I too have a 1996 26" wheel Allrounder. http://tinyurl.com/4qfwem http://tinyurl.com/45cbmr It was bought small to work well offroad, but over the years has generally been a commuter and mixed road steed. It has Reynolds753 tubing and is quite flexy, or these days one might say it planes. For years I had the handlebars about 2 inches below the saddle. Now they have been jacked up to about even with the saddle. Since then I have had a front end shimmy. This makes some sense to me, with the higher handlebars providing a longer lever arm to set up headtube oscillation. This shimmy is nothing I can't control with a knee against the toptube.
Another interesting experience with shimmy: I have a wonderful Curt- built Rivendell Road that has beautiful handling especially descending. http://tinyurl.com/4hdtuk I have never had any unusual handling out of this bike, except... On a local descent out of the Colorado National Monument there is a ~150meter long tunnel. In the middle it is hard for me to see the road surface, so psychologically I lose a little bit of spatial reference, or feedback about the road at least. I then tend to tighten up my grip and perhaps whole upper body, and then the bike starts to feel a bit squirrelly and even shakes a bit. As soon as I am out the end of the tunnel and back in daylight, I relax and the bike is rocksolid again. My behavior on the bike definitely effects the steering. > My 1996 All-Rounder has never shimmied that I can ever remember, and > I have a handlebar bag and Nitto mini-rack on that bike and no rear > load. It's pretty similar to the Altantis, so I was surprised to > read this article. My best estimate is that trail on the A/R is > about 55 mm. > > I think that too many people take what Grant writes and what Jan > Heine writes as some kind of cycling gospel. I see this unquestioned > acceptance coming up in all sorts of forums. --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ 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 -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
