Specialized Bicycles podcast

I have mentioned Specialized a few times in this blog, so it is probably no surprise to most of you that I am a fan of their products. I currently ride a Specialized S-works E5 road bike (pictured here) and I own several other products from the company. I refuse to part with my old Sub-6 and Piranha helmets even though the former one is crumbling to pieces at this point. Why do I like Specialized? Well, I remember them as one of the first companies in the bike industry to really embrace design. I recall seeing articles in bike magazines in the early nineties about the design department at Specialized. No one else at the time was creating crazy concept bikes for Interbike, so the pictures that accompanied those articles really drew me in. Today, the influence of good design can be seen throughout the bike industry, but Specialized continues to make some of the best looking products around. I am glad to see them reaping the benefit of that early focus on product design.

OK, I’ve established that I like Specialized’s design, but somehow I missed the three podcasts that featured Robert Egger of the Industrial Design group in October of this year (I didn’t subscribe to the Specialized podcast though iTunes until yesterday, so I guess I have missed a lot of good content). To anyone reading this blog, I recommend listening to those three industrial design podcasts at a minimum. Several of the others that can be found on the website are worth a listen as well. I’m catching up on them as I can.

While I am posting, I want to mention one other thing. This may be a little off topic, but Athlete Focus is a new website that is worth checking out. It is still in Beta and won’t be officially launched until Spring, but I suggest you sign up early if you are interested in bicycle racing. Athlete Focus will be kind of a social networking site that is geared toward action sports fanatics. It will allow you to look for sponsors, find training partners, find great deals, etc. There is not a lot of content in my profile yet, but you can check it out right here (my user ID is JamesT). Take a look at the site and let me know when you create your own profile.

Posted

December 27, 2006

James

Tags:

Athlete Focus, design, podcast, Robert Egger, Specialized

Comments

6 responses to “Specialized Bicycles podcast”

gwadzilla

December 27, 2006

I have a specialized cross bike that has a nice flat section on the top tube for shouldering the bike

over all it is a pretty nice bike

pretty

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Fritz

December 28, 2006

The LBS in my town is a Spesh shop so I’ll probably be buying more of their products. I already bought the ’07 Roubaix last week — nice bike.

Athlete Focus looks pretty good. I’m *so* glad they’re not calling it ‘MyFitness.com’ like so many of the other MySpace copycats are doing.

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Edu&Nano

January 5, 2007

I´m a fan of Specialized products to; I still´ve a 92 Stumjumper Comp (Tange Prestige Direct Drive) and the frame is still perfect. I crack the fork but the frame is still ok. I cannot say the same thing of my 95 Trek 990.

I think they are the more reliable bicycles on big size manufacturers, aren´t they?

Reply
James

January 5, 2007

Thanks for the comments guys.

Edu&Nano, I don’t know about your reliability question. I love my Specialized road bike and have not had any problems at all with it, but I have seen broken frames from most every manufacturer. For the record, I also own a Trek cross bike that I ride pretty hard without any problems. I think that both of those companies and many others invest heavily in engineering to make their products as safe as possible.

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Edu&Nano

January 8, 2007

I know all the manufactures spend a lot of money on engineering, but i think there are some phyloshopy differents. Trek is a bussines that sells bykes. Specd. sells bikes and they make bussines with it. Two examples to ilustrate this

My 990 Trek had a crack (fatal one) between the Headset pipe and the diagonal tube, there are a reiforcement there. The crack (fatigue one) was in the HAT (Heat Affected Zone) quite probably due to a hydrogen dispersión in the metal base( I´m not sure if this is the correct name in English. This drives to a weakness by hidrogen. The cause of this is probably the welding sequence (reinforcement), the heat dispersion of the welding or many but I bet for one these ones. This could be avoid with a PWHT (Post-Welding Heat T) to reduce the welding stresses and the hydrogen dispersion. That was a manufacturer mistake, I think.

My 92 Stumjump. has a terrible crash on the top tube, the zone is not critical, mid part, and the top tube loss is rounded shape but there is no rest of fatigue crack yet, ( 10 years or so)

As a resume Specialized are more worried on his image of reliability an made quality products, than Trek. They are more worried on the marketing an brand image, than engineering and research

Am i wrong?

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Eurobike and nouveau penny-farthings | Bicycle Design

February 28, 2010

[…] I also remember this carbon fiber high-wheeler concept bike that Specialized industrial designer Robert Egger did many years ago (early 90s maybe?). Does anyone know of any others? I am pretty sure that I have […]

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