Filed under: News
Just finished reading this review from Velo News online about these new “cables” Wrenched and Ridden. Bah! I honestly don’t know why I read that site at all.*
The article is a review about the new product called Power Cordz™. These are replacement cables for your derailleurs and brakes, but they’re more like a woven cord than they are like a cable I guess, hence the name Cordz. I’m not sure what technical feature they hold that entitles the intentional misspelling. Mabye Z’s are more aerodynamic or something.
Anyway, reading this review, I am truthfully left with much more knowledge regarding alternative materials for stringing up a bike’s gears and brakes. That’s testimony towards the author’s writing, well done. It’s not the article that I’m writing about here it’s the cables themselves. How much is sixty grams? A bit over two ounces. How important is that saved weight to you? Is it really worth $70?
Take all this with a grain of salt of course, I don’t race, but honestly, I’m tired of all this talk of weight savings. I’m tired of hearing about it, but mostly I’m tired of it being pushed on those who don’t race, or those who realistically shouldn’t care about a mere sixty grams. These products (their advertisements, and I guess their related reviews) seems like they’re being foisted on people.
Power Cordz™ will work on ALL types of bikes including dirt, road, bmx, track, unicycle, you name it! If it can be raced Power Cordz will make it faster.
How many cables are on a track bike? So if some dude’s bike doesn’t have cables made out of these gossamer strands of moonlight then he’s not going to get on the podium on his way to work. If the bike weighs somewhere around nineteen or twenty pounds then great! Less? Fine, but for the regular everyday rider it doesn’t have to be.
I know, I know, too cynical; I know the article is mostly directed to those racing; so sure, every advantage, no matter how small, can help you place. But at what cost? One thing the article does give me the impression of is how tenuous these cables seem. Dangerously so actually. Great care needs to be paid when installing any brake cables, but these sound especially difficult to ensure a safe and properly pinched cable.
…cords crush when clamped in place (cannot easily be re-clamped).
Are stainless cables really that prone to friction? Hasn’t steel been pretty sufficient all these past ninety or so years? Innovation I guess is another driving force for these cables, so with that I’ll have said my peace and shut it.
But not before I say this: Never would I or have I suggested something so specifically light and performance driven to a customer, before I did that I would suggest they first lose a few hundred or so grams themselves. In all actuality though, the tinkerer in me tells me I would actually want to check these cables out personally—to see for myself how tenuous or not they really are.
* I do know why I read it, basically to keep abreast of as much things “bike” as I can. No matter how silly or unnecessary to probably 95% of those who ride bikes it is.
1 Comment so far
Leave a comment
Hold your fingers over fingers over your Adam’s apple, and say the following words: “cheese” and “jeez”, “said” and “zed”, “this” and “that”, “tad” and “dad”, “cod” and “god”.
In each pair, the first word begins with an unvoiced consonant and the second word begins with the voiced version of the same consonant.
In English, the regular way to form the plural is by tacking on the sibilant consonant “s”. That’s true after an unvoiced consonant, like “cat” and “cats”. After a voiced consonant, we pronounce the voiced sibilant consonant “z” but use the letter “s”: “dog” and “dogs.”
Thus, “cordz” is an intentional misspelling that in fact represents English pronunciation in an easier-to-understand way than standard orthography, like “nite” and “night.”
Comment by JR 04.28.09 @ 12:10 pmLeave a comment
Line and paragraph breaks automatic, e-mail address never displayed, HTML allowed:
<a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>