually go into hibernation. We investigate if maintaining some level of indoor milage might improve your fitness and if World Tour pros are moving indoors for sessions regardless of the weather. Ronan chats with David Bailey (head of performance at Bahrain Victorious), Stephen Barrett (coach and head of research and innovatio...
May 07, 2021•1 hr 11 min
Cycling apparel may look similar between various brands, but when you dig a little deeper, there are often seemingly small variations that can make a world of difference in terms of how well they work out on the road. In other words, that tag may say “polyester” on it, but that only tells one tiny part of the story — and it’s time to learn a little more about the rest of it.
Apr 30, 2021•54 min
The Nerds have an awful lot of tech news to talk about this week, such as SRAM’s recent decision to seemingly go all-in on electronic shifting, the ins and outs of two big high-end wheel introductions, the unmentioned pitfalls of fully internal cable routing for everyday enthusiasts, and some big changes for DT Swiss’s workhorse hubs. There’s also been yet another push in the drivetrain friction front from Silca that uses... diamonds? Finally, we debate the ideal gravel bike in a What Bike Shoul...
Apr 23, 2021•1 hr 6 min
This week Caley and Ronan interrupt the regular schedule to bring you another deep dive episode. Deep diving into the science of Everesting, the Nerds discuss the training, wattages, equipment selection, marginal gains, and time left on the table from Ronan’s recent Everesting world record ride.
Apr 16, 2021•1 hr 26 min
TrainerRoad offers training plans and workouts for the individual rider and has always been focused on making us faster. They recently launched an Adaptive Training method that combines machine learning and science-based coaching to adjust training plans based on coaches feedback. The goal? "So you get the right workout, every time". This week Ronan chats with TrainerRoad co-founder and CEO Nate Pearson about the new Adaptive Training and explains just how it knows what it's doing. They also dis...
Apr 08, 2021•43 min
Ronan Mc Laughlin joins us this week to go over the details of the hyper-optimized bike he used to shatter the Everesting record. Canyon’s precious container of new bikes is finally free from the grips of the Suez Canal, Enve announced its new custom carbon fiber road bike program, we question if we’re all worrying a little too much about weight. Finally, does it make sense to build your own bike from scratch using open-mold frames and parts since new bikes are nowhere to be found?
Apr 04, 2021•1 hr 1 min
You’ve heard us talking about the supply issues currently facing the booming cycling industry, so this week we dive into what it’s like designing bikes when things are in such short supply. Our guest this week is Sydney-based materials engineer and bike designer Dave Musgrove, someone who’s deep in the industry and in touch with the industry’s Covid-related supply issues. From two year lead-times on certain components to slower and more expensive shipping, this conversation details why you may w...
Mar 25, 2021•52 min
James, Dave, Caley, and Zach discuss a wide range of topics in this week’s episode, like how much Speedplay’s revamped pedal lineup matters relative to the changes to its dealer service, whether MIPS really is a must-have when it comes to helmets. And then in this week’s Ask a Mechanic segment, we tackle perhaps the most important repair and maintenance question of all: what’s the sketchiest repair job Caley has ever done?
Mar 19, 2021•57 min
Team Deceuninck-QuickStep and Bora-Hansgrohe — together with sponsors Roval and Specialized — have been doing a fair bit of experimenting with their wheels and tires over the past couple of years, gradually moving away from traditional tubulars to tube-type clinchers for time trials and tubeless clinchers for road races. In an unusual move, both teams say they’re now wholly committed to clinchers and latex inner tubes for everything — even possibly (but not likely) Paris-Roubaix. To find out mor...
Mar 11, 2021•59 min
Mathieu van der Poel didn’t let a little broken handlebar on his Canyon Aeroad keep him from finishing Le Samyn, a cobbled race in Belgium, but why did it break? And what’s up with the flexy seatposts on those bikes, anyway? The Nerds share their thoughts on those topics and then look into a Specialized patent for a wacky flexy seatpost design of its own. And is the wait finally over for power meter pedals for Shimano SPD-SL pedal fans? It sure looks that way. Last but not least in this week’s e...
Mar 04, 2021•53 min
With very few exceptions, every piece of cycling clothing you buy comes in its own individual bag — or “polybag” as it’s commonly called in the industry. When you take into account the size of the global cycling apparel industry, and the number of individual garments, that’s a lot of plastic bags. Has it always been this way? How did we get here? And what do we do about it? In this week’s episode, James chats with two apparel brands, Ornot and Pearl Izumi , to assess the current state of things,...
Feb 25, 2021•45 min
Dropper seat posts for Super Tucking on road bikes? Mountain bikes with fully internal cable routing?? Road Boost hub spacing??? $6,000 aero bars???? Some of the recent developments in the bike world actually make a bit of sense, but there’s an awful lot of other stuff that’s so silly that, well, it’s pretty much guaranteed to happen. The Nerds dig into what’s going on and try to make sense of the madness.
Feb 18, 2021•1 hr 9 min
In this week’s Nerd Alert, James and Dave go deep into the rabbit hole of custom bicycle wheels with Adrian Emilsen of Melody Wheels in Perth, Australia. Why should you care about wheels? Are custom wheels really better than factory-built ones? How would you build a set of wheels for a light rider versus a heavier one? What are some strategies you can pursue at home if you want to get into the basics of truing, or maybe want to build a set of wheels for the first time yourself? Hope you’ve got s...
Feb 11, 2021•1 hr 15 min
Recent filings with the US Federal Communications Commission reveal that Shimano’s next generation of Dura-Ace Di2 will be at least semi-wireless — and not only that, but SRAM looks to finally be bringing its AXS wireless system down to the Rival level. Both developments are very exciting, but what do they mean for wired drivetrains, and will both companies be able to deliver in the current environment? While drivetrains are trending toward wireless, indoor trainers might be moving in the other ...
Feb 05, 2021•1 hr 10 min
You might look at tools just as utilitarian items — cold lumps of lifeless steel. For the true believers, the difference between good tools and bad ones is like the difference between gas station sushi and the real thing: they both might get the job done, but one is certainly a lot more satisfying, while the other is more likely to leave you feeling more than a little bit of regret. But, what makes a good tool, why is designing one so hard to do, and why should you care? James and Dave get the l...
Jan 28, 2021•1 hr 1 min
The Nerds gather for the first podcast of the new year and it does not take long for things to get spicy! We discuss the lawsuit filed against Trek and Bontrager for their allegedly outlandish claims regarding WaveCel helmet technology efficacy, the way ZwiftHub is out-Zwifting Zwift in a few key ways, and the pros and cons of Sea Otter’s recent announcement that they’re moving the show (at least for 2021) all the way back to October instead of April. Finally, in our Ask a Mechanic segment, Cale...
Jan 15, 2021•1 hr 31 min
