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A nice comfy road bike.

7K views 66 replies 25 participants last post by  Walt 
#1 · (Edited)
#35 ·
For most people a road bike should have a sloping top tube. For a long time the sport clung to level top tubes but right now pretty much all the top of the line road bikes have sloping top tubes.

Stems are similar. In time sloping stems will become as normal as sloping top tubes. Basically unless you need a super low position a level stem does not make much sense. I expect that eventually the top pros will be on sloping stems in the larger sizes for all the reasons that PVD mentioned plus it lowers the front end of the bike for better aerodynamic profile in the context of a thinner stem for the raised bit vs the big fat head tube. The bikes are also lighter using this approach.

Great job on the bike BTW.
 
#37 ·
@ScaryJerry.
Went through that phase a few years ago. It looks cool, but it's a bad direction to go and is not correct route to go. I strongly recomend not doing it now. The reason is that it tends to trap the bike into one stem or stem/bar situation. Forget about passing the bike on to someone else, a rider will float around various setups as time goes by. During the season you may want low. In the winter you may want high. Best to stick to commercially available parts for ease of change.

PVD WarBird SS - Pvdwiki
PVD TIE Advanced X1 - Pvdwiki
PVD Bird of Prey - Pvdwiki
 
#51 ·
I chuckled at the posts predicting that a bike like this won't sell. Take a look at what's on the market these days and compare to a 1970s bike. Custom or production, 90% of today's bikes would have no hope of selling in 1972. The market continually changes. Even the tradition bound Europeans are putting out "radical" designs. The entire market has changed drastically due to the influence of mountain bikes and their disregard for tradition. I think that this bike looks like what conventional will be in 10 years. Just for the record, I'm a traditional level top tube, level stem guy but I like this bike.
 
#57 ·
Peter - It was really nice to meet you at Fourbarrel the other morning. Thanks again for the coffee and the guided tour of the bike. Weirdly, I didn't even notice the stem in person and I am nothing if not an aesthete.

On the right frame, the very wrong thing can often look very right.
 
#63 ·
I must be one of the oldest members contributing to this forum because I certainly remember the bicycle components that dictated the reason we had level top tubes and big frames on road bikes. All seat posts were short back then. Mostly in the 70's that meant Campagnolo and a little later Shimano. They were 180mm long and that means a long seat tube had to come up to meet it. There weren't longer ones for sale. All the road stems like a Cinelli didn't point up so a head tube needs to be long enough to put it in the right position with a seat. And of course almost every frame was built with lugs that confined designs to mostly level top tubes because of the limited angles available.

I might also mention that the foundation bicycles lots of people got started with back in the bike boom era of the 70's was the Schwinn Varsity, Continential and Super Sport (what I got in '65). They came in a 22 and 24 inch sizes. They weren't measured center to center but center to top. The top tube came in an inch lower than the top of the seat tube. The result of the sizing of these first bicycles was that many thought they needed larger frames then necessary because a 24" Schwinn was in reality a 23".
 
#65 ·
So far only one person has gotten close, but it wasn't phrased well enough to get the points for it. It would have to be said in a more deliberate way.

I'm suprised that this is such a mystery.


@Rody. YES! I need fancy color but I'm a cheap and impatient guy. 3 days local for cheap powder always ends up being my choice. One day I'll do a fancy paint job and hit you up.
 
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#67 ·
Aaaand... we're done.

If someone wants to re-start the level vs. sloping toptubes thing in another thread (because that topic has NEVER been discussed on the internet before...) feel free. Pete, if you have more pics or thoughts on stuff not related to stems or toptubes, post a new thread.

Thanks guys.

-Watl
 
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