Speedplay Light Action Platformer Failure

One of the tricky aspects to catch in product design is the amount of true value in it between its stages of evolution. Sometimes, last year's model that you bought could have negligible difference in it as opposed to this year's. Its marketing might say its improved, with a new recipe, new look, new shape and so on and in the end, you would probably pay a premium for it as well, all for the same exact thing.

On the other hand, as a credit to product design, it could also be that last year's model could be insufficient for use compared to the current year's release. Dangerous too. So is this really a credit if people are still using last year's product?

Subsystem design is very dependent on the performance of the parent system.  Today's illustration is a case in point.

Speedplay's marketing line for the "Platformer" brand of pedal adapters is this : "The innovative Speedplay Platformer is a user-friendly, tool-free platform cover for Zero and Light Action pedals. The Platformer makes it easy to convert from clipless pedals to platforms for riding with street shoes."

But reality is different. Last year's clear "Light Action" pedal adapters are really light action, apparently.  As the internet will show, quite a number of people are disappointed with the quality of material used in its design. Durability issues notwithstanding, riding your bike with one of these installed could be a danger just waiting to happen

Among the disgruntled is an individual (who doesn't wish to be named) whose adapters broke just as he was pulling out of a traffic light last summer. Casual riding wasn't light enough for Platformers. The plastic adapter on his right pedal broke catastrophically with an audible snap. Because of little warning, he lost his balance very quickly and ended up crashing on his tailbone and elbow, right in the middle of a road during rush hour traffic. A crucial red light to one side gave him enough time to get back up in pain, pick up the pieces and vacate the road.

Thanks to light action pedal adapters, he is in miserable condition today. Because a fractured coccyx is an injury with no form of available treatment other than time, five months later he still is in immense pain on a daily basis and can’t sit for more than an hour without feeling discomfort. He calls the sensation "intensely searing". For the weekend racer and an enthusiastic bike geek that he is, this is not exactly the good life.

The gravity of the injury and the possibility that someone else could be hurt in similar fashion made him contact Speedplay on many occasions. To make sure this wasn't some freak event, he even installed a set of the old Platformers on his girlfriend's bike as well. The product lasted approximately 16 minutes before they cracked. Some insults are better off when they come with forewarning. This one was even recorded on video by him.

Speedplay took back his pedals for inspection and has stuck by the quality of their brand. They chose to deny his theories of why they broke and didn't feel much need to return them back to him. They have claimed no responsibility for his injuries and other damaged personal articles. The user has now fixed a date with a Small Claims Court to settle the matter in the interest of full disclosure. He has also had a meeting with the Consumer Product Safety Commission.

Interestingly enough, this year's design, with the new "recipe" doesn't seem to have had as many problems since it does not use the same plastic clamshell (see right). The user ordered a pair from Competitive Cyclist, rode them on his girlfriend's spin bike for 50 minutes (the approximate lifespan of the broken ones) and they seemed to hold up just fine.

I suppose somewhere, someone found out the trouble with the old pair, fixed it, moved on. Meanwhile, old units are still being used by riders.


A Plausible Theory

The concept behind the Speedplay Platformer is to allow the user the option of riding a bicycle equipped with Speedplay brand pedals without having to wear dedicated cycling specific shoes. By creating a larger, stable platform around the pedal, Speedplay Platformers, allow the user to ride in “regular shoes."

A set of Speedplay Platformers consists of six pieces. A complete, individual unit is comprised of two seemingly identical pieces of clear plastic. The difference between the two pieces is found on the “inside” where four tabs fit together in a male/female manner. A metal retaining clip slides through these tabs and locks the Platformer in place around the Speedplay pedal.

Because of this design and the fact that the Platformer is molded to be compatible with only one specific type of pedal, it is virtually impossible for the Platformers to be installed incorrectly. They are either locked in place or they aren’t and this is very obvious to the user. To remove a Platformer, a key, coin, or screwdriver is used to remove the metal retaining clip by sliding the clip from the Platformer. The edge of each Platformer is concaved to facilitate the easy removal of the retaining clip.

At the time the user tried the product, he was 210 pounds and stood a height of 6'1". While this isn't typical of your featherweight climbing maestro, he told me that he's never broken any products before and he's always careful with cycling equipment.

Now clipping in and clipping out of Speedplay pedals cause substantial wear on these high performance pedals as most of us have learned. The right pedal, more so due to clipping bias in start-stops. The user's had between 3000-4000 miles of usage on them. For most people, this is a season's worth of use.

This leads to a plausible theory for why the pedals failed. He wrote to me :

My theory for why they broke is because design of the Platformer didn't take into account worn pedals as they are molded around a brand new set of pedals. Since the pedals I was using were worn down, there was some open space between the Platformer and the pedal itself which lead to much more stress on the Platformer particularly on the "outside." 

The following two images show a  3.2% reduction in right side pedal dimension between a brand new and the user's old one.

New right pedal

Used right pedal

The following image, of the used left side pedal, shows a 1% difference in pedal dimensions when compared to the right side pedal. This shows that the right pedal wears more due to clipping bias.

Please be aware of this problem and report any of your personal mis-happenings in the comments section. If you also wish to offer any kind words of advice to the user with regards to a broken tailbone, please share your thoughts.

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Fishy Marketing : The Slippery Speedplay Mannequin

"I'm at the Speedplay Booth. Their leg mannequin has the biggest ass I've ever seen."

- someone at Interbike this year.

While I appreciate bike technology in all forms, I can't stand the inglorious ways by which people try to sell it to you. Readers may know that I run a section on this site titled "Marketing Mishaps". For some time now, I have been collecting events in our biking world that seem fit for it, you know - haphazardly done marketing through poor science, cheesy ad material and other nuances that just turn intelligent people off. I think I have found some new material today.



I present to you the "Slippery Speedplay Mannequin". It's all slippery (and smoke and mirrors too) if you read on.



Dynamic Test Procedure : Quickly, here's a summary of what Speedplay did to try and back up the superiority of their pedal design, the Zero. They placed the mechanized legs of an impressive mannequin (only legs) on a bike in the San Diego low speed wind tunnel. The legs were attached through cleats to the Zero pedals. The contraption was then made to pedal for a mere 5 minutes at 100 rpm in a normalized wind velocity of 30 mph. Apparently the tech guys did this twice with a 3 hole and a 4 hole mounting sole to capture any differences from mounting. Finally, they compared the results to the same procedure done to two other competitor pedals from Shimano and Look (brand was kept secret).



What To Measure? : Speedplay was interested in measuring the drag co-efficient, Cd, multiplied with frontal Area, A of the mannequin and bike system. This term appears in the equation for retarding drag force in cycling. I have written the equation for you below and what the terms mean :





It appears that even Speedplay is muddled with the terms and their definitions. In several places, they write as if they're measuring the term drag co-efficient Cd when even the computer screen in their report shows "CdA". On top of that, they take this to be a dimensionless quantity. I wonder what kind of drink the author may have had the night before?



Where Measured : San Diego Low Speed Wind Tunnel at the Air & Space Technology Center. Test section dimension of facility is 2.44 x 3.66m. Test section cross-sectional area is 8.50m^2.



Results : Going with the poorly presented results of the test, here's what I think I gleaned from it. Tabulated for you, these numbers are for one test for each item, for a duration of 5 minutes and 100 rpm cadence. Please note, all these numbers are claimed by Speedplay. The percentage differences between each line item were done by me.





Conclusions To Customers : Speedplay goes on to claim that their calculations show such drag reductions result in a time saving of 5.5 seconds/hour and 33 seconds/hour for 3 and 4 hole mounts respectively. This, they say, is equivalent to the savings gained from replacing a standard wheel with a deep section, aero front wheel.



The fishy things going on in this whole agenda are the following :



1. Time savings for whom? : While the contraption is really impressive, the 33 second savings computed by Speedplay, if correct, are for the lower legs of a "robot" riding into 30 mph headwind in a wind-tunnel specifically with 4 hole mounted cleats. C'mon, even an ape won't believe that an actual human being using this will get the same amount of claimed benefits.



2. As opposed to what? : The number of pedals in the test are small (2) and the specific brands chosen have been hidden from us. Which is understandable but again, I suppose any idiot could test the Zero pedals with a competitor's junk hardware from the past years and say that it's better. Were all brands tested the latest in market?



3. 33 seconds savings, really? : Those claimed savings seem artificially huge to me. Just for an illustration, the 2004 Nike "Swift Spin" time trial suit prototype (with tracksuit and leggings), worn by a pro cyclist, showed a time savings of 33 seconds when pedaling into 32 mph wind, over its 2003 development model. This suit is still considered by many to be state-of-the-art stuff and a production model was used in a couple of Tour de France's. To claim that switching to a small pair of pedals under a robot's legs equal the time savings of a top aerodynamic piece of apparel worn by a actual human in aero position points to something extremely fishy in the calculations. It even diminishes the many years of work Nike and other researchers conducted in trying to create a more aero suit for pro cyclists.



4. Where's the math? : Obviously, what Speedplay fails to show is the methodology behind their conclusions. How did they arrive at 33 seconds/hour time savings? Moreover, they don't investigate the variation of CdA numbers as the sample size increases by limiting themselves to one test run for each type of pedal. The worst part is, they test each pedal for 5 minutes. Hence, we don't have an indication of the level of error and range of CdA values over many trials. Now you have to ask, is this really 33 second time savings? Or something smaller?





The bottomline?



As is apparent to others, Speedplay wants you to buy their Zero Pedals which will free you of between $130-$330 (Chromoly-Titanium). They calculate that if you cut your legs apart, dispose of the trunk and then pedal a bike in a rare and bloody time trial of 5 minutes keeping everything tight and in-plane like a mannequin, you'll save as much time riding into a 30 mph headwind as does tossing out a 32 spoke wheel for a slick aero wheel in the front.

Copywrited picture from Speedplay

RELATED DISCUSSION FROM OTHERS :



Cyclocosm : Are You A Speedseeking, Torso-less Pair Of Legs?

Alien Biker : The Missing Link, The One Piece Of Gear That Will Help You Ride Like A Pro

Slow-Twitch Forums : Speedplay Claims Huge Wind Drag Reduction Over Leading Brands

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E-Hub Marketing : A Important Lesson In Statistics

Like the past 100 years, even today cycling products come and go. And with them, so do their marketing sound bytes...

Any intelligent cyclist must carefully inspect marketing data handed to him, and question what is missing and why its missing. Weak data can lead to weak correlations, spurious percentage differences and other logical fallacies. Until the missing numbers are accounted for, I don't advise anyone to take faith in where they put their money.

When James posted a small article yesterday on the E-Hub at the Bicycle Design blog, I got very amused and decided to take a peek at the product website. I spent a little time looking at the interesting item proudly displayed but then had an itching desire to see the numbers behind the invention. Not just plain numbers. I wanted to see if they're meaningful numbers.

This page has a statement from Dr. Alen Orbanić (a University mathematician from Slovenia) telling us that the designers behind the innovation carried out a surefire experiment to prove without doubt that using the E-hub for cycling showed the following things :

1) Increased average power output when compared to cycling with a conventional rear hub.

2) 4% reduction in average and maximal heart rates in cyclists using this product, when compared to the same figure for cycling with conventional hub.

3) 10-15% of blood lactate reduction using the E-hub versus using a conventional hub.


So What Was The Experiment?

Well, I'll tell you the part of it they conducted outdoors. They brought together a population of cyclists from 20-60 years of age. How many? Not specified. Then they categorized them as "Professionals", "Recreational" and "Amateurs". How did they define who belonged where? No indication. What were their weights, fitness levels etc? No indication.

So this population of cyclists were asked to fit themselves with a Polar heart rate measuring system who then mounted Ergomo powermeter fitted MTBs to ride a 2km track (1.24 miles) with 14 degrees of average inclination. Apparently, they did this twice, one with the E-hub and one with a classic hub after 24 hours of rest between the two. Levels of lactic acid were measured twice, immediately after each run with a hub.

Fig 1 : A snippet showing how things were measured by the authors. Typos abound. Click to zoom.

I'm surprised a tad bit by two things. 14 degrees of average inclination? Wow. That is an average of 25% grade. Second, I'm surprised recreational cyclists could manage this effort. Either Slovenian humans are exceptional, or the drive train was really dumbed down for spinning, or something is just plain wrong with this number presented to us. I have written in the past about the W/lb required to maintain a certain speed on a given grade.


So What Does The Data Look Like?

The authors go on to claim they gathered a "vast quantity of data" but for the sake of the reader's reading convenience, they picked 3 'random' data points corresponding to 3 cyclists, for each class of cyclist. I guess this is a solid example of where you can't really thank people for their kindness :).

Here are the numbers :

Fig 2 : 3 randomly selected cyclists in each class showed the above numbers with and without an e-hub. And how were they randomly chosen? No indication so could we not say this is an example of data mining?

Fig 3 : % differences in heart rate and power between the two hubs.

Fig 4 : % differences in average blood lactate between the two hubs.

Right off the bat, I see this is poorly presented data, at least for a professional level. From the surface, I can come up with 3 weaknesses :

1. Sample Points & Averages : There's a rule of thumb in good statistics. You need a minimum of 30 sample points before you do descriptive analysis on it to explain trends.

Take a look at the amount of power these cyclists are producing on this so-called 25% grade, 1.2 mile track. Professionals are producing puny average power outputs while recreational and amateurs are easily rivaling them, not only in power but also in speed.

This leads me to question firstly how the authors classified and defined these cyclists. It seems to me from this meager amount of data that all three classes were almost equal in their cycling abilities?

I also have to say that averages can fool you if data jumps all around the place wildly. For the meager sample points presented above, you can see that the average power is pretty sensitive to outliers.

Infact, if we had been handed 30 sample points or more for each class of cyclist, it is likely the data could have shown a decreased average power, which could have reduced the resultant power differences between the E-Hub and the classic hub. Any guarantee that's not the case? The authors haven't proven it here but go on to artificially bump up the averages using just 3 data points mined from here and there. Furthermore, their conclusions about the apparent efficiency increase with the E-Hub is only relevant for these 3 sample points.

2. Spread : Closely following the absence of more samples is the question, what's the spread and deviation of this "vast amount" of data? I don't have any idea of it as there's no indication of standard deviation. The data is meaningless. How can I tell if a majority of data points in this experiment are close to the average power output or not? What if outliers are pushing the average up?

3. Range : Because only one sample data point (for power, HR and lactic acid) have been presented to us going across for each cyclist, we have no idea of the true range, or the true maximum and minimum values that would be observed. The data point presented to us is just one of what could be many and they are all bound to vary, because that's how all processes are... they vary! Hence, the range could vary pretty significantly if we had more tests on the same individual.

4. Instrument & Measurement Error : Lastly, what about the instruments used? Were they calibrated properly and accurate to other power measurement systems? What's the bias in the system, if any? Are these numbers from just random variability or regression to the mean? It is often taken for granted by some that measurement systems (instrument+human operator) that produce such outstanding numbers are always pin-point accurate.

I simply have to conclude that this data, so far, to me is just meaningless. The rest of the data that follows on the webpage, done on an indoor ergometer, suffers from exactly the same types of weaknesses I have mentioned. These are basic rules to follow in statistics and I'm surprised they weren't in this case.

The product itself may be great. I cannot disagree for certain there. But the numbers don't show me much so far. Thus, I think the declaration that this hub system really improves the efficiency of a cyclist compared to what we usually use must be taken with a handful of salt.

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The Fun & Modern Day Magic Of Bike Advertising

That bicycle companies will go to odd lengths to market their products is clear when you pick up their catalogs and flip through their pages. If you manage not to drool all over yourself and drown in your own puddle, you may come across some odd nevertheless interesting finds.

The word cheesy in the urban dictionary means "shoddy quality". And I think when you devise cheesy marketing and drive it towards someone and his pocket while trying to attracting their interest, its sort of like shining a bright flash of immodest light in someone's face, ordering them to go blind and start believing through faith alone.

Perhaps immodesty is the norm these days? I don't know. But I wonder what space aliens might think of us when they arrive at our desolate planet many years later and excavate our sorry remains. All those piles of papyrus junk containing cheesy advertising might put them off. They'll probably just fly back in their space ships disgusted.

Today's case in point for illustration :

(Drumroll...)

Enter the Zipp Annual Product Catalog for 1993. I had this saved on my computer from sometime back and I doubt you can get this on the internet now.

Anyway, this piece of advertisement was a specimen alright. Open page 1 and you unmistakeably find yourself at the center of what they're trying to sell, an odd looking bike with bright red and yellow that does prove that red color has the marketing power of provoking emotional outbursts; repulsion could certainly be one of them?


And why, there's a quote on top of the prologue that asks the reader that he stop for a little more insight into this contraption. What might it be and will it inject him with some wisdom before his adventure?

It reads :

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" - Arthur C. Clarke

Of course, the great futurist and sci-fi author never said any such thing about a bicycle. It may have been hip in those days to quote Clarke anywhere and everywhere you found a spot begging for scientific blessing.

The quote is the third law in what is known as Clarke's Laws, provocative observations on the future of science and society that were published in his book “Profiles of the Future". The essays in the book covered a wide range of topics looking to as far as year 2100, exploring the conquering of gravity, conquering of time and space and so on and so forth. I wonder how an emasculated bike for half naked tri geeks connects with Clarke's imagery. It might have been the carbon fiber in the bike. It sounds space age.

Anyway, as we move on, we find more red and more yellow with blue and orange along with fancy graphs attached to unvalidated bursts of insight such as "our Zipp bike lets you save 19% of your energy at 30mph compared to competitor's frames." and how treating yourself to their "Ballistic Hubs" and "V-Rim" Technology" will never make you regret it, ever!

A question "what is there to think about?" adorns the end of that page, shooting the reader in the face for entertaining naughty contradicting thoughts and pulling him along for the rest of the thrill ride.

What is there to think about? Its basically just "Blazingly Fast"!

The next page is a full page motion blur image of a person riding on such a bike, almost like he's doing a 180 in a school zone. It seems to fly right past the reader and out of the page. That must surely captivate him. Wow, that is fast.

P.S : Photo editing sure works, but it must have been so bad those days that this rider in the blur came out to look more like Daffy Duck with a silly hat on than anything human.

Page 5 has another quote, another inkling of wisdom from great people :

"Those who create are rare; those who cannot are numerous." - Coco Chanel

Coco Chanel was talking about the fashion business and the creation of simple and elegant clothing for women. She quite possibly didn't give a French kiss about bicycles. But Zipp, perhaps to show how they both agree with each other's ideologies, throw in a picture of a track bike in a purple color so repulsive, perhaps the men at Zipp were taking their revenge out on the more fairer of sexes back home for nagging them so much.



Some near naked images of men show up in the following pages and then lo and behold, we are greeted with another quote, this time from none other than the late Prime Minister of India - Mrs Indira Gandhi. It is robust with grammatical error.

"My grandfather once told me that there was two kinds of people : those who do the work and those who take the credit. He told me to try to be in the first group; there was less competition there." - Indira Gandhi

Mrs. Gandhi was talking about the economic wisdom offered to her by her grandfather in a British India. If using Arthur Clarke to bless your bike was hip, quoting world leaders out of context with grammatical error while denigrating them between two near naked tri geeks was probably even hipper...or hippier.

But that's not all. After 11 truly entertaining pages of marketing, Zipp finally zips their campaign with one more imagery.

This is to suggest to us that they're winning the world over right from little Indiana.


A casual observer might see it as a harmless image. "What's wrong with that?"

Well, it would have been perfectly sane if it weren't for a final closer look at that odd flag at the 6 o'clock position. Let's magnify it some 200%.


What's this?!!

Why Ron, I've never seen anything like it before. Could it be the imaginary empire of Kuboojistan, told in tales by past house wives...that empire so mighty that their armies raped and looted other nations and had their flags miniaturized and sewn into theirs?

Or did the bleary eyed guy with the photo editor, late in the day, run out of space to place more flags of the world? Perhaps on finding that the coffee in the pot ran out, did he decide to call it a day and rush home after patching all the remaining flags together to form the mighty Kuboojistan?

I don't know. I maybe ignorant. But after this exciting exercise of swimming through a bicycle catalog risking being eaten alive, a reader could be forced to reflect upon the 3rd Arthur Clarke's Law :

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, indeed.

Except, the magic is not so much in the bike.

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Do you have recollections of cheesiness in bicycle product ads? Write to me here. Let's laugh together and be merry.

Marketing Junk : Specialized Transition Vs Cervelo P3C

Bicycle companies will often put glossy promotional advertisements on their websites while putting forth their sales pitch. Sometimes, they'll even go ahead and even compare a bicycle model from their line to that of a competitor's. 

As an example, I was stumped by the frontal view of these two bikes. It was put on Specialized's website in a tutorial pdf called "The Importance of Aerodynamics In Cycling". The idea was to show how 'skinny' the Transition looked from the front compared to Cervelo's P3C. 

Fig 1 : Side by side frontal area comparisons

As you can see, there is no rider on the bikes, and no pedals either (hardly the case in the real world). 

Specialized makes a big deal out of Cervelo's cables sticking out in the front end. They also critique its flared out seatstays and commend the tucked-in design on same in their bike. If you put things into perspective, these things are probably going to make negligible differences to your power output at constant speed. 70-80% of the drag is from the cyclist, not even shown in this picture, much less from the bike, and still much lesser friction drag from cables.  Unless you're fighting for a mere tenths of second or a couple of feet with a your opponent, cable drag is hardly an issue. Even then, remember top pros back in the days had cables sticking out like the antlers on a deer. They did fine, and even broke plenty of records. Armstrong, Lemond and Valverde are just a few specific names.

Anyway, the real interesting thing happens when you flip the Transition sideways. Like in the following image. This isn't on the promotional pdf.

Fig 2 : Exposed cable in side view of the Transition

If Specialized is so keen on discussing exposed cables, perhaps they should have talked about the segment of ugly cable housing peering into the air from the downtube. But they won't. For all they did with ultranarrow stays, integrated brakes and 1 inch steerers on this bike, you'd think they wouldn't overlook this obvious detail.

Getting back to Fig 1, they compare some fat ugly wheelset on the Cervelo p3C with their aerodynamic Roval hub. If Rovals are so good, why aren't they used on the top of the line Transition, as shown in Fig 2 and in the component listing for the bike on their website? Apparently, Rovals aren't good for the best bike in the time trial lineup and they shamelessly stick with Zipps. 

Now lets view the P3C from the side. 

Fig 3 : P3C Side View

Compare and contrast this clean look with the bent proportions of Fig 2. Which is better? Since Specialized makes a big deal out of frontal area, perhaps they would know that sloping top tubes actually increase frontal area and is generally a bad profile for aerodynamics. But they won't tell you this either.

Only someone like Bike Sport Michigan will thoughtfully critique this sort of bad aero design.

Fig 4 : Bad design elements for TT aerodynamics

Don't get me wrong. I have no overwhelming affections for Cervelo. But this was just a poor show from Specialized against one of the best time trial designs in the market. Cervelo created a benchmark with the P3C, and I'm sure you'll agree with me. 

So here's the bottomline : A company will only highlight some couple of points of a product that are favorable to their proposal. These will generally look good. If they highlight bad points, then whats the point in selling it in the first place, right? 

Well, turns out that this is really a limited view for the audience who see it. For customers and interested parties pouring over advertisements and promotional product materials such as these, it pays to do some good critical reading and cross checking information before falling too easily. 

As for Specialized, it seems like they should really study some aerodynamics themselves first before writing "tutorials".