This is an interesting discussion. Based on what I can tell, RBW has not (ever?) attributed the stoutness of their frames as a contributing factor to how "fast" they are. They mention things like fitness, strength, rider position and comfort as the contributing factors. They have always mentioned tubing wall thickness as a design factor based on what the frame's intended use will be by using terms such as "road gauge" and so on. They've said the Roadeo is light because that's all the strength that's needed for a club riding bike.
If you read through the old Peeking Through the Knothole archives, Grant clearly outlines how he came to the conclusions he has about all this. There's no science or anything like that. Just his personal riding experiences. Interesting stuff. But other bicycle gurus and folks on this board claim otherwise. I personally don't have a enough experience to be sure, but when folks claim the Roadeo is faster than xyz (when taking build, wheels, tires, etc. into consideration) I'm inclined to believe them. I'm taking the claims of "faster" as meaning more speed per amount of physical pedaling effort. Not handling or descending speed. I have a 61cm Roadeo and it's the only RBW frame I've ever ridden so I don't have a basis of comparison. I have experience with other non-OS non-Riv steel road frames though. This frame is not as light construction-wise as the 57cm and smaller Roadeos. Instead, the basic tubing gauges are in the same range as the Ram, Rom and AHH of the same size (I had asked the question to Mark at RBW at the time of purchase). I weight 163 so that seems (to me) to not be a lot of weight for what the frame must have been designed around in that 61cm size. I always wonder if the same frame in the lighter gauge of smaller Roadeos would actually be better FOR ME or not. Would it be too flexy when bombing down a bumpy, winding descent? Would it be more comfortable? Would it be faster even? I don't know. Maybe it's perfect already! All that said, it would be interesting to see how a 61cm Roadeo would compare to the Ram, Rom and AHH of the same size as the differences in stoutness are smaller (nonexistent?) than, say, Lum's smaller lighter gauge Roadeo when compared to the same sized Ram, Rom and AHH. I wonder if the speed benefits of a Roadeo frame diminish in the larger 59cm+ sizes and that the speed benefits are only for the small sized Roadeos. This has made me ponder the decision of getting the Roadeo when I could have gotten an AHH for $100 more at the time and gained a significant increase in versatility. But the marketing materials described the Roadeo as the racy bike and the AHH as the country bike so... Paul On Thursday, October 4, 2018 at 10:56:12 AM UTC-7, Mark Schneider wrote: That would be disappointing, the whole point of the Rodeo is to be a faster model in the line-up. Oversized tubing is already stiffer, you don't need a beefier/thicker model, you already have that in AHH. I have a Homer it's great, but it's designed for a different kind of riding than a Rodeo. I'd like at least one true performance Riv in the line-up. On Thursday, October 4, 2018 at 6:51:27 AM UTC-7, Lum Gim Fong wrote: I was told by Grant that plans were drawn up alteady for the Taiwan version, which will be longer and stouter than the MUSA version they have been making. But they haven’t decided if they will go ahead and make it or not. I think for now you can still get MUSA version.. If you want shorter stays and thinwall tubing now is the time. -- 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.
