You mention the steerer strength is between 1" and 11/8" threadless. Has anyone given any thought to possibly the superior strength of 1" steerer that Rivendell is possibly using that was not used years past? Both Grant Peterson in early Rivendell Readers possibly and for sure Keith Bontrager in his writings have exposed how some larger bike companies have used lesser materials like high-ten steel tubing in headtube and bottom bracket shells to save cost that ended up causing failures and issues which lead to using oversized tubing to counteract these failures. Is it possible the bent 1" steerer is the result of companies using not as strong tubing in the steer tube and that current Rivendell forks a lot better, stronger tubing in that application for that reason. I may be wrong on that issue.
As far as disc verse canti, I personally find it disapointing that there are hardly any canti brake bikes outside of low end units and possibly and odd ball here and there. The only bike I have with disc is a Gary Fisher X-Caliber 29er with used Avid BB-5 brakes on 160mm rotors. They work ok, not spectacular. I have gotten better braking out of cheap, low end linear pull brakes, but that may be a product of the used brakes than anything else. I have built new bikes up with disc brakes and didn't notice anything spectacular on the test rides. I haven't spent a ton of time on disc brakes either. One of the issues now is that with the bicycle industry pushing disc brakes more, this has caused less quality cantilever brakes to be made. Gone are Avid Single Digit Ultimate and Cane Creek Direct Curve 5, formerly Onza Pork Rib brakes. That along with standard canti brakes like the Avid Tri-Align, Interloc 5-10, or Wilderness Trail Bikes Speedmaster. All but one bike I have has standard cantilever brakes on them. I is nice that Rivendell still offers standard cantilever brakes. It is my preference. I don't see the need to move to disc brakes, but that does not mean I won't at some point, but not anytime soon. For anyone that likes cantilever brakes bikes, it would seen that now is as good a time as any to pick up some older bike that has them like an Ibis Mojo steel, Moots, for a reasonable amount with disc, through axle/Boost, 44mm headtube/taper steerer bikes being all the rage now. The thought of having Rivendell build a disc brake, 11/8" steerer bike takes me back to when I ordered my Rivendell Mountain. I wanted to substitute KGB/Breezer or Ritchey hooded drops in place of the forged drop outs they were being built with along with Rollercam/U-Brake mounts. Pretty much said No Go on the drop outs, but was more receptive to the Rollercam mounts. In the end, I went with the standard cantilever brakes for future replacement reasons. I have been happily riding that bike since with no regret on not getting those specs. Reginald Alexis -- 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.
