What do you think of the Kona Dew?

[lordofthemark]

@mstone 65934 wrote:

I’m seeing a lot of parallels with economic forecasting already.

macro forecasters are like the ELITE among economists

[jabberwocky]

@lordofthemark 65904 wrote:

Okay, help me with this (not only WRT to the Dew, but more broadly) The bike is light and has 700CC tires. What makes it so far from a road bike? Lack of drop handle bars? The tires not being narrower than they are?

The difference is primarily geometry. Mountain bikes have more upright frame geometry that largely ignores aerodynamics, since riding off road requires a more rearward body position, the ability to stand and shift body weight forward and backward and speeds are lower so aerodynamics play less of a role. The head angle is generally slacker, which slows the steering (increases stability at speed in rough terrain) and pushes the front wheel out (helps keep center of gravity back and resists endos better). Wheelbases are longer. And then concessions to the equipment MTBers prefer (disc brakes, suspension-corrected fork geometry, clearance for wider tires, etc) as well as the increased frame/fork strength that riding rough terrain necessitates.

[ShawnoftheDread]

@consularrider 65931 wrote:

Isn’t that just a slot machine?

I would never call Dismal a slot.

[TwoWheelsDC]

@ShawnoftheDread 65938 wrote:

In my experience it starts to become an issue around 20 miles, though I’ve ridden my hybrid 50 with no real issues. And as others have stated, you can easily get some alternate hand positions with bar ends.

Yeah, 20 is what I would say, although I haven’t ridden a hybrid in a while. My wife did a century on a hybrid, but I don’t think she was particularly comfortable, with her hands/wrists being the main problem area. Bar ends help, but IMO they simply can’t adequately replicate the position you get on the hoods of drop bars. Another problem with bar ends is that, because they fit on to the ends of the top bar, they either force your hands too close together while using the top bar (if you move your grips inward to make space), or they force you to keep your hands too far apart when using them (if you fit them at the very end of the top bar).

[consularrider]

@lordofthemark 65936 wrote:

what distances are we talking about? 20 miles? 200? Seriously, while my current commute is about 6 miles each way, if the drop bar (and associated attributes) is helpful at only a bit longer than that, I really owe it to myself to test ride some road bikes. If it doesn’t really become an issue till we are talking about century rides, I don’t think I want to take up my bike shopping time with that now.

I use my hybrid or old rigid mountain bike for two 12 to 20 mile commuting rides a day. I will also use them for recreation rides up to the 50 mile range when I want the carrying capacity of my rear rack or I want to go slower because of the group I’m riding with. Over 50 miles I generally only ride the hybrid or rigid mountain bike if my road bike is in the LBS for work, the trail surface is too rough, or I want the fenders or studded tires. That said, I did 90 miles for the 50 States Ride on my rigid mountain bike this year. Also, I have dispensed with bar ends since I found I never used them.

[ShawnoftheDread]

@TwoWheelsDC 65942 wrote:

Yeah, 20 is what I would say, although I haven’t ridden a hybrid in a while. My wife did a century on a hybrid, but I don’t think she was particularly comfortable, with her hands/wrists being the main problem area. Bar ends help, but IMO they simply can’t adequately replicate the position you get on the hoods of drop bars. Another problem with bar ends is that, because they fit on to the ends of the top bar, they either force your hands too close together while using the top bar (if you move your grips inward to make space), or they force you to keep your hands too far apart when using them (if you fit them at the very end of the top bar).

Does anyone ever put bar ends pointing downward to use as drops? How about inboard of the grips?

[jabberwocky]

@lordofthemark 65936 wrote:

what distances are we talking about? 20 miles? 200? Seriously, while my current commute is about 6 miles each way, if the drop bar (and associated attributes) is helpful at only a bit longer than that, I really owe it to myself to test ride some road bikes. If it doesn’t really become an issue till we are talking about century rides, I don’t think I want to take up my bike shopping time with that now.

It really depends in your personal fitness and comfort level. I started commuting by converting my old hardtail MTB to road use with a longer stem and slick tires. Once I made the switch to a road bike I never looked back though. The difference isn’t massive, but its plainly noticeable.

The answer is that there will always be a difference between a bike with upright MTB-ish geometry and a more aero road bike. For the same effort, you’ll always be able to go faster and further on a road bike. How much of a difference there is depends on the particulars the two bikes, and whether the difference actually matters is entirely up to you.

[DismalScientist]

I don’t think reliability enters into the tradeoff at all. The basic question is riding position. An upright position allows better visibility, sightlines and maneuverability, while a more aggressive position allows better aerodynamics. The better aerodynamics will lead to more comfort on longer rides. Which position is more comfortable is a matter of personal preference to some degree. For example, I find road bikes with drop bars to be perfectly comfortable at any distance and I can see traffic perfectly fine. Therefore, I personally wouldn’t buy a non-road bike (except for specialty uses like a mountain bike for snow and trails). You have stated a preference for a flat bar and this is how I based my suggestions. I think at some time you stated that you would primarily ride on paved surfaces, so I see no advantages to bikes with mountain bike characteristics and would concentrate my search to hybrids on the road bike side of the spectrum of hybrids.

The price of any type of bike will depend on the value of the frame, wheels and components. For an equivalent level of these, pricing will be similar regardless of whether the bike is a hybrid, flat bar road bike or traditional road bike. Prices are higher for lower weight of the frame, wheels and components. Wheels are more expensive all else equal if they are stronger. I think you will find a consensus here that if you to spend more money concentrate on the wheels first, then the frame and last components. Cheaper components are likely perfectly functional.

The things that most affect speed are aerodynamics of the rider, weight and stiffness of the materials. Lower weight is always good, all else equal. Stiffer wheels and frames will be more responsive but carry a harsher ride. Lastly, I would conjecture that higher pressure and narrower tires would be faster (and offer a harsher ride) but mstone will disagree.

[vvill]

@lordofthemark 65935 wrote:

What Im trying to get a handle on (pardon) is the relation of the bike specs to the speed attribute, in particular. I thought the major drivers were weight, aerodynamics from rider position, and tire size and width. Some above have also introduced efficiency related to frame shape, which is about more than simply the flatness of the handle bars, IIUC.

mstone touched on this when he mentioned the top tube – the actual physical position/design/shape of the frame will affect the feel of the bike. Even if you somehow had say, a 29er MTB and a road bike with exactly the same geometry specifications in terms of common measurements, they would not feel the same.

FWIW I went from riding 26″ rigids/hardtails to a flat-bar hybrid/road bike in 2005, and then a drop-bar road bike in 2011. I definitely noticed the difference in efficiency both times.

@ShawnoftheDread 65944 wrote:

Does anyone ever put bar ends pointing downward to use as drops? How about inboard of the grips?

Yep and yep. I had my beater MTB set up like this for some time; it was a frankenbike. I even had a set of brake lever extenders that let me brake from the upside down bar ends.

[lordofthemark]

@jabberwocky 65946 wrote:

It really depends in your personal fitness

as in A. if you’re really fit, you will overcome the things on a hybrid that make you go slower, and you will be fast anyway or B. If you aren’t going that fast to begin with, the aerodynamics won’t make that much of a difference (days with major headwinds excepted)? C. something else ?

[DismalScientist]

If you want to live by Rule #5, the hell with aerodynamics.:rolleyes:

[jabberwocky]

@lordofthemark 65952 wrote:

as in A. if you’re really fit, you will overcome the things on a hybrid that make you go slower, and you will be fast anyway or B. If you aren’t going that fast to begin with, the aerodynamics won’t make that much of a difference (days with major headwinds excepted)? C. something else ?

Both A and B. Obviously, the fitter you are, the easier it is to overcome poorer aerodynamics. And aerodynamic forces increase with the square of the speed, so its far less an issue at slower speed.

But with the same rider, a road bike with a nice aero road position is always going to be faster and more efficient.

[mstone]

@lordofthemark 65936 wrote:

what distances are we talking about? 20 miles? 200? Seriously, while my current commute is about 6 miles each way, if the drop bar (and associated attributes) is helpful at only a bit longer than that, I really owe it to myself to test ride some road bikes. If it doesn’t really become an issue till we are talking about century rides, I don’t think I want to take up my bike shopping time with that now.

I think that’s less a matter of distance than of time; I’d probably start to care around an hour in one position on the bike. So for 6 miles, I could tolerate a beach cruiser. MTBers can go for longer, but they’re typically doing a lot of standing up/sitting down/starting/stopping/etc rather than remaining in a fairly constant position as is normal on the road.

@lordofthemark 65935 wrote:

My sense is that the tradeoff among road bikes, road leaning hybrids, and MTB leaning hybrids (have I got that right?) is that the as you in the direction of the road bike you get higher speed, and more comfort on longer rides (cause of differences in positioning) while giving up reliability, and giving up “commuter comfort” (esp the greater visibility one gets in an upright posture). There are also stiffness of ride issues, but Im not sure I grok those.

What Im trying to get a handle on (pardon) is the relation of the bike specs to the speed attribute, in particular. I thought the major drivers were weight, aerodynamics from rider position, and tire size and width. Some above have also introduced efficiency related to frame shape, which is about more than simply the flatness of the handle bars, IIUC.

The stiffness/efficiency basically comes down to whether the bike bends when you’re pushing hard on it. Any effort that goes into bending the bike comes out of what you’re applying to the wheels. (This includes effort that goes into compressing any suspension elements, which is one of the reasons–weight being the other–I generally recommend avoiding suspension if you’re not actually off-road.) You need to be consistently remaining above 15MPH before any of this really matters. If you’re strong enough you can get almost any bike going that fast, but if that’s the kind of riding you’re doing it’ll be more efficient and you’ll be able to go longer with a bike designed for that kind of use. I don’t think reliability is a necessary element of the trade off, unless you’re using a bike outside its design parameters (e.g., jumping a road bike off a boulder).

@DismalScientist 65947 wrote:

Which position is more comfortable is a matter of personal preference to some degree.[/quote]

It’s also a matter of conditioning. For short & infrequent rides the upright position is comfortable because it’s basically like sitting on a chair. It also means you’re putting a lot of weight on your butt and relatively less on your hands and feet. Moving more weight onto the hands and feet while in a hunched over position is pretty uncomfortable if your arms & legs aren’t accustomed to it, but is for many people more comfortable than putting all their weight on the butt for hours on end. Physiology also plays a role, and some people aren’t comfortable at all in one or the other position (or both, and for those people we have ‘bents )

Quote:

The price of any type of bike will depend on the value of the frame, wheels and components. For an equivalent level of these, pricing will be similar regardless of whether the bike is a hybrid, flat bar road bike or traditional road bike.

Brifters are going to be more expensive than a thumb shift & lever at the same level of quality–there are just more parts. At the lowest end of road bikes you can find bar end or stem/downtube shifters, but they don’t have the same functionality compared to brifters as a bottom end flat bar shifter compared to a higher end model. For some uses that’s mostly immaterial, but for commuting I’d rather keep my hands on the bars than let go to shift. Now if you go fixed or single speed, then you can invent any kind of crazy cockpit with no price or functionality constraints (beyond the fact that you forgot to add gears )

Quote:

Prices are higher for lower weight of the frame, wheels and components. Wheels are more expensive all else equal if they are stronger. I think you will find a consensus here that if you to spend more money concentrate on the wheels first, then the frame and last components. Cheaper components are likely perfectly functional.

The things that most affect speed are aerodynamics of the rider, weight and stiffness of the materials. Lower weight is always good, all else equal. Stiffer wheels and frames will be more responsive but carry a harsher ride. Lastly, I would conjecture that higher pressure and narrower tires would be faster (and offer a harsher ride) but mstone will disagree.

I’d definitely put wheels at the top. After tires. Which come after the saddle. 😎

Higher pressure tires will be faster on a track, and progressively slower the worse the surface is. I don’t ride on track. There’s a crossover point where aerodynamics (narrower tires having less wind resistance) matters more than rolling resistance, but you need to be going fairly fast before that’s noticeable. If you’re light enough you can have both a low pressure and a narrow tire, but I’m not that small. People tend to get confused because they conflate the fact that the narrow tire has aerodynamic advantages with the fact that you must have a higher pressure in the narrower tire. (I’d need close to 200PSI to avoid pinch flats on a 20mm tire.) If I have a tire that’s wide enough that I can actually use it over a wide range of pressures, I find that a high pressure doesn’t actually help. For those who really think high pressures are important, I invite them to try solid rubber tires or riding on a steel disk, then get back to me on whether that sped them up a lot. So basically it comes down to whether you’re going fast enough that the aero effect outweighs the rolling effect (maybe 25-30MPH?), whether your surface is smooth enough that you can get up that fast in the first place, and whether the aero improvement is worth getting beat up by a high pressure tire. For myself, I’m not that fast, I ride on crap surfaces, and I’m really digging how much nicer lower pressures feel.

[hozn]

@lordofthemark 65936 wrote:

what distances are we talking about? 20 miles? 200? Seriously, while my current commute is about 6 miles each way, if the drop bar (and associated attributes) is helpful at only a bit longer than that, I really owe it to myself to test ride some road bikes. If it doesn’t really become an issue till we are talking about century rides, I don’t think I want to take up my bike shopping time with that now.

Yeah, I would take this with a grain of salt. I have ridden my mountain bike for 9+ hour stretches on several occasions and wasn’t less comfortable during those rides than during similar-scale road rides. Of course for riding on the road I would choose a road bike because it would be faster (tires, gearing, aero position) but you can make an upright geometry bike comfortable (or your body can adapt).

[mstone]

@hozn 66005 wrote:

Yeah, I would take this with a grain of salt. I have ridden my mountain bike for 9+ hour stretches on several occasions and wasn’t less comfortable during those rides than during similar-scale road rides.

I envy your ass of steel.

[Author]

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