I was always curious what the the original Rivendell Mountain fork crown was supposed to look like. Per Rivendell Reader Grant writes:
"The Rivendell mountain crown is less ornate, but it’s not your basic TIG-welded unicrown. The fork blades are silver-brazed to a beautiful cast lug, which distributes stress better than a TIG weld. It’s based on a design Waterford wanted to sell to S, after the separation, but it had the misfortune of being conceived at about the same time as suspension forks, so marketing forces snuffed it before it could ever be made. I saw the design, liked it, and added the shoulder window. No place for an epaulet!" The description leaves a lot to the imagination. I was a little disappointed that The Rivendell Mountain didn't have its own specific design lugs. Don't know how I would have felt if it turned out to be the lugged uni-crown design. I know at that point I was expecting something similar to the Ritchey designed Bi-plane fork crown from the recent Bridgestone Cycle days. Thanks, Reginald Alexis On Sunday, July 7, 2024 at 9:48:59 AM UTC-5 Ted Durant wrote: > > On Jul 6, 2024, at 10:42 PM, Patrick Moore <[email protected]> wrote: > > Wasn't the original Riv mountain bike built generally along the lines of > the All Rounder which was modeled on the Bridgestone XOs, thus with far > lower stack than later Rivs? > > > The Bridgestone to Riv jump was: > RB -> Road > XO -> All Rounder > MB -> ATB > > The geometry on my Riv ATB was very close to the MB-1. The ATB was > originally supposed to have a fork crown that looked something like a > lugged unicrown. There was no way to bend the 753 blades to work that way, > so they ended up using the All Rounder fork crowns, instead. > > At the time Grant was starting to include top tube upslope even on road > frames, plus an extended head tube and spacers in the headset to “get da > bars up dere”. I remember the Reader copy trying to sell the idea and > saying “it’s barely noticeable”, acknowledging the resistance people had to > something that might look weird. Then the bike industry adopted the idea of > “compact frame” geometry with sloping top tubes and sold it as a way to > make frames lighter and stiffer, and suddenly sloped top tubes on road > bikes were cool. It was a while later than the big bike companies started > selling “endurance” road bikes with the sloping top tube and extended head > tube to have a higher bar height. > > 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 view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/rbw-owners-bunch/34a8adc6-ccc0-4865-b5ba-9d34ae618ef0n%40googlegroups.com.
