Following the trend of other bike makers, Orbea has produced its own Pad X/Y chart for it’s Orbea Ordu LTD series.

These bikes technically do not need a chart like this in order for a fitter to calculate and prescribe a bike. But this bike has two front-end details that make the bike a good match for a Pad X/Y chart of this type.

First, while there is a range of standard stems that can go on this bike, Orbea thinks a –6° stem is a nice cosmetic fit. The bike is really made not to have stem spacers underneath. It isn’t a superbike in that sense, but in a way it acts like a superbike because of a stem height that doesn’t want to be changed (Orbea is quite fine with changing the stem’s length).

Still, this wouldn’t disqualify calculators, like the HX/HY calculator on the Slowtwitch website, from working fine for this bike.

The second problem is the relative obscurity of the Visiontech TriMax aerobar that goes on this bike. It’s a fine bar. But it’s not widely sold.

[very technical paragraph!] The way the process works (or ought to work) in a dynamic fit protocol, if an Ordu is a bike admired by the customer, that aerobar is placed on the fit bike. A fit is executed, HX/HY is read off the fit bike, ported into the Slowtwitch calculator, and the stack and reach of the frame is the output. The front end of the bike (stem length, aerobar pad pedestals) are changed just like salt and pepper in the stew, until the right taste (a stack and reaching matching one of the Ordu sizes) is achieved. But let’s face it: This aerobar isn’t in a lot of fit studios. [/very technical paragraph!]

Not only did I lose three-fourths of everyone reading this in the paragraph above, I lost two-thirds of the bike fitters reading this in the paragraph above. Such is our industry.

So Orbea released a Pad X/Y chart and while it lacks some precision it’s very easy to use. Let’s take Jordan Rapp, our CTO here at Slowtwitch, as an example. He rides a Dimond, but using his 630mm/500mm metrics as an example (note that the chart lists centimeters rather than millimeters), we see he could ride either an M or and L. He’s more likely a fit on the L. (Jordan’s Pad Y and X are represented by the little red square overlaid on the chart.) Because Jordan rides low, he’s ride this bike with very little pad pedestaling (perhaps 5mm). He would ride the bike with a pretty short stem, probably 90mm, which is fine for a tri bike.

See how easy that is? This new chart should make deciding on an Ordu LTD series bike much easier for fitters, salesmen and end users.