On Jul 11, 2009, at 12:07 PM, [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: Here are some attempted answers to your voluminous questions. Are you preparing a dissertation? ;-) > Were the Heron Road and Rivendell Road Standard available at the same > time or did one succeed the other? They were concurrent. Two different business ventures. The Rivendell Road was a frame/fork built and painted mostly to Grant's specs under contract by Waterford, until that relationship ended and Grant moved on to having other builders and painters do them. The Heron was a group venture between Grant, Waterford and a third guy whose name I cannot recall. There were too many shares of the pie and it was not profitable as such. The venture was sold to Todd Kuzma, who continued to have the frames built at Waterford at least for a while. My wife has a Heron Road, it is a very fine machine and easily on par with the Rambouillet in terms of quality. I have a Waterford-built All-Rounder, also a very fine machine but a LongLow would have suited me better in hindsight. > Did they have the same lugs, geometry, tubing? No. The Rivendells were 753 with 531 forks, the Herons were 531 throughout. I believe the lugs were Waterford's standard lugs. > Is there a reliable way to differentiate a semi-custom Road from a > Road Standard? No. Grant was customizing the designs quite early on. The Waterford- built ones were the most standardized but were still tweaked quite a bit for individual customers if they asked. By the time the Joe- built and Curt-built bikes came along (1998 maybe?), they were pure custom. The Waterford decal on the left chainstay is probably the best indicator, along with the serial number. > What features could be changed on a custom - tubing, braze-ons, > brakes, geometry? Tubing and geometry was/is Grant's choice. > Were all match-built Rivendell Roads Standards? No. Match mostly built All-Rounders. > Are geometry charts available for these bikes - in Readers or > catalogs? Yes. Buy the CDs of the old Readers. --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ 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 -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
