No Rivendells in my collection, but a bunch of other steel road bikes, from pre-80s up to 2013. How do these all compare?
1971 Mercian Olympic-- Reynolds 531, rides nice, fairly compliant, not the snappiest response to pedaling. 1982 Jack Taylor Tour of Britain-- Reynolds 531, rides incredibly smoothly and compliant. Snappy response to pedaling. The stays and fork blades are pencil thin, which may contribute. 1988 Trek 560-- TruTemper double butted tubing, rides nice but not great, fairly compliant. Somewhat dead response to pedaling. 2013 Rawland Stag-- unkown double butted tubing (8/5/8 main tubes is all I know)-- has an overbuilt, stiff fork which compromises the ride quality, but the frame is very snappy in response to pedaling. 2014 Jeff Lyon L'Avecaise custom-- currently getting painted before delivery to me, unknown (to me) tubing, will have 7/4/7 TT, and thin, compliant Kaisei fork blades. Was built to have a very compliant ride and snappy response. We'll see! Interesting how two Reynolds 531 bikes can ride and feel differently (both bike have comparably supple and fast rolling tires, and similar overall builds). The devil is definitely in the details when it comes to bike handling and ride dynamics, and tubing is just one of many variables. As far as standard off-the-shelf bikes go, one problem is that they have to be designed to work across the anthropometric range of rider metrics within a given frame size. That is, a given size frame has to be strong enough to accomodate riders who may vary by as much as 100-150 lbs. i.e., there needs to be a certain level of robustness built in, at least to minimize the risk of potential frame failures. Only a custom bike built to a rider's personal metrics will yield a frame that behaves exactly as the rider wants. Everything else is a compromise in some way or another. Anton -- 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.
