I finally concluded that the chainstays on my 61 Roadini are just a hair too long at 46cm. I'm not opposed to longer chainstays, it's just that it would be nice if there were a Rivendell option other than the Roadeo that had slightly more traditional road geometry. If they had capped it at 44cm for the large sizes or specced horizontal dropouts to allow a bit of adjustability I probably wouldn't have a real issue with it.
I don't buy the line that wheelbase doesn't affect handling significantly. I have an 90s road bike with 41cm stays that's exhausting to spend a long while on. The handling feels significantly more confident to me on that bike. I know that you can take the same lines but taking the same line on the long-stayed bike requires a good bit more lean than the other. It makes me a lot more hesitant to take corners as quickly on loose surfaces. Of course once you've lost traction it's easier to control and recover from skids with long chainstays but I'd rather not lose traction in the first place, you know? As someone who adjusts their bars below the saddle I'm also not really representative of the typical Rivendell rider, though. I suppose that at this point complaining about no shorter-chainstay'd Rivendells is like complaining that Cervelo doesn't have a steel option any more. Both companies once had the option for it but the type of riders they're intended for necessarily led them away from that. -- 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 view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/rbw-owners-bunch/dff29408-57da-4688-b22a-46425cc1d3b1%40googlegroups.com.
