FlashBazbo

Perhaps, but how many more satisfied customers and how many more hundreds of $millions would Sony have made if they hadn't gotten greedy and tried to force a proprietary format on all their customers. (Maybe somebody will open a shop specializing in BetaMax, BBright, and other proprietary technologies -- catering to the truly ticked off former customers of formerly-dominant companies.)

kwakster928

Really? $2800 for 2011 R3? Where at?

Velo Gator

Hahahahahahaha.

fatallightning

the headtube changes are on a slope. the smaller sizes see almost no change, the bigger the frame size, the more the headtube gain. if it's really that bad, get a -17 stem. i don't think i've seen anyone running zero spacers on any cervelo coming through my shop. you can swap the cone spacer for a normal cap as well.

as for bbright, i think it makes sense, but too many standards isn't good. axle diameter isn't the only designator for stiffness, the further apart you can get the bearings, the stiffer. which is where bbright makes sense.

v70cat

I think Cervelo is making cutting edge bikes.

nthach

So what happens if your BBright bottom bracket bearings are shot? Are you held at the mercy of Cervelo and SRAM/Campy/Shimano for a "proprietary" shell/spindle assembly or BBright uses similar bearings as BB30 and its 6000-series sealed bearings which are available from NTN/Koyo/Nachi/SKF/a certain German bearing company which is also a slur?

v70cat

How often has that happen?

If you can afford a Cervelo you can't pay a little extra (if any) to replace a bearing?

patentcad

Fixed.

Garfield Cat

Here's a link that explains the BBright

https://www.bbright.net/technology.aspx

v70cat

Bike companies are in business to make money and the way to beat the pack is to make a better bike.

fatallightning

i believe they use standard bb30 bearings, just further apart. i haven't read the white paper.

FlashBazbo

Yep, you get the performance benefits of an external BB coupled with the inconvenience of press-in bearings. And you get the assymetrical seat tube like Specialized has had for several years. Should be a decent performer. (But will anyone really be able to tell the difference?)

bostongarden

I'm surprised that they did not go with a 36-38mm axle diameter -- which is probably the max that one would want to go with carbon fiber. Maybe they are building in room for improvement down the road. In any event, this bike will absolutely be the best one out there.

v70cat

Just think it is a real 2011 model change/improvement. The other major brands seem to change paint schemes and not much else. The whole concept of the R5 is great they are working on taking carbon bike to a new level. Do you know that the owners respond to questions on the Cervelo Forum, a lot more real and personnel than a Giant firm like Giant, Trek and the like.

merlinextraligh

Sony's mistake wasn't trying to force a proprietary format. There were 2 competing formats Beta by Sony, and VHS by JVC. Both were proprietary.

Sony's mistake was refusing to license Beta, while JVC aggressively licensed VHS. So when consumers went in the store there were multiple VHS brands and one Beta brand, which led consumers to conclude VHS was the horse to back.

That, combined with a recording time advantage in the vey early days which gave VHS an early lead, sealed Beta's fate.

Sony

Garfield Cat

Asymmetrical has been around but mostly in the mountain bike frames. This is what I consider a major step in the road bike frames. The chain stays are asymmetrical. The seat tube is bigger, more rigid. All this results in the use of the BBright configuration. Their white paper really explains what's going on.

Eclectus

Cervelo is an engineer-owned and run company. That's different from bike-rider founded companies and bike-parts trader companies, who hired engineers. Cervelo was founded by aerospace engineers. Then they went to Cali and hired other aerospace engineers to really get into what optimizes performance characteristics.

A lot of great bikeshops sell Cervelo. I went to my LBS to test-demo a Specialized Roubaix Expert, $35 for two days. (I am an old, overweight fart, but I know quality.) It was a typical windy Kansas day. It was a decent ride, but I brought it back after 2 hours, I have to think about this purchase. The owner said, "Why don't you try this RS, no charge, but bring it back before we close." A loop around the parking lot said, "This is niice." So I took it 30 miles. "THIS BIKE WAS MADE FOR ME." Not everybody experiences this, but a pretty good number of test-riding buyers do. It just happens. It's , "Well this is a grand more than I was looking to spend, but THIS BIKE WAS MADE FOR ME." I know it wasn't custom-designed for me, but it just felt like it was.

If there are "chi chi brand buyers" who buy a Cervelo for "bling", if it's not that good a bike for them, that's sad. Cervelo is only good for people who ride it and and feel "This bike was made FOR ME." If it happens to you, buy it. I've ridden mine 8000 mi in the last 15 months. I would have gone farther, but I had to switch to my old Spec Stumpy in ice and snow.

You look at engineer-founded companies, even in apparel like Assos, GBW, De Soto, and you realize they make really nice stuff.

FlashBazbo

I think there's a bit too much KoolAid being sipped here. Cervelo makes fine bikes, no doubt. But the education of their founders has little to do with it. All bike companies have engineers. Some are better than others. And sometimes, they "engineer" a change purely for the marketing impact the change will have -- not quite change for the sake of change, but deadly close to it.

Cervelo is doing a Specialized Roubaix-style seat tube -- good idea, but not terribly original. They are doing BB30 spaced like an external bearing crank -- again, good idea, but not earth shattering. Is it more than a cosmetic model-year change? Define "cosmetic." 2010 Cervelos were great bikes. 2011 Cervelos will be great bikes. I doubt anyone in a blind test will be able to quantify a performance difference between the two. It's more than paint but will it really matter, except in the ego of the buyer and in the amount of money it can extract from shoppers? It could easily be argued that this is a cosmetic model-year change purely for marketing purposes.

v70cat

It is not Kool Aid it is better engineering that has already trickled down to normal bikes. Typical Bike Forum you are called a shill or drink Kool Aid

Please read this https://www.competitivecyclist.com/ro...r5ca-8030.html

Originally referred to as "Project California", the frameset now known as the Cervélo R5ca is laid up by hand then molded at Cervélo's test lab in California. In some respects, this is the old way of doing things, where the frame is built by the designer. The 21st-century twist is that the designers are a team of engineers and the framebuilding consists of using the latest space-age technology and techniques to turn some 350 pre-preg carbon fiber sheets into frame gold.
The result is a frame that's ridiculously light (700g claimed weight for size 56cm) yet ridiculously stiff (22-39% stiffer depending on the area of the frame compared to the baseline of the R3) and more than strong enough to handle racing on pavé (higher impact resistance) and should fit just about everybody well (new sizing). As you know, such a boast means nothing if the bike doesn't ride well and isn't durable enough to stand up to the rigors of racing. So we'll point out that this frame was put through its paces by the Cervélo Test Team, first in training and then at the 2010 Tour of California. Think of it as light enough for Carlos Sastre and stiff enough for Thor Hushovd and comfortable enough for Heinrich Haussler to ride his in an all-day solo breakaway and fits all equally well. The one difference is that these guys need to race with solid steel rods inserted into the seat tube to meet the UCI minimum weight requirements, so the design advances which save weight aren’t for them. Since you’re not riding the ProTour, you don't have to suffer that fate. Though the R5ca is designed to perform for them, it's intended to be ridden by you.
In order to make "Project California" a reality, Cervélo engaged an impressive braintrust. Leading the effort is Don Guichard, their director of technology and manufacturing. He's been working in composites for over 20 years, including a stint developing the GT Superbike II for the 1996 US Olympic Team and several other rocket scientist types who ride and love bicycles. That's one end of the braintrust; they work at the Project California facility. Making communication between the engineers at Project California and the Cervélo Test team happen is Damon Rinard, Cervélo's race engineer. He's also a bike geek extraordinaire, who before hooking up with Cervélo, was working in the aviation industry. The other is the Cervélo Test Team, which first gets the bikes for training and evaluation, and when that's successful, they get them for racing and evaluation, for a feedback loop that is second to none. When the loop is all in agreement, Cervélo knows they have a great product.
Even though Cervélo uses molds for the frames, they broke the mold with the work that led up to the creation of the R5ca. There are plenty of computer modeling programs that inform bike design, but Cervélo decided to toss out old assumptions. For starters, they put strain gauges on a bike and rode it to see if they could learn more. Among other things, they found that there are much higher bending loads on the seat tube than is commonly assumed (they found that loads from a seated rider are more significant than standard frame torsion tests postulate). But that's just one of many valuable results. Possibly most importantly, they used the data gathered from their strain gauge bike to create more realistic tests to push any frame design up against, which resulted in new lay-up designs and creating more advanced tools to help make that lay-up a reality.
Project California has also resulted in a new kind of mold machining of frames. This results in Cervélo being able to fabricate more complex molds that can produce a more precise frame that needs less finish work. The simplicity here means less sanding of the frame that can result in a more reliable, stronger frame thanks to reducing the possibility of structural layers getting sanded off in the finishing process.
And for those who worry that carbon-fiber frames are great for riding but a tad delicate when crashed, the R5ca will surprise here as well. The frame exceeds European safety standards by a minimum of 20 percent. It also beats front-end impact standards by 150%. In terms of the fatigue life of the bottom bracket, Cervélo has designed the R5ca to exceed the fatigue baseline of their older designs by 150%. They do this by mixing plies of lower-modulus carbon-fiber with plies of higher-modulus carbon-fiber. High-modulus carbon-fiber makes for better copy, but the stuff is brittle, so mixing plies is the smart way to make the frame stronger.
Design and production details, that's like getting obsessed over engine internals, only the obsessive dig on it. Regardless of who you are, you should pay attention to the results of this work. For example, the seat and down tubes look off-center and the water bottle bolts look like they're mis-aligned. They're not. What you're seeing is a result of Cervélo optimizing the seat and down tubes to better resist bending forces. Likewise, the left side of the bottom bracket shell and the start of the left chain stay look larger and thicker than the right. It is. Since the right side of the bottom bracket and the right chainstay is limited by the drivetrain, Cervélo explored making the frame stiffer by making the left side of the frame larger. It worked. They also found that by placing very thin walls inside the frame tubes by the bottom bracket shell, walls called bulkheads, they could further stiffen the bottom bracket without adding weight. These design improvements wouldn't be possible without even more design work, particularly the new bottom bracket they've debuted with the R5ca, BBright. Basically, it's very similar to the Pressfit 30 standard and uses the Pressfit 30 oversize bearings on either side of the bottom bracket shell, but they found that if they extended the shell on the left by 11mm and changed the dimensions of the left crankarm a bit, the result is a stiffer, stronger, smoother-running bottom bracket with no increase in q-factor. They've also gotten their team component suppliers, SRAM and Rotor, behind this, as well as FSA and Zipp, all with dedicated cranks. Campagnolo supports it with an adapter for their Ultra-Torque cranks and the system also works with Shimano.
Rather than having to worry about finding cranks to meet this new standard, Cervélo supplies a set of BBright Rotor 3D 30 cranks and BBright bottom bracket with the R5ca frame and fork. They're very similar to the standard 3D cranks. The Trinity drilling is done from the spindle end of the crankarms and removes material to save weight, yet the design leaves the cranks plenty stiff. The 30mm hollow alloy spindle is permanently affixed to the left crankarm. The right crankarm has a splined interface and is affixed and removed by a self-extracting 8mm bolt. Sitting between the left arm and the BBright shell is a locking adjustment ring, very similar to what you find on Shimano XTR cranks, which you use to adjust the bearing preload once the cranks are properly torqued into place. Overall, the Rotor 3D 30 system saves you 30g over the "standard" 3D road crankset and bottom bracket. The crank is supplied with 53/39 round Rotor rings. However, if your preference is for 50/34 and/or Rotor's elliptical Q-rings, we're happy to make that change at no cost.
Cervélo doesn't include a seatpost with the R5ca frame, but they designed the frame to work with a 27.2mm zero-setback post like the team-issue 3T Doric LTD seatpost. And this brings up another interesting advance Cervélo has initiated with Project California; they've slackened the seat tube angle slightly. While they certainly did lots of measuring of people and positions to come to this conclusion, they're advancing a theory that Keith Bontrager put forth years ago; seat angles don't matter so long as the cyclist can get in the right position relative to the bottom bracket. They expect just about everyone to fit this frame with a zero-setback post as they found that a 73-degree seat angle with a setback (or offset) post works for most everybody and simplifying the post to a zero-setback is another way to reduce system weight.
In rethinking the bike, Project California also addressed the fork and head tube juncture. While they found that the 1-1/8" diameter lower bearing is not quite stiff enough for the materials they're using, they also found that the 1.5" diameter lower is actually too stiff and transmits too much force to the frame, so they determined that 1-3/8" was the diameter that worked best with the needs of the frame and rider. So they chose the Cane Creek AER headset lower race, with a 1-3/8" lower bearing for the bottom half of the headset. To further reduce weight, the fork crown race is molded into the fork. For the upper race of the headset, they're forgoing a headset race entirely; in its stead, they've got a Teflon bushing between the head and steerer tubes. This kind of upper race is making inroads in frame design, and Cervélo is supporting it completely; they're stocking the bushings.
The fork is not built in-house. It's a Cervélo-designed FK 30 SL fork with carbon-fiber tips. The fork is designed to be laterally stiffer and more vertically compliant than the current team-standard 3T Funda Team carbon-fiber fork.
With Project California, Cervélo also decided to revisit frame-sizing conventions. Yes, describing a frame size by the length of the seat tube is fast-disappearing. But as many are finding out, using the virtual top tube length as the sizing convention also has limitations; it doesn't take into effect head tube height, which can affect position in a profound way. Cervélo has taken a good look at the sizing conventions and size runs of their older designs as well as some frames from other manufacturers to develop a more consistent sizing configuration. With the R5ca and other frames going forward, they want to use a measuring convention called "stack and reach." Stack is the distance from the centerline of the bottom bracket drawn vertically to the top of the centerline of the head tube. Reach is the horizontal distance drawn at a right angle from that line to the center of the head tube. Starting from the smallest size and working larger, each frame has a taller stack and longer reach, and these dimensions will progress in a linear fashion through the size run. This might seem elementary, but many manufacturers don't shorten the reach on their smallest sizes, they just steepen the seat tube angle. One result of this is that the R5ca won't have any women's-specific frames; this new sizing eliminates the need. Another is that people with long or short torsos relative to their height will have an easier time sizing. Another is that you'll have an easier time comparing one frame of one maker to another.
They also looked at all the little things on the frame and found ways to improve just about all of them. The dropouts are carbon fiber, with a newly-designed replaceable aluminum derailleur hanger that attaches via bolts from the inside of the right dropout, passing through the dropout stub and threads into the hanger itself. This results in a lighter dropout as well as a stronger grip on the hanger, and it's easier to replace. The front derailleur mounts on an aluminum mount that is bonded and riveted. The cable stops are carbon fiber and molded to the frame rather than riveted. The bottom bracket redesign gave Cervélo a reason to design their own bottom bracket cable guides for smother cable routing. Atop the seat tube is Cervélo's own aluminum seatpost collar with a titanium bolt and aluminum nut that goes over a unique three-slotted opening that eliminates the dreaded carbon-fiber seat post slip by evenly increasing pressure around the seat post rather than by pinching it in one spot.

FlashBazbo

That's EXACTLY what I'm talking about, v70cat. You DO realize that's a marketing piece, don't you? (Apparently not.)

"KoolAid", in BF parlance, refers to the tendency of some to accept marketing / promotional pieces as objective, scientific truth. It's ADVERTISING, for crying out loud! They're trying to sell you something -- and they're using the same buzzwords year after year. Even their writers (and especially their lawyers) would tell you that it is puffery -- not intended to be taken as literally true. Sadly, some on the BF act as baby birds, beaks wide open, eyes shut tightly, willing to guzzle whatever they feed them. (see also, "Bob Jones" or "KoolAid")

I have read the marketing piece. It is well done. But I'm not foolish enough to think that its claims are all real.

v70cat

You don't get, it the bike is supper light and is another step forward in the building/design of carbon bikes. Sure it is a marketing piece but it is factual. My guess is that you are still riding steel and don't trust that new newfangled carbon.

bostongarden

$7300 more value? I have no horse in what anyone buys. Value is in the eye of the beholder. $9800 vs (now) $2500 on the frameset is quite a differential.

FlashBazbo

You're not paying attention.

Garfield Cat

What do you think the piece is claiming and what do you think is not "real"?

rollin

"...the bottom bracket stiffness of the crank and the frame together is about double what it was before and of course already before it was strong enough and stiff enough for all the sprinters and everybody else we have on the team..."

So worth doing then...

I'll be burning my non b b right (not b bright) frame tomorrow.