Originally Posted by
kunsunoke
The article on the Bruce Gordon frames makes prominent mention of the gauges of tubing used and about the differences in the tubing's metallurgy. Prestige is heat-treated, which changes all properties pretty dramatically (including modulus of elasticity).
Wonder if they adjusted their tire pressures at all? The article didn't mention that, but it seems like a reasonable way to compensate for the differences in stiffness, particularly for the front forks.
This is an often repeated misperception. Heat treating increases tensile strength and yield strength, but Young's Modulus (a.k.a. modulus of elasticity) is virtually the same for all steels: ~200 GPa. This is true from plain carbon steels to high strength stainless steels, whether in the annealed state or heat treated.
The only ways to make a steel tube stiffer is to increase wall thickness or increase diameter. Heat treated steel tubes have higher strength, and therefore may be drawn thinner, making the tubes lighter, but to increase stiffness the wall thickness and/or diameter have to be increased. That's why we have OS tubing.
Originally Posted by
DiabloScott
Right, TSX was essentially SLX but the rifling went end to end. Not that that made it any better - but they could price them even higher!
Correct, although because of the end-to-end helical reinforcements it could be argued that the increased wall thickness where the reinforcements are do, in fact, increase stiffness to some extent.
SL (no helical reinforcements except in the steerer tube):
SLX (helical reinforcements only in the butts; it's difficult to imagine reinforcements only in the butts will improve stiffness):
TSX (helical reinforcements from one end of the tube to the other. This will improve stiffness somewhat):
