Hi tucker, The standover for the 63 Hilsen is listed as 88.8. Anyone can ride a frame with a standover equal to their pbh when road riding. Typically, Rivendell lists a standover measured with the biggest tires the bike can handle. The Hilsen geometry chart lists the biggest tire as 43mm. If you are going to run 35 mm tires, then the standover will be 88.0 cm. In addition, when you wear cycling shoes, you gain about 2 cm in height, so your pbh of 89 cm + 2 cm = 91 cm is 3 cm higher than the 88 cm standover of the Hilsen equipped with 35mmm tires. That is more than enough clearance for anyone.
If you want to get the bars up near the saddle height, you should consider buying the biggest frame you can standover--then you won't have to use a high rise stem to get the bars up even with the saddle. Unfortunately, the Hilsen's have really long top tubes. Grant will argue that they don't. But I argue that they really do. So while the large size will allow you to use a lower stem height, you might have to use a short, stubby 6 cm stem length. The top tube plus stem length will determine the reach to the bars--although you do have to make some adjustments when comparing the Hilsen to your current bike due to the differences in seat tube angle, etc. On the other hand, the adjustments can cancel each other out, and in that case a direct comparison is possible. A 6cm stem may be right at your maximum reach, which means you would have no room to adjust shorter. The only thing you could do is raise the bars higher to get the handlebars to move closer to you. Ok, so maybe that will persuade you to get the smaller frame. The smaller frame will have a shorter top tube, which means you can use a little longer stem, say 8cm long, but now you will have to raise the stem higher to get the bars even with the top of the saddle. An 8cm stem will give you some leeway to adjust for shorter or longer reach. You can switch to a 6 cm stem for less reach or to a 10 cm stem for more reach. Of course you can always raise and lower an 8 cm stem to adjust your reach as well. If the top tube length on the larger Hilsen doesn't scare you, I would get the larger size. The standover is a non-issue. If you want to test out how the 88 cm standover will feel, put some books under the tires of your current bike (or a friend's bike) until the middle of the top tube is 88cm above the ground. Then put on some cycling shoes and straddle the top tube. Also keep in mind that just leaning the bike slightly to the side will provide even more clearance. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. To post to this group, send email to rbw-owners-bu...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to rbw-owners-bunch+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/rbw-owners-bunch?hl=en.
