Answers inserted to the best of my knowledge... On Sat, Jul 11, 2009 at 10:07 AM, [email protected] < [email protected]> wrote:
> With all the interest generated by the anticipated, new club-rider > road bike, thought it might be an appropriate time to bring up the > history of pre-Ram Rivendell road bikes. The only mention of these on > the cyclofiend site is in the list of models and there seems to be a > dearth of specific information on these bikes on the web in general. > Some specifics of interest to me: > Were the Heron Road and Rivendell Road Standard available at the same > time or did one succeed the other? Waterford built Road Standard and All Rounder were first, maybe then the Long Low, then came the Heron road and touring models. Did they have the same lugs, geometry, tubing? Nope, Heron lugs were simpler and unique. Rivs were custom drawn Reynolds 753, Herons were 531 and had round fork blades (as did at least some Long Lows). Heron geometry was very similar, but had fewer sizes (maybe even cms vs. every cm.). Is there a reliable way to differentiate a semi- custom Road from a Road > Standard? The earlier, stock Road Stds. were all that custom 753 and had a special French style but in English tubing decal. The semi-customs have a mix of tubes and no tubing decal at all. What features could be changed on a custom - tubing, braze-ons, brakes, > geometry? On the semi-customs (like my Joe Starck built '99 Road Std.) the tubing was picked for you, you could pick from a variety of braze-ons but the geometry was stock. A "full custom" meant tweaked for you, but Grant still picked the geometry and it probably didn't deviate much from the standard. Long Lows usually (always?) had cantis, because the standard reach brakes were all old stock at the time. Semi-customs and customs have a serial number that indicates the builder and year. Were all match-built Rivendell Roads Standards? No, match built All Rounders for sure, not certain about the Long Low. It was pretty much absorbed as the normal RBW BB height was lowered to 8cm drop like the LL. Match was added because Joe couldn't keep up with demand. For a time, all semi-customs and customs were JS and stock builds were match. I don't think match ever did any non-stock building. Curt Goodrich was brought in to supplement Joe and eventually became the sole Riv builder when match failed. Are geometry charts available for these > bikes - in Readers or catalogs? How will the new road bike compare to > these? From reading about the Ram, the major changes made from the > Roads were long reach brakes, wider fork crown, longer chain-stays, > double taper seat stays. Did trail and bb drop remain about the > same? Sounds like the new bike will have some features of both, but > lighter tubing than either. > David > --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ 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 -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
