Posted by Chris on 01/07/09 |
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CHINESE JONES?
According to a thread on the MTBR 29er forum, a company in China is knocking off Jeff Jones' Spaceframe. I haven't had a chance to talk to Jeff for months now, and I have no idea if he's yet seen these "Ti Special style MTB frames," but they're an interesting example of form leading function, the complete opposite of everything Jeff believes in.
Yes, the Chinese frames are obviously welded poorly, and anyone who buys one will probably die horribly, and yes, it's a smarmy-ass thing to do, ripping off somebody's designs, but, as many point out, China's been doing that for years. But the point is that they've also been getting it wrong for years. This thing is designed to look like a Jones Spaceframe, but it's ridiculous to even speculate about the "ride" of something like this, because none of Jeff's ideas are here.
Take a look.
Taller head tubes make for stronger, stiffer frames, maintain a taller bar height while still keeping fork axle to crown height low for less dive under braking, and give all the intersecting tubes on a genuine Spaceframe ample clean contact space. The Chinese frame has a nubby, little head tube and a crazy miter job on the two lower tubes. Even if this frame were to somehow be welded better than a U.S. made frame, it's already at a considerable structural disadvantage to a Jones frame, because everything that Jeff has studied about how best to make a bicycle's head tube work is not only ignored here; it's actually deconstructed and not put back together again.
Look at the front derailleur's cable stop, which is much too low. Sure, you can use a top-swing front derailleur, ignoring the fact that Jeff specifically designed his frame to work with a traditional bottom-swing front derailleur because they don't clog with mud and stop working. Compared to a guy who obsessed about creating the perfect, low-friction cable routing path, with just the right angle and location, this stop simply makes it harder to set up your front derailleur and shift your bike.
Jeff doesn't bend his seat tube to be cool; it's integral to the controlled flex of the frame, and the position of the rider relative to the rear axle. With a straight seat tube, the chainstays of the Chinese copy frame necessarily have to be longer or the seat tube angle has to be steeper, or both. Either case positions the rider exactly away from where Jeff ideally locates the rider's center of gravity.
The shape of the seatstays simply doesn't do what Jeff's frame does. The more acute the angle of your rear triangle (closer the seatstays and chainstays), the more compliant, but the Chinese frame doesn't know what it's doing. If there's any compliance in the copy's rear triangle, it's just the seatstays trying to tear the chainstays off the bottom-bracket shell. Fortunately, the disc tab will likely crack the seatstays before they can do any real harm.
So this isn't a knock-off. It isn't even a proper "Jones-shaped object." This is a bicycle frame with its top tube driven into its downtube to make room for some extra long seatstays. No intellectual property was actually copied here because there are no ideas here.
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