But in each case, with all these bikes, all these brands, garbage-in, garbage-out. If the position aboard your bike is poor, systems like the one I'll describe and demo below will accurately and quickly provide you with precisely the proper Felt IA that fits up underneath your crappy bike position. Changing your crappy position to a comfortable, powerful, aerodynamic position is not the purpose of what I'm writing in this installment, in the prior installments on Trek and Cervelo, and in upcoming installments on BMC and for other bikes.
So, for the purpose of this article, I'm assuming that your bike position is good, is dialed, and you
only need to find the Felt IA or DA that precisely matches your position.
About calculators and systems like this: I think a lot of companies have been short-sighted in not thinking about the process by which their products get from their warehouses to customers' garages. The products are in many cases great. The processes by which those products pass from dealer to consumer is often not good, and
for want of a nail the kingdom was lost (meaning, you can make a great bike and for want of a method for determining how to sell that great bike, that great bike doesn't get sold).
The process below is Felt's
nail, allowing the
kingdom to prosper. Felt made a great bike. Before today it had no system helping you determine which size and configuration of that bike was correct for you. Now Felt does have that system.
You'll need to download an Excel file that is the platform used for this system, which is
accessible on Felt's site.
You know the drill by now, right? Type in your Pad X and Pad Y which is, in this spreadsheet, known as Pad Stack (Y) and Pad Reach (X). When I plunk these into the cells, along with my saddle height and saddle nose fore/aft, and I'm given a quite precise prescription. Using 630mm and 500mm for Pad Y and X, as I've used with the Trek and Cervelo, here's what the system outputs for me, and below is a close-up of a screenshot of the calculator: