On Sunday, January 21, 2018 at 2:16:13 PM UTC-6, Dave Small wrote: > 1. Has anyone else experienced something similar and then fixed it, > 2. Has anyone used drop bars on a Cheviot? >
Sounds VERY similar to my own experience. I’ve been thinking about writing a post on this, following the earlier thread on upright riding. I first tried Albatross bars on a Quickbeam and didn’t like the way it handled (squirrely front end). We also have a CoMotion Periscopa tandem that has Albatross bars because it’s our “kids and guests” tandem so gets used by people of widely varying sizes, and it works well for that. I have gone through a number of iterations with my Cheviot, today being iteration number 6 or so. I just took drop bars (on a short Dirt Drop stem) off of it and replaced them with VO Belleville. Haven’t gone anywhere on it, yet, but initial feel is “wow are these narrow!” I’ve now tried Albatross, Choco, Mustache, and drop (Nitto 176) with a variety of stem lengths and heights, ranging from a bolt upright (think Dutch) position to something close to my normal road bike position. I bought the Cheviot intending it to be my daily commuting bike. It’s an 8.5 mile mostly flat, half on a bike path route with a small amount of “urban” riding at one end. Here on the shores of Lake Michigan, though, there is always the wind. And, like Dave, I find the Cheviot to be very hard to ride. Objectively, measured over many rides, the bike adds around 5 minutes to what is normally around 35 minutes, much more if using upright bars and there’s a headwind. Coming home last week, riding with a guy I occasionally meet on the commute, he dropped me like a rock on the little hill near home. Normally I can keep up with him with a bit of effort. Yeah, snow tires don’t help, but it wasn’t just that. The Cheviot simply doesn’t reward you for pushing harder on the pedals. On the contrary, it makes my knees hurt when I try to ride it like my other bikes. It’s plenty comfortable as long as you don’t try to accelerate. Slow, steady, build up momentum over time, and it’s fine. My commute is just long enough that most days I want a more sprightly ride. The riding position with drop bars and a short stem is nice and familiar, and I’m sure I could ride a long distance comfortably with it but I’d be working harder than on my other bikes. All that said, the Cheviot is great for running errands, and a more upright position for that is just fine. I’m trying the Belleville bars because I find Alba and Choco to be too wide. The Belleville might be a bit to much the other direction - we’ll see! As for commuting, I’m in the fortunate position of having a Terraferma Corsa 650B that I replaced with a Waterford ST for brevet riding. The Terraferma is brilliant for commuting - handles my backpack on the front rack perfectly, low BB, cushy tires, very responsive frame for sprinting to make a light. Ted Durant Milwaukee, WI USA -- 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.
