Well, this has been interesting :) Thanks to those who offered opinions and comments, which I think are netted out below:
- aesthetics ... sidepulls look right on a road bike - now that the homer and atlantis are made in taiwan, and pretty much clones of their formerly-cheaper taiwan twin, the reason to differentiate the models has gone away - canti/v forks need to be stouter to offset the higher braking loads (assumption is it'll cost more, or have diff handling? That much more?) - some people just want sidepulls and would go elsewhere if not offered (reason not given; maybe aesthetics again.) - companies like trek also have lots of model overlap like Riv now has (trek is now a billion dollar company with 2K employees ; Riv isn't.) - brazing on cantilevers costs more (does it cost more than a offering an entirely new bike that is a 95% clone?) - the diff models offer slightly diff size options (so why not offer 1 model of each -- Homer or Sam, or, Atlantis or Joe -- with the full range of sizes?) - some people are intimidated by canti brakes (reason not given. Is it setup/adjustment? Hmm, so install V brakes...) - centerpulls and sidepulls are fine up to 42mm tires (actually w/out fenders, 44mm works on a sidepull Sam fork), so why incur the extra cost (again, worth a whole bike that's a 95% clone?) - someone thought i meant make all bikes 650b. No; I actually said offer 650b in the *mid sizes*, which tends to be Riv's preference anyway, but not all bikes for some reason - certain brake pads may make weaker brakes (like sidepulls, centerpulls) as strong as canti/v -- or strong enough, anyway Obviously everyone has an opinion and none are right or wrong -- just different. It's been interesting to read the comments! Tom -- 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 https://groups.google.com/group/rbw-owners-bunch. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
