Tag Archives: steel bikes

Thinking Ahead: Our Manufacturing Evolution

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Being a small builder has it’s challenges. Our goal has always been building a bike that fits well and meets all the customer’s performance needs. Sounds simple enough, but a lot goes into it. We couldn’t do it without a manufacturing system that’s both efficient and versatile. It’s the core reason why we can offer a bike built just for each customer that’s exactly what they’re looking for. Today I’m talking about some of the steps we’ve taken to make that goal possible in today’s bicycle world.

In 2005, we radically redesigned our manufacturing process. We went from a traditional batch method of bike building to a true “one at a time” custom building process. We did it in such a way that both saved time and made our system almost infinitely flexible. How is that working out almost 15 years later? Turns out it’s more relevant than ever.

Batch building is a traditional method in the bike industry

The traditional method for building bikes involved making batches of frames that were all the same. This is still done on a large scale by the major (and some less major) manufacturers. A set of sizes are designed and a number of each size is made depending on how many the maker thinks they can sell. This is great if you ride a medium size and your body is of medium proportions. There’s always a bike for you in the world. This is less great if you need a size that’s unusual or a size that’s in between the common sizes. It’s also a problem if you want special features not included on the production model, or specific performance characteristics from the frame. That’s where builders like R+E come in handy.

In the beginning (the mid 70’s) we would also build batches of bikes in order to save time in the frame shop. Bikes were built using lugs, which limited the frame design somewhat so there wasn’t as much variance between frames like you see in modern bikes. A road bike was a road bike. A touring bike was also pretty much a road bike, just slightly different. Mountain bikes hadn’t happened yet. Batches made a lot of sense under these conditions. This didn’t change much until the late 1980’s.

The 80’s brought us a plethora of new technologies that reshaped bike design. Tig welding freed us from the strict design needs of lugs. New tubing choices in steel, titanium, and very early carbon fiber (then called graphite) became more available. The radical design needs of mountain bikes started to redefine what a bike could (or should) look like. Bikes started to become much more differentiated as we moved into the 90’s. Road bikes, touring bikes, and mountain bikes started to look very different from one another.

As a custom builder, we also started varying our designs. Rodriguez developed the Stellar, one of the first bikes designed specifically for women. It wasn’t just a bike with a lowered top tube, but one that took into account women’s smaller stature and fit needs. Tig welding and new mitering tools allowed us to build bikes with new geometries that didn’t have to make as many compromises for smaller riders. However, we still did a limited number of production sizes and built bikes in batches whenever possible. Our milling machine had to be set up from fresh for each new process so doing multiples made sense

By the early 2000’s the bikes we were building had become more individually specialized than ever before. Each model had a very different set of requirements and we had expanded our sizing range to better accommodate our customers. Batching became more difficult and less valuable. Our framebuilders were losing time waiting for machines to be freed up and bikes were taking longer to finish. We knew we had to change our process.

This machine’s only job is slotting chainstays and seatstays for inserting dropouts

Starting in 2004, we made several significant changes to our production model. Instead of a couple of versatile machines doing everything, we switched to several smaller machines that did just one thing really well. Once set up, these machines virtually eliminated idle time due to machine setups and changeovers. Our framebuilders could finish a frame much more quickly without sacrificing quality. Our new tube mitering machine could miter tubes of different diameters and cut different angles much more easily as well. Our builders were suddenly able to build a standard frame from scratch in less than a day. This freed them up to build much more elaborate and complicated designs without the entire production process coming to a halt. 

This machine miters bridges for the rear triangle. It’s been doing it perfectly since 2005.

In 2019 we can see that all of these changes weren’t just beneficial, but vital to the direction bike design has taken. There are more differentiated styles of bike now than ever before, each with their own idiosyncrasies. Gravel bikes, road bikes, touring bikes, city bikes, randonneuring bikes, and mountain bikes all have different manufacturing requirements. If we need new tooling or equipment for a new feature or component, we build or buy what we need and it gets incorporated into our tool set. Being a small builder requires a high level of manufacturing versatility and we’re lucky to have started working that way as soon as we did. It’s allowed us to evolve to meet the needs of customers more easily without having to resort to lengthy wait times or compromises in quality. That’s exactly the kind of builder we want to be.

This post is an update to an article Dan wrote in 2006 about or then new process.

This article details our journey towards the perfect bike fit.

This one talks about bicycle sizing and how yours is determined.

Here Today, Gone Tomorrow?

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For something invented in the Victorian era, bicycles sure do change a lot from year to year. New materials, engineering advances, and the changing demands of riders keep the bicycle in a constantly evolving state. Economics can also play a role in this, for good or ill. Bicycle manufacturers need to sell bikes to stay in business. This can lead to some design decisions whose sole purpose is to drive future sales. This is called planned obsolescence. The idea is that the design will be obsolete within a known time frame and the manufacturer will be there to sell you a new model just in time. You see this in lots of electronic products, like cell phones or pop stars.

How do you know the difference between an improved design versus one designed to become obsolete? This can be tricky, even for those of us doing the manufacturing. Some real advances, like hydraulic disc brakes, seem here to stay and a benefit for many riders. It gets trickier when you look at bottom bracket designs, axle standards, or headsets. Of the dozens of designs out there, which one is going to stick around? Is it the right one for our customers? Should we switch now and risk pouring resources into a passing fad? Should we stick to our current design and risk falling out of step with the industry? This is the position many small builders face regularly.

Those of us at Rodriguez like to think we have a leg up on this question. After all, we’ve seen lots of designs come and go over the years. A lot of the time we can tell if something is going to be a lasting change because we can see how it’s going to play out over time. Or it’s possible that we just think we can and we’re guessing like everyone else. The truth is probably somewhere in the middle.

The advent of carbon bicycles has thrown a lot of these questions out the window. Does it matter if the design is any good if the bicycle itself is only designed to last a few years? Those of us building in steel or titanium are often expected to use the same components as carbon race bikes even if no one has any idea if the designs are going to stick around. (For example, the new T47 threaded bottom bracket design might eventually become the accepted standard for non-carbon bikes, but it’s hard to know now how that’s going to shake out until it does.) These can be difficult decisions. Some companies avoid this question for the most part by sticking with older designs and a classic aesthetic. We build a lot of high performance bikes that use state of the art components and sometimes it’s difficult to strike the balance between longevity and cutting edge. We’ve always built our bikes to last a lifetime and we don’t want that to change. It’s part of our ethos as a company and we still make the wrong choice sometimes.

When you come to Rodriguez for a bicycle, know that we’ve considered all of these decisions quite deliberately. We will try and build you a bike that meets your needs and will keep meeting them for the long haul. In a culture of disposability, we want to be the thing that stays true, year after year.

Building Tandems the Rodriguez Way

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At Rodriguez Bicycle Company, we build a lot of tandems. We’ve done it for 46 years now, and in that time we’ve learned a lot. Tandems require a different approach than single bikes. Every force put into a single bike during a ride is at least doubled, and sometimes tripled, when riding a tandem. This means every design decision has serious repercussions for ride quality as well as rider safety. In this article we are going to explain why and how we make these decisions when building a Rodriguez or Erickson tandem. We’ll take them in order of importance.

 

Fit – the most important decision

Every Rodriguez and Erickson tandem is built custom to the riders’ exact fit. Every one. This sets us apart from every other tandem manufacturer. We’ve learned that a tandem that isn’t comfortable to ride is a tandem that sits in the garage, unridden and unloved. Fitting one rider to one bike can be challenging, but fitting two riders to one bike requires the extra effort of a custom frame. This also allows us to build each tandem to perfectly suit the goals of each team of riders, whether that’s a 26 pound ultralight race tandem, or a double step-through tandem frame for an older (uh…wiser) couple that just wants to keep riding together as long as possible. We meet you where you need to be.

Fit is also the reason we rarely use a belt drive for our timing gears. We get a lot of questions about Gates timing belts for tandems these days. They work well to connect the two cranks together, but they are restrictive in one particular way: they drastically limit how long the stoker cockpit can be. A comfortable stoker is a happy stoker and forcing them into a cramped, short compartment is never a good idea. Although the timing belt looks cool, it will look less cool sitting in the garage because your stoker doesn’t enjoy riding the tandem.

We do build occasional tandems with belts if the stoker’s fit works out. If belts become available in variable lengths, and we can build without stoker comfort compromises, we will be happy to recommend them to more couples. Until then, consider what problem you’re trying to solve with a belt, if any, and whether the compromise is worth it.

The tandem above uses a belt for timing. As you can see the stoker’s handlebars end up almost directly under the captain’s saddle. The Rodriguez tandem on the bottom has a much roomier stoker cockpit, allowing for greater comfort and fit flexibility. Note the lack of stiffener tube in the top tandem as well.

 

Frame – the most permanent decision

To the untrained eye, tandem frame designs can look very similar, but to an experienced builder there are subtle yet important differences between designs. Our design choices can add complexity and time to the frame building process, but we think it’s worth it to our customers.

Designing a tandem frame is a formula that balances strength, handling, and rider comfort. The frame needs to be stiff enough to handle two riders putting all their weight and strength into it while still being compliant enough to give a smooth and comfortable ride. If a tandem is too stiff then it will be jarring to ride and therefore unridden. This is why we almost always start with steel. It provides a reliably smooth ride, fantastic strength, and can be made as light as the riders require for their needs. Desired riding characteristics can be achieved through tubing choices, tube shape, and geometry design all of which are fine tuned to the owner’s needs. These decisions build the foundation on which all the other parts rest.

One feature that almost all of our tandems have is a stiffener tube that transverses the length of the bike from the head tube to the stoker’s bottom bracket shell. (see the above image) Correctly mitering a tube to join the bottom bracket correctly is a difficult process, but one that we know is worth it. It stiffens the frame overall, but by joining the tube directly to the bottom bracket you gain a frame resistant to the twisting forces of the stoker’s pedaling and a frame much less likely to crack from stress. Our stiffener tubes are also one continuous tube, not two tubes welded into place. (see image below) Again, this is more difficult, but worth it for the strength and stiffness this method provides. A pierced tube will not flex at the captain’s seat tube the way a pieced together tube will.

Here’s an example of a junction assembled with pierced tubes. Piercing, rather than joining two separate tubes, maintains maximum strength and rigidity.

Most tandem builders have stopped using stiffener tubes in recent years. This is to save time in their build process. Time is money, after all. Some believe it makes the frame lighter, but is that true? Surprisingly, no. All the other tubes have to made stronger and heavier in this type of design so any weight savings is negated. Leaving out the stiffener tube also results in a frame this is less resistant to flexing at the stoker’s bottom bracket. The frame will be more likely to twist under load even if the other tubes are heavier because there is no triangulation. While we do offer lower priced Rodriguez tandems without stiffeners, they are not the main choice of our customers who want a high performance build. Leaving out the stiffener saves the builder money, but there is no getting around the fact that it is a performance compromise.

Fork – critical to both handling and safety

There’s no getting around how critical the fork is to tandem riders. It needs to be stiff and it needs to be strong. We have two styles of tandem forks and both are made from steel.  Unlike a single bike, where we can use aluminum or carbon fiber forks, tandems work better with traditional steel forks. We have a heavy duty fork that can handle the weight of the riders as well as a fully loaded touring setup with panniers and frame bags. We also build a lightweight steel fork for riders that want to save weight but still have a fork that they can rely on in difficult situations like sprinting and cornering under speed. Having a fork that flexes too easily, especially in regards to the steering tube, can ruin the handling of an otherwise well built tandem.

For these reasons we no longer use or recommend carbon forks in our tandems. While many carbon forks perform well on single bikes, they have proven to perform poorly on tandems. Carbon steering tubes flex more easily and are more prone to breakage than a steel steering tube. The legs of a carbon fork have the same issue and can provide a “noodly” effect even if they are built strong enough to stay intact. There are also few carbon fork manufacturers that will warranty or recommend their forks for tandem use. They know it’s not a good idea. Even so, many tandem manufacturers put these carbon forks on their tandems even though the fork maker has specifically stated ‘not for tandem use’. If the fork manufacturer says it’s not strong enough for a tandem, you should believe them.

Safety aside, the benefits of a steel fork in both handling and reliability for tandem use greatly outweigh saving a couple of ounces of static weight.

Components – fine tuning your needs

Tandem components go through a lot. Shifting gears can be especially challenging with two people applying force to the drivetrain. Stopping a tandem requires more than 3 times as much force as a single bike, thanks to the Inverse Square Law. Wheels on a tandem need to be especially strong to hold up to the forces of cornering, climbing, and descending under two adult riders and the things they carry with them. We can carefully curate a set of components for your tandem that will meet your needs and hold up for the long haul. These choices will be part of the conversation when you get a tandem from R+E. One size does not fit all and we keep this in mind when building your tandem.

Experience – the last crucial piece

All of this information and insight comes from building and riding tandems for decades. Every part of our design has been looked and revised over the years and we are confident that we are building the best tandems in the business. We build because we ride, and we don’t want to build something we wouldn’t want to ride ourselves. If you want to know more just give us a call or shoot us an email. We will be happy to have a conversation and go into as much detail as you need.

 

For more information on our history with tandems, check out the articles below:

Other articles on bicycles, tandems, and the bike industry can be found here.