My experience with randonneuring is limited to riding the Pt. Reyes Populaire last weekend. And my experience with putting high front loads on a bike is limited to my 52 cm Sam. So I can't give much direct insight into brevet-riding details or compare to other bikes but I do have a lot of experience riding the Hillborne front-loaded.
I have a Nitto mini front rack and a medium wald basket zip-tied to the rack. Almost every time I'm on the bike something's in that basket. Regularly I ride with loads up to perhaps 10 lbs in there. And when grocery-shopping I suspect closer to 20 lbs is sometimes in there. Though I'm always lightly climbing away from the grocery store when loaded (as opposed to high-speed descending-- this comment will make sense later). In my experience once you adapt to the feel of the loaded bike (which happens quickly) it's like nothing's there. In my several months with the bike I've only observed one instance of a slight handling issue for which I don't actually blame the bike. I don't blame the bike as the loading was done haphazardly, quickly and strangely AND my headset needed tightening at the time. I had probably about 10 lbs in the basket and probably more like 25-30 lbs lashed haphazardly (almost certainly off-balance) and high to the rear rack. When descending at high speed one-handed while wiping wind- tears out of my eyes there was some front-end shudder/oscillation. Riding with two soft hands rather than one grippy hand dampened the shudder out. No need to slow down or anything extreme like that thanks to the soft hands. No need to use the thigh-on-top-tube trick. -Mike On Oct 4, 7:34 pm, ToddBS <[email protected]> wrote: > From photos and geometry charts, it looks like the Sam Hillborne has a > good bit of fork rake. I was curious if anyone had experience using > the Sam for front-loaded light touring, specifically in a > randonneuring capacity, but anyone riding it with a rando style > handlebar bag. > > I know the Sam is supposed to be the replacement for the Bleriot, > which a lot of folks used for that type of activity. --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/rbw-owners-bunch?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
