On Mon, 2010-03-01 at 10:06 -0800, newenglandbike wrote: > I took another look at the article last night, and this is an > (approximate) summary of what's in it: > > In the test, two of the forks compared had equivalent offsets and > tubing, but one had a much lower, tighter bend than the other. The > one with the much lower bend had much more flex or 'vertical > compliance'. There was another fork of identical tubing but with a > greater offset, and this one had significantly larger flex/compliance. > > There was also an Alex Singer fork in the comparison, which IIRC had a > large offset and a lower bend, so that the angle of the blade was > shallowest at the dropouts. Heine stated that the fork had been > specifically designed to be very strong near the crown, with uniform > diameter/thickness elliptical-cross-section tubing all the way from > the crown to the cantilever bosses. The reasoning for the design was > because fork blades most commonly break near the crown, so they were > made extra-strong there. Below the bosses, the fork gradually takes > on a circular cross-section and smaller diameter all the way to the > bend, which has a small radius and starts low on the fork. The Alex > Singer fork had the most absorption of any of the forks tested. > > The Alex Singer fork looked something like this: > > http://www.vintagebicyclepress.com/images/chromsing.jpg > > As for exactly how important the flex characteristics of a fork are in > how a > bike rides, I have no idea- but my point was that, assuming > shock absorption is important, and that the bicycles NAHBS > are supposed to represent the best designs, it just seemed odd to > me to have a straight-blade fork there (not that the Dominguez bike > had straight forks, which it didn't as pointed out above) >
The problem is the assumption that the "bicycles at NAHBS are supposed to represent the best designs." The bicycles shown at NAHBS are supposed to showcase the builder's skills at building the sort of bikes he wants to build and sell, and they reflect the builder's preferences as well as those of their preferred customers. Although they always look weird to me, as though the bikes had been on a roof rack when they were driven into the garage, there are plenty of customers (and builders, too) who like the look of straight blade forks. -- 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.
