Chris and Mitch: Thanks; at least plausible explanations. As I said elsewhere, in experimenting with setting up the bar for the Matthews over the last year, I've gradually lowered the bar by a total of about 2 inches, and extended the stem by 1 cm. (The last 9 mm reduction in height was by swapping out the 9 cm 90* stem for a 9 cm 6* stem flipped negative; this because I'd earlier removed the last spacer from above the headset. And flipping the 6* stem downward extends the bar forward by 2 more mm, in addition to reducing its height.)
Long windup as usual. Let us proceed: Compared to my Benchmark Riv Roads, the Matthews feels vague in that crucial transition from straight to turn, at lower speeds on pavement. It still felt this way even as I lowered the bar. But this last reduction seems to have pushed a handling button; the last 9 mm seems to have made more difference in this turn-in than the previous 3 cm. At any rate, this lowering made the hoods feel more natural, keeps the hooks very usable, and (hoods position) seems at least to make turn-in feel a bit more planted. Of course, with such variables as tires -- width, pressure, tread -- who can possibly parse all the element affecting all the other variables in my peculiar body relationship with this particular bike; but --- again, very longwinded windup: I can well believe that more weight over bar leads to a better "planted" feel in "turn-in." 'Nother anecdote, not wholly unrelated to all this: my first highish end road bike, 1990, was a '89 Falcon, 531 C, all Sante, which had a design that I read was a trend in the '70s or so: very short front-center (very little daylight between 19 mm Turbo and bottom of down tube), and long stays. I messed up the handling by setting up the saddle and bar all wrong: saddle so high I needed mtb seatpost; saddle all, and I mean all, the way forward on the rails, so much so that I needed blue Loctite to keep it from tilting *forward* under my then svelte weight; 135 or 140 mm stem full 6 inches below saddle -- you had to experience fast, swoopy downhills with gusty sidewinds! But I expect that this design would have handled delightfully with a Grantian setup: he told me, get your bar up and back, and your saddle back and down, and it worked for other bikes. But I'd sold the Falcon. -- 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 https://groups.google.com/group/rbw-owners-bunch. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
