It would be interesting to hear from a professional bicycle designer on this point:
"I know it's hard to design small frames without design compromises; is one of the compromises putting the rider too far back on the bike? " Based on my 5' 2" tall wife's experiences with a few bikes, small bikes with 700c wheels don't work well at low speed. She rode a low end MTB with 26" wheels that climbed quite well at walking speed. Then she moved on to a mid-grade sport-touring bike with 700c wheels that was considerably lighter but took more attention when climbing. This bike is similar to a 58 cm in our family and the head tube angle of the smaller one is visibly more slack. A few years ago she got a 47 cm Atlantis with 26" wheels. She has climbed long grades with panniers and noticed how much easier it is compared to her previous bikes. Both leg effort & general control are superior and she's quite confident with the Atlantis. Both the Atlantis and the old MTB have 44 cm chainstays and the 700c wheeled sport tourer has 42 cm chainstays. So being further back may be a factor but likely it's a combination of things. My thought is the front end has a lot to do with the feel of the bike especially at low speeds. It seems the slack head tube angle would result on more wheel flop for the rider to deal with. On a steep climb where the front end is lightly weighted, a floppy front wheel could cause the rider to lose confidence in the bike's stability. Note that I have no qualifications, just observations & opinions. It would be interesting to hear from someone who does this professionally. dougP On Sunday, November 9, 2014 9:54:34 PM UTC-8, Anne Paulson wrote: > > A few months ago I asked for suggestions about how I could climb > better on my new bike. I was feeling that I was worse at climbing on > the new bike than on my other bikes despite having lower gears, > and was unable to climb hills that I should have been > able to climb. > > I figured out the problem: my weight was too far back. I dropped the > handlebars, and (as I thought) moved the saddle forward. That helped a > little. Then I replaced the offset seatpost with a straight seatpost. > While doing that I noticed that instead of moving the saddle all the > way forward, I had moved the seatpost all the way forward on the > saddle- so I had moved the saddle *back*. Oops. Moving it forward > solved the problem completely. There are plenty of super steep dirt > trails that I can't climb, but I am able to climb normally steep hills > with no problem. Hurray! > > And that brings me to a question about frame design for short people. > One of my riding partners is 5 feet tall. She's slender, and she > climbs like a rocket, much faster than I can. But, oddly, even though > we have the same low gears, she has trouble climbing the super steep > roads that I love to tackle. She's afraid of them, says she can't > balance. I know it's hard to design small frames without design > compromises; is one of the compromises putting the rider too far back > on the bike? > > On Fri, Apr 25, 2014 at 8:22 PM, Anne Paulson <[email protected] > <javascript:>> wrote: > > > But now I understand. I thought when I bought my new Surly Krampus > mountain > > bike I'd be able to climb even steeper dirt roads than I now can climb > on my > > Atlanti. I thought, I have an absurdly low gear on the Krampus (15.6 > inches, > > something like that), I have all the traction in the world, I can climb > > anything. > > > > But no. I'm finding that I climb *worse* on the Krampus. It's > frustrating. > > There are dirt sections that I have no trouble on with the Atlantis, > with > > smooth tires, that I can't climb on the Krampus with the knobbies. > > > > What's going on here? Front-end geometry? Wheel weight? Bottom bracket > > height? > > > > -- > -- Anne Paulson > > It isn't a contest. Enjoy the ride. > > > -- > -- Anne Paulson > > It isn't a contest. Enjoy the ride. > -- 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 [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/rbw-owners-bunch. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
