Yes, the design is the major factor in terms of how the bike handles and rides... however. The tubing diameter and wall thickness directly influence the stiffness (or perhaps more accurately the spring rate) of each tube. This in turn will affect the bike's response to loading whether from weight put on the bike or dynamic loading from pedaling, etc. Take a Roadeo and put 100 lbs of stuff in panniers on it and compare it to the same size Atlantis with the same load and the bikes will tolerate those loads differently; the odds are that the Atlantis will handle much better because the frame won't flex as much from the load.
That's an extreme case, though, and for most aspects of the riding experience the effects of frame design will be more prominent than whether the belly of the tube is .07 or .08. However, on interwebs forums you'll find a lot of argument to the contrary from the princess and the pea crowd. I remember one guy on rec.bicycles hollering blue bloody murder because his custom bike came with a top tube like 3 mm off spec center to center and how the builder "ruined" his bike. I am so glad that I am not as sensitive to these things and too ignorant to know the difference. Tim On Jun 20, 2014, at 12:30 PM, dougP <dougpn...@cox.net> wrote: > Surely the design is the lion's share of a bike's handling, ride, response, > etc. The raw material would have to be top quality to produce the designer's > intent, but likely there are several vendors products that are functionally > interchangeable. Designers like Grant have accumulated years (decades?) of > experience. Remember his "how to design a frame" tutorial a couple of years > ago? Ain't so easy, I suspect. > > dougP > > On Friday, June 20, 2014 8:24:30 AM UTC-7, Joe Bernard wrote: > My initial comments about my Heron Road generated a good bit of discussion > about the perceived wonderfulness of a specific tube, which has been > interesting and informative, but possibly misses a salient fact about said > bicycle: I've owned several Grant-designed bikes, and they all have an > hard-to-describe-if-you-haven't-experienced-it ability to float comfortably > down the road; hold a stable line in a turn; yet snap into a different > direction on a whim. I've ridden enough other bikes in 25 years to know this > is not an universal quality in frame design, which is one of the things that > makes Rivendells (and Riv-designed Herons) special. Of course the tubes > chosen for each model/size are part of the equation, but I suspect the > geometries they are placed into make more of a difference in the > ride/handling than the specific properties of the tube themselves. This would > be my guess, at any rate. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to rbw-owners-bunch+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to rbw-owners-bunch@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/rbw-owners-bunch. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
