My commuter is set up similarly to your Bizango. It's an old Rocky Mountain, has 26" wheels and drop bars. I also have a LongLow which is a similar bike to the Rambouillet. The Rocky is quick handling, incredibly stable at any speed, has a high BB and can be pedaled through just about any turn, can be loaded with two weeks of groceries and still behave perfectly. It is also heavier and solid and does not plane.
When getting on the LongLow, the first few minutes/couple of hours of the ride, I also pedal strike. It also seems to wallow from the front end. After I'm used to it again, it feels right and good and it is a bike that can be ridden long distances seeming to work with the rider, whereas the Rocky would be a poor choice as a brevet bike. If I rode the LongLow every day and then jumped on the Rocky, I'd be looking behind to see what I was towing. As a shorter distance commuter (say up to 8 miles each way), those old 26" wheel mountain bikes are tough to beat, especially if the road surface is not great. They are a lot of fun to ride. If my commute was 12 miles each way, the Rocky would spend more time at home though. Ian A/Canada On Friday, April 4, 2014 11:44:27 AM UTC-6, Jeff Ong wrote: > > So, I've got a lot of bikes and zero cars. Only two are conventional > "road" type bikes (a 2004 Merlin Fortius and an '84 Nobillette). Many are > mountain bikes, and my daily rider/commuter is a 1995 Voodoo Bizango that > I've added rack/fender eyelets to, converted to drops and 2 inch Schwalbe > Marathons, and basically made into a sort of Atlantis type ride. > > About a year ago, I bought a secondhand (or third- or fourth-hand, who > knows?) Rambouillet (from the first run of framesets, in pearl orange). My > idea was to have a sporty road/light tourer with fenders, since I live in > Portland, where it drizzles seven months of the year. I built this up with > a pretty Riv-like collection of stuff -- a VO triple crankset, platform > pedals, some nice wheels and Pasela 28s, Shimano 9-speed bar end shifters, > bars a bit above saddle height, etc. It's super pretty, everyone oohs and > ahs over it, etc. > > The problem is, I kind of hate riding it. It just steers like a pig, > wallowing through turns, and it feels super slow to accelerate. I get > terrible pedal strike unless I coast around every turn. I've really tried > to get used to the ride, but I always find myself getting angry when I'm > out on the bike... like "hurry up, man! come on!" I'm a decent enough > mechanic to know that there isn't anything mechanically wrong. I do think > this bike is bigger on me than I generally ride -- I'm 6' tall and this is > a 58cm, and generally I ride smaller than that, although it's difficult to > compare compact frames against this more traditional geometry. The bike > isn't super light (27 lbs or so with fenders and racks), but many of my > bikes are around that weight or heavier. > > Am I just not cut out for Riv-type geometry? Is it poorly fit to me? Is > there something about the Rambouillet that just makes it slow-steering and > ponderous? I would love to swap out this frameset with something livelier > and more fun to ride (but that can still take racks and fenders with 28mm > tires), and I'm just hoping to not make the same mistake. Any insights > would be greatly appreciated. Thanks! > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to rbw-owners-bunch+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to rbw-owners-bunch@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/rbw-owners-bunch. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
