Sizing & fit when the customer is not present

[Chris.T]

I'd like to know how everyone is working out sizing when the customer cannot be present..
I'm talking fit more than than geometry & handling... so working out things like seat height, seat setback, bar drop, top tube length/compartment, etc.

Do you let the customer take care of it and build from the fit dimensions that they supply?
Do you get their body dimensions and plug them into a calculator? Which calculator?
Do you send them into a LBS to be measured/fitted/etc?
Do you take measurements from an existing bike?
What dimensions are you taking (from bike and/or body)?


What is your process?
...If you dont mind sharing!

[Too Tall]

Chris, if you will allow me to be part of this conversation maybe I can add positively? I am not a builder I'm one of "those guys" who builders trust (g-d help me) to assess clients and send the measures. Sometimes builders tell me EXACTLY what they want and other times builders just want to hear my numbers and dialogue. I plug everything into BikeCAD and supply that if requested only to the builder never the customer...I DO NOT design bikes.

[Andrew R Stewart]

I'd want the customer's current bike's numbers and their comments about this bike as well. It's nice to know what to avoid as well as where to go. Andy.

[steve garro]

IDo you send them into a LBS to be measured/fitted/etc?

Anything - ANYTHING but this.
Now I can sleep well knowing I did something good for someone today.
- Garro.

[sam]

Im not yet building frames myself, but do deal with other framebuilders for my customers and consider fitting a big part of my bike shop so I will chime in. I usually get asked for the numbers from there current bike, as well as numbers we came up with on our fitting cycle. I also get asked for their body measurements. In addition to being asked for these things I also supply a picture of them on their current bike as well as the fitting cycle. Most of the builders that us bike shops deal with, usually I.F., serotta, seven and the like, tend to build from the numbers supplied from the fit cycle- unless it does not seem to jive for some reason.

I like suppling pictures, I am having a frame built for a customer right now, where he needed 9cm of bar drop on his mtb. The builder questioned this and suggested 5cm, after he seen the picture he could see this guy has arms as long as a silverback gorrilla and is actually sitting pretty upright for 9cm of drop.
As a fitter and dealing with all sorts of people, I find a good number of people who think they have a good fit- but dont and when trying something else find out they were wrong. Or simply ride the bike how it came out of the bike shop and never even moved the saddle. I think for a lot of the everyday cyclist you cant trust there numbers.
As far as trusting a fitter, I dont know how much you can do that either as many shops have so-called fitters, so unless you know the fitter I dont know I would trust their numbers either.
so I think it depends on the customer and thier background if you can trust their numbers, i think you need to get all the info you can and find a system that works well for you

[Dave Anderson]

Im not yet building frames myself, but do deal with other framebuilders for my customers and consider fitting a big part of my bike shop so I will chime in. I usually get asked for the numbers from there current bike, as well as numbers we came up with on our fitting cycle. I also get asked for their body measurements. In addition to being asked for these things I also supply a picture of them on their current bike as well as the fitting cycle. Most of the builders that us bike shops deal with, usually I.F., serotta, seven and the like, tend to build from the numbers supplied from the fit cycle- unless it does not seem to jive for some reason.

I like suppling pictures, I am having a frame built for a customer right now, where he needed 9cm of bar drop on his mtb. The builder questioned this and suggested 5cm, after he seen the picture he could see this guy has arms as long as a silverback gorrilla and is actually sitting pretty upright for 9cm of drop.
As a fitter and dealing with all sorts of people, I find a good number of people who think they have a good fit- but dont and when trying something else find out they were wrong. Or simply ride the bike how it came out of the bike shop and never even moved the saddle. I think for a lot of the everyday cyclist you cant trust there numbers.
As far as trusting a fitter, I dont know how much you can do that either as many shops have so-called fitters, so unless you know the fitter I dont know I would trust their numbers either.
so I think it depends on the customer and thier background if you can trust their numbers, i think you need to get all the info you can and find a system that works well for you

This is pretty good advice. Especially this part

i think you need to get all the info you can and find a system that works well for you

Most of it comes down to experience and figuring out what works for you. And to add to Steve's comment about bike shops, it can be pretty scary sometimes seeing what comes out of a LBS. Having said that, though, there are some good fitters out there that do a nice job.......however, one of the bigger problems with many shop based fitters is that they often try to talk the customer out of your bike and into whatever "custom" or other brand the shop sells ..........and many seem to be confused about the difference between "fit" and frame design.....avoid any fitter that tries to give you stuff like TT and ST length instead of the stuff you asked for, like saddle height, set back, reach to the bars, & etc.

Dave

[steve garro]

.......however, one of the bigger problems with many shop based fitters is that they often try to talk the customer out of your bike and into whatever "custom" or other brand the shop sells ...........

Dave

Listen to Dave on this one or learn it the hard way like I did in a crash course of how to loose 2K+ and your summer va-ca.
- Garro.

[suspectdevice]

-First ride bikes really fast for a long time- sublimating the physics and anatomic issues at hand is the #1 thing. It's a 3d world with 5 degrees of freedom and whole lot of bones and muscles. Understanding that shit is important, as is being able to picture how small changes make larger differences.

-Secondableeey converse as much as you can with a customer without having them give you numbers or pictures. Listen well and try to steer the direction to place where people might open up about percieved weakness and defficencies. That gives you a datapoint to work backwards from once you see how their bike is currently setup. Datapoint- as in one hardpoint in a complex system. So many damn linkages and muscles.

-Thirdably reconcile what they said with what you see. Cognitive dissonance may be one of the largest reasons people seek a made to measure bike. If it looks wrong, it is wrong. Draw up the bike they have now while you're at it. Get inside it. Would you do something differently? Is it worth doing something differently? Maybe the rider is just too short and too high on the bike and 80% of their physical complaints are a result of wonky vehicle dynamics. The large majority of people are already on the right bike that's setup wrong, a key thing to keep in mind.

- Stuff goes on from there but as far as I'm concerned there isn't much more you could do in person besides working on knee tracking issues, leg length discrepancies or tiny bits of cleat setup.

I haven't been selling these things long enough to know what level of service to offer at a given price point, or how much of that bullshit to build into the cost of the frame. Sometimes it takes 20 minutes to draw a bike, sometimes it takes me prying information out of people, making free-body diagrams, closing my eyes and spinning around or eating two burritos at once, all difficult, time consuming tasks.

Caveat-
It's safe to ignore everything if an experienced racer comes to you with a set of numbers and asks you to build it. Just make sure it's not wrong first and find out why, for some reason they want you to build a bike.
It's not your place to fuck with their numbers unless they need to be fucked with. If they've been winning crits since the early 90's they're doing it right.

Caveat2-
Unless you've ridden and dined with the "pro" "fitter" that a customer is talking about, just take the sheet of paper and say thank you. You can look back at it later to see how things might be different. Lot's of these guys went to a "fit school". I went to Space Camp. Those jerks at NASA never called me back even though I aced the fake landing in the fake shuttle.

[steve garro]

I went to Space Camp. Those jerks at NASA never called me back even though I aced the fake landing in the fake shuttle.

that is one of the best posts ever on the WWW as per bike fitting. Out of the park, M! - Garro.

[Amaro Bikes]

Hi!

I think there had been great advices here and this should be the way to go, try to speak a lot with your customer and get as uch feedback as possible so you can have not only his/hers actual bike measures, but also if he/she is someone with real knowledge and trustable information or you can make those measures better.
I think two customers with the very same body measures will never have (or very rarley) the very same bike fitting measures, as each one fo us have different cycling history, experiences, body flexibility, bicycle uses (racing/commuting/etc), and depending all of those parameters we end having different settings.
One of the best examples was Sean Kelly, who apparently was definetly "wrong" on the bike, but I would never thougth of changing his position as he was already too used to it and too many miles on that position can create muscle routines wich would be really difficult to change in a short period of time.

Hear your customer, see him on the bike (pictures, videos), hear customer experience and knowledge about what/why he/she does and what for he/she wants the bike. Then hear your own ideas and experiences. Finally, mix all those questions together and make a reasonable balance as result... and good luck!

[Amaro Bikes]

Sorry, I forgot one of your main questions... ;)

About wich measures (body, bike, etc), I usually ask for basic-mandatory body measures (inseam/total height/arm), general information (flexibility, km/year, bike use) and his favourite bike/ride measures (saddle height, tt effective length, hb drop, etc). Then, you can go into the previous process of "hear/thought" and see what is ok and what might be improved.

Cheers

[Chris.T]

Awesome guys, thanks.
this is mostly stuff i've been thinking about or arguing with myself about so it's reassuring to see that I'm on the right track (I think).

[WadePatton]

revival time.

Not that there isn't plenty of sound opinion posted above on the matter, but that i have to comment on Toot's mention of Brent Curry's BikeCad. I love BikeCad, been a "Pro" Bike-Cadder since version 5.x BUT

as far as plugging body measurements into it...I can't get behind that for two reasons.

First is that I tried that with my meas. and got a completely wonky "frame" result in BCad_so wonky it wouldn't be UCI legal wonky. I spoke with Brent about that and we never worked out what was going on to cause this. So that said, i've never seen the "result" worth the effort of entering the data. And i quit trying to figger how to get a non-wonky result from the program.

caveat: it might be a great place to store client measurements and notes-for those challenged by paperwork as i-just stay off the "apply" button.

Second: Doing such is no different that consulting a conti chart or slide rule - it's not teaching fitment, but giving "hard" numbers to which one may place too much emphasis.

I trust current ride setup and seeing rider (on and off bike) as much as "developed numbers" or raw body data. Interview/conversation to find out if/where it needs to go from there.

theoretically that is. i'm still hacking out stuff for me. (but i never stop thinking about this subject (for long))

[prolix21]

Before I went to UBI I spent a ridiculous amount of time trying to understand bike fit and the seemingly endless number of ways you can come to some sort of proper design. Each method will land you with various results, some will be simliar, some will be wildly different.

I recently purchased BikeCAD pro and it's fit stuff is somewhat hit and miss. I've been going through and setting up all my bikes in it and looking at the results to get a better feel for how it works. The best part is the preview so you can see where it thinks you should be vs where your design actually is. You can then tweak various stuff accordingly, never hit apply, you'll end up with a mess of a bike, as Wade mentioned. Without having some sort of interaction or discussion with the person you're fitting, I'd imagine it would difficult to feel confident about the frame design.

I still really don't understand the details behind a lot of the fit systems out there, but the more you try each out, the more you'll come to figure out some sort of hybrid that will work for you. Most share some sort of basic body measurements, but I'd have that person measure themselves 3 or 4 times if that's all you're going off of. Repeatable measurements.

[Eric Estlund]

caveat: it might be a great place to store client measurements and notes

This is how I use it. It allows a handy visual for distant clients if they want to see a roughly "them shaped object" on a roughly "their-bike shaped object". It is a handy visual aid for them.

The BikeCAD fit adviser is just a rubric, and is not a stand in for real design or fitting experience.