TEAM ROBOT - The Inside Line Ride Along Ep. 1 37

sspomer
2/12/2023 8:57pm
RideAlongA1

Team Robot, aka Charlie Sponsel, drops in for the first Inside Line Ride Along, where mountain bikers sit down with no real agenda to discuss life and bikes.

 

Video contents

  • 0:00 - Intro, Banter & Airplane Turbulence
  • 8:20 - PIVOT DH BIKE SPY SHOT
  • 20:53 - Does Spoke Tension Matter?
  • 31:22 - Is Puzzling Over Bike Setup Worth It?
  • 43:43 - Loam Isn't What You Think It Is
  • 47:46 - Importance of Cockpit Setup
  • 1:00:17 - One-Piece Bar/Stem Combos
  • 1:11:28 - Instagram Questions Answered

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37 comments

View replies to: TEAM ROBOT - The Inside Line Ride Along Ep. 1

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Wvcyclists
1 year ago

@TEAMROBOT Just listened, great fun!  A day after listening I was  cleaning my garage and I find a random water bottle a buddy loaned me in a pinch. Lone and behold it’s a Team robot kill yourself bottle. I should go buy a lottery ticket. I hope they have you back on in the future to re-hash some of your old articles. 

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cookie tuck
bermroller
1 year ago

@TEAMROBOT Words have multiple meanings, and their usage evolves over time. When mountain bikers talk about loam they are often referring to an experience, not to the actual soil composition. The experience is the important part of riding and "loam/loamy" has become the colloquial expression in mountain biking used to describe the conditions that provide that experience.     

The noun even has multiple official definitions depending on which context it's being used in. The chart you showed is only within a geological context. In construction the definition is: "a paste of clay and water with sand, chopped straw, etc., used in making bricks and plastering walls"

And the nail in the coffin is the landscaping, gardening, and agricultural definition: "a fertile soil of clay and sand containing HUMUS"

What's hummus? "the organic component of soil, formed by the decomposition of leaves and other plant material by soil microorganisms" which is what is what is on the forest floor, mixing in with the soil, creating what mountain bikers often correctly refer to as loam.

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Brian_Peterson
1 year ago

Ok... I just hit skidding the loam off the loam.. That was a needed laugh... But, I live in the high desert of SoCal.. Sandy kitty litter most of the time, but so much grip with all the recent rain...

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Brian_Peterson
1 year ago

Man.. you made go searching for that Pivot... So much hard since the notifications take to the last post instead of the last read post... And when I get 40 or so notifications in my email daily, I can't keep up...

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Primoz
1 year ago

It's not the last post, it's the post from the notification. Previously you opened the oldest email as every post was so a separate email. Since the update to the forum software each topic gets a single email with additional emails in the conversation for each post. Opening the thread in Gmail throws me to the first unread email in the conversation, thus directing me to the first unread post of the thread. 

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cheapondirt
1 year ago

This was like popping in at the best local bike shop, but without feeling like I'm supposed to buy anything.

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AmesEvan
1 year ago

Haven’t finished listening yet. But on the set up part and with Mikey. He is just naturally fast af but I was the nerd at the time and still am. we lived together 2011-2013 ish I helped a lot with his bike and always worked on it for him. Was always chasing him trying to figure out how the f he was so fast. Definitely have had some heated arguments with Charlie at races too years ago. All in all love this pod cast with the homies. We all got after it back in the day. Would love to join in on one of these! 

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EBlackwell
1 year ago

The people need a TEAM ROBOT podcast. Big fan of the "review old articles" concept too. 

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TheSuspensionLabNZ
1 year ago

I don't know if people bring up the spoke tension & wheel stiffness thing just to troll people like me but I'll bite-

First thing - reducing wheel stiffness is highly likely to be a benefit, and there is plenty of anecdotal evidence for it. Personally I think front wheels can be much less stiff than they are and I've run highly mismatched wheels in the past to test it and felt it rode great. 

HOWEVER, lowering spoke tension is a bad way to do that -  Charlie actually explained why when he described the feeling of a wheel falling apart. If you lower your spoke tension to the point of creating "flex" you are actually just hovering it over the point of failure. Tension changes above that point won't make much difference though, as it is literally just preload on the spokes, same as preload on your shock spring doesn't change its rate. Or another way to look at it is a spoke is just a long nut & bolt in a very flexible system. You could loosen your pivot bolts in a way that doesn't have play but would feel flexible while riding..........until rattles apart!  (PLEASE DON'T DO THAT)

Damon Rinard did the original tests on this over 20 year ago - https://www.sheldonbrown.com/rinard/wheel_index.html 

And Jobst Brandts book "The Bicycle Wheel" described how wheels don't "hang" from the top spokes, the bottom of the wheel squashes inwards then the spots either side of that push out but the other 3/4 of the wheel barely change in tension. I can't find my copy but these are pretty good reads-

https://docplayer.net/24793179-Design-and-analysis-of-a-bicycle-wheel-s…

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/242257064_Bicycle-Wheel_Spoke_…;

But anyway if people are actually interested in this, its 2023 and you can measure these things without too much difficulty.........

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TEAMROBOT
1 year ago

Dude, Jobst Brandt's "The Bicycle Wheel" has been on my want-to-read list for a super long time and you're reminding me to finally read it. Thanks for the detailed response, and all of those facts are awesome! Looking forward to investigating all those links and chasing down the internet wormhole. Nerds unite.

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TheSuspensionLabNZ
1 year ago

Wicked! Theres not decent technical books about bikes out there but that one is a good resource (if a little dated). The other good read is the RaceTech Suspension bible, if you haven't already had it suggested its one of my favourites for a broad coverage of suspension fundamentals!

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Primoz
1 year ago

If you want to get into the nitty gritty, theoretical background of the stuff, there's also The Shock Absorber Handbook and Suspension Geometry and Computation, both by John C. Dixon. While the shock absorber edition can be easily applied to bikes, most of the suspension geometry book deals with specifics of cars and the resulting issues having 4 wheels brings with it. Plus covering the myriad of 3D suspension layouts used in cars. But there are many takeaways in it too, a lot of the calculations of the forces and leverage ratios is dumbed down to 2D at first, which makes it bike applicable at the end of the day.

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Ride2day
1 year ago

Outstandingly fun listen. Please, schedule more of these, with this same crew. 

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kcy4130
1 year ago

I was really expecting this just to be him screaming "Loam (/lōm/): a soil with roughly equal proportions of sand, silt, and clay!" over and over in an increasingly high pitched voice. Sorta disappointed. Only joking, Charlie's entertaining, definitely could be a regular on these if he's into it. 

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mitch.angus
1 year ago

This got so much deeper than I was expecting... And I loved it! The Loam Chart really brought it back to Geology 101, also known as "Rocks For Jocks" 

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Big Dos
1 year ago

We the people would love a regular TEAM ROBOT podcast. Rambling at its finest 

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StudBeefpile
1 year ago

I really hope the "Pivot" is just someone's bike they hacked together in a shed and slapped a sticker on the top tube to f with everyone. 

I'm also still waiting on "My favorite loamer is dirt merchant" sticker. 

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Primoz
1 year ago

Charlie: "I used to be fast, now I'm just a guy."

Liar. Some of us have seen enough of your riding to know that!

Re forum built bike, MTB-News.de did that, the angles and dimensions were crowd sourced (polls, essentially what people would prefer) and Alutech made it. Sadly the content is in German.
https://www.mtb-news.de/news/category/icb/

Regarding F1, it's a marketing exercise. It has zero connection with the real world. I've mentioned this before, the bike world F1 stuff is iron man bikes (not constrained by the UCI), DH bikes are somewhere along WRC (a mix of Rally1, 2 and 3 specifications) and touring (GT4 most likely given their similarity to production cars) cars - similar to the stuff most people buy, but not quite.

One piece Alu stems? Would require welding. Would require a rethink of the materials (bars can now be made out of 7075, stems are made from machining/forging friendly alloys, etc.), besides welding also heat treating, the tolerances would probably be a PITA, etc. To be honest I don't see it happening. It's a bit different with carbon, the gains aren't really there with Al.

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alloutprodux
1 year ago

"Don't let yourself get attached to anything you are not willing to walk out on in 30 seconds flat if you feel the heat around the corner."

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