Yes, I agree with Jim. If versatillity is a hallmark of the Riv brand, then threadless is quite an appropriate design consideration, or at least an option.
________________________________ From: Jim Thill - Hiawatha Cyclery <thill....@gmail.com> To: RBW Owners Bunch <rbw-owners-bunch@googlegroups.com> Sent: Sun, August 29, 2010 12:41:48 AM Subject: [RBW] Re: WTB: midge, junebug, woodchipper, etc Seth makes a good point, in that many Riv customers and aspiring Riv customers prefer the classic quill aesthetic, and maybe Grant has decided that filling this niche is an important part of the RBW business model. But threadless steerers have been mainstream long enough now, that even retro-grouches can appreciate that it is a proven design. I'm not going to get into my long list of reasons to favor 9/8" threadless, but in the context of this discussion, one key point has surfaced: there are a lot of interesting handlebars that can't be used with available quill stems. If a bar has a 31.8 clamp area, and many newer bars are only available in 31.8, there is no quill stem that will accommodate it. If the bar is not a single continuous bend - think h-bar - then a removable face plate is needed, again, not generally available in a quill stem. If versatility is a hallmark of the RBW brand, then the quill stem runs counter to that ideal, given the current huge variety of threadless stems and handlebars that cannot be used on Rivendell frames without some kind of kludgy adapter. Anyway, I just went for my first ride of any distance with Woodchipper bars on my Post-Riv Curt Goodrich A/R. I ran the Shimano bar-end shifters up top on thumbie mounts (one Paul, one IRD, in the interest of science). I like the bar quite a bit, but may screw around with the angle a little (very little). And, since I was changing things around, I replaced the Paul Cantis with Tektro v-brakes. I once was of the opinion that the Paul cantis had great stopping power, and they do, for cantis, but a couple times this evening, I was pleasantly surprised by the massive increase in braking power from the v-brakes. This swap was inspired by a LHT I just set up for my wife a couple months ago. With cantis, she lacked the hand strength to bring the bike to a quick stop. Switching to cheapie Tektro v-brakes (and appropriate levers), her modest hand strength was suddenly more than adequate for effective stopping. The improvement was so drastic, that I decided to try it on one of my own bikes. I don't know why I waited so long, but I'm now of the opinion that my cantilever days are behind me. Even the cheap v-brakes are comparatively amazing. Just one more bike with cantis in my personal fleet, and that will be changing sooner than later. On Aug 28, 8:47 pm, Seth Vidal <skvi...@gmail.com> wrote: > On Sat, Aug 28, 2010 at 9:46 PM, Jim Thill - Hiawatha Cyclery > > <thill....@gmail.com> wrote: > > Time for Riv to go threadless! > > Let's not have that happen. I really don't care for threadless very much. > > -sv -- 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. -- 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.
