Was the initial question about shimmy, or about straight line stability? As
Antone says, there is a big difference. I've owned bikes that just felt
"darty" -- they didn't want to track straight, and the slightest body
adjustment or sidewind would send them swerving. *And*, this could happen
on a bike that was, if anything, rather sluggish in turn-in -- we're not
talking about darty crit bikes.
One such bike was an otherwise nice Fuji Royale, 6 speed era ('cause it was
written on the right chain stay: "12 Speed"). The bike just didn't want to
track straight. It wasn't terrible, and you could adjust, and I did, but it
just wasn't stable. And this was no darty crit bike by any means.
But put a 20+ lb load in the back, and the handling became just sweet, if
rather sedate.
Likewise: riding a NORBA (can't speak to modern ones) era mountain bike
with too-skinny tires: again, just would not track straight.
Or, last example, my otherwise nice Sam Hill. Fine, if rather sedate on the
flats, but point it uphill, sit far back, gear down, and pedal hard, and it
was very hard to keep the thing in a straight line. (This is very great
contradistinction from my 4 other Rivs, of which one wonderful quality was
straight line, no-thought/no worries stability, albeit with supremely
confident and seamless turn-in. In fact, on the flats or in fast downhill
sweepers, the Sam felt rock solid.)
All of this is and entirely different matter from shimmy.
I think that the Original Person was talking about this sort of
instability, and not shimmy -- right?
Patrick "fwiw, the 15 mph+ no-hands-only shimmy on the '03 Curt seems to
have mysteriously disappeared this year" Moore
On Tue, May 23, 2017 at 7:00 PM, Antone Könst <[email protected]>
wrote:
> But there is basic stability, as opposed to the speed wobble kind of
> shimmying...my old Nishiki I'd ride through NYC with no hands for miles,
> besides lights, but through intersections and down hills, even loaded. My
> new (to me) Cheviot is very hard to control with no hands on a flat road
> with no load. Why?
>
>
--
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 [email protected].
To post to this group, send email to [email protected].
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/rbw-owners-bunch.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
