I would suggest adjusting / slash tightening the headset, before I bought a new one.
My Ebisu All Purpose frame had a very slight front end shimmy as soon as I put it together. After two years of riding, I became aware that the shimmy was very gradually getting worse. One day I checked the headset and discovered it had loosened considerably. I ride a lot of bad roads and I now suspect that the top nut had never been tightened enough and rattled loose. It's better now. Michael On Dec 10, 1:03 pm, William <tapebu...@gmail.com> wrote: > I am a recent subscriber of Bicycle Quarterly. I had thought about > subscribing for a while, and two things about the newest issue made me > pull the trigger. One was the write up about the Bilenky 650B tandem > (dude, I want one). The other was the article about shimmy. I know > Jan Heine has a reputation under some sections of the big tent of > cycling, and I was interested to hear what he had to say. I expected > by now somebody would have started a thread about the shimmy article, > but it is towards the back. My Samuel Hillborne is the first bike > I've owned that has a pronounced tendency to shimmy when riding no- > handed. I'm not the most experienced rider. I've only had 30 or 40 > different bikes in my lifetime, so I don't have nearly the experience > Jan does. I hoped to gain a greater understanding of the problem and > maybe do something about it on my Sam. > > Unfortunately, I found the article almost entirely unsatisfying. The > Cliff-notes synopsis is: "I don't know what causes shimmy, nor does > anyone else. Here's what several oldschool guys said about shimmy. > They were wrong. I can't take a bike that doesn't shimmy and change > it into a bike that does shimmy. Even though I don't have any ideas > about the causes or the solutions, you should absolutely swap your > headset to needle bearings if your bike shimmies and hope for the > best, even though I don't know if it will help, and maybe will make it > worse" > > Now don't get me wrong. I don't understand shimmy, but I came to the > article with the attitude of student. The only other articles I've > read on the topic are Sheldon Brown's (RIP) very brief glossary > discussion and the Jobst Brandt article. For Jan to put the single > word "Shimmy" on the cover, and to title his article "What Causes > Shimmy?" suggests that he knows something. The article content itself > suggests to me that Jan might not know any more about shimmy than any > of us. That's not necessarily a bad thing: I'm convinced it's a > complex problem. But I'd almost rather see a person in a pedagogical > position of leadership to say "Hey, I know a lot, but I don't > understand shimmy. Here's some anecdotal observations I've made. > Here's some anecdotes I've heard, but haven't verified." and just end > it there. > > Since I'm growing convinced that there might not be anyone who really > understands shimmy, I'm going to run some experiments of my own on my > Hillborne to attempt to understand it more. Since that bike, in it's > current state, shimmies willingly when riding no-handed at 15mph on a > smooth flat road, I think I have a decent baseline and reasonably > reproducable test environment. I'm going to try several (numerous?) > things, and I'll at least try to take better than normal notes, and > see if I can learn anything. -- 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.
