I personally know a person who re-raked his Atlantis fork with questionable to no results. This person rides extremely long events, and ultimately his conclusion on the experiment was: Meh. It didn't do anything. Eventually he had a new fork built, and it seems to have changed the handling with a large front-only load. But wheel flop is still a factor because the headtube is slack.
That said, he had a different rando-specific bike built, and it is still on the higher side of trail figures at 57mm. And it carries a handlebar bag perfectly fine. So is low trail really the be-all end-all thing to focus on? Methinks not. As Cyclofiend stated, there are FAR more factors to a bike's handling than just the fork rake. And if you're looking at low trail as The Thing That Will Help, you can't look at it without also taking into consideration headtube angle, tire size, what size loads you generally carry, where you carry them, etc. I ride brevets on a Saluki ( http://flickr.com/photos/gzahnd/2221488837/ ) with a medium sized Inujirushi handlebar bag, and I don't have problems. I can ride no handed in just about any condition other than uphill at <10mph. But really, who climbs without their hands on the bars? That isn't efficient. Oh, and heavy cross winds seem to bite me with a bar bag up front. I've never ridden a low trail bike, so I can't compare the uphill-no-hands or crosswind factors. So to answer your philosophical question, my opinion is that you'd be taking a bike designed for certain types of riding, and trying to make it something that it is not. It isn't designed for that one very specific type of load carrying, and anything you do to it is less than ideal because you're only looking at one of many factors. Gino (sorry, Jim, about continuing this thread) On Fri, Jan 23, 2009 at 6:51 AM, Larry Powers <[email protected]> wrote: > I randonneur on a Rambouillet with a large Berthoud handlebar bag. Most of > the time there are no issues with this but when I am tired and climbing > steep hills I can notice the affect of the bag. For this reason and because > I would also be able to run bigger tires with fenders, I have toyed with > getting a new fork for the bike. If I did would this still be a Riv > Rambouillet? Riv/Grant intentionally build high trail bikes so modifying > one of their bikes to a low trail bike goes against their philosophy and In > my mind creates a bike that is no longer a Rivendell. > > This is merely a philisophical question I am pondering while at work. Many > people love to tinker and there is nothing wrong with that. When my > beautiful orange Rambouillet finally needs a paint job I may decide to > modify it by changing the fork and adding canti studs but when I do I am not > sure that I can say it is a Rivendell. > > Larry Powers > > "just when you think that you've been gyped the bearded lady comes and does > a double back flip" - John Hiatt > > > > ________________________________ > Hotmail(R) goes where you go. On a PC, on the Web, on your phone. See how. > > > --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ 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 -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
