William, I am sorry you are disappointed with our article on shimmy. We tried to offer summary of the factors that appear to cause or exacerbate shimmy. After all, we know that some bikes rarely shimmy (heavy tubes, long trail, no load, skinny tires). It appears that shimmy is a multi- faceted problem with more than one cause and more than one solution. To provide a complete picture, we presented other opinions on the issue, which may help you in your own research... I find it fascinating what people thought about these things 50 or 70 years ago.
Most of all, we felt the need to publish this article, because we very much like bikes with optimized handling, wide supple tires, relatively flexible tubing, etc. The one downside of these bikes is a greater tendency to display shimmy. Of course, your Sam Hillborne shows that even bikes that are very different also can display persistent shimmy. And none of our favorite bikes shimmies a lot, so low trail, front loads, wide supple tires and relatively flexible tubing don't automatically result in a bike that shimmies. I am beginning to believe that all bikes have a tendency to shimmy, and depending on a number of factors, the oscillations either are dampened or self- reinforce. For your bike, if you don't already have a needle-bearing headset, I'd give it a try. That is the only thing we have found to work consistently in "curing" shimmy or at least reducing it so that it appears only rarely. You may also try to switch to narrow, stiff tires, but there are downsides to that. If you are carrying a load on your bike, you could try using a backpack (with its own downsides). It's hard to change the tubing or geometry of your bike... I don't know what you expected in the article, but I would like to remind you that we offer a money-back guarantee for the unused portion of your subscription. And if your experiments yield something conclusive, please let us know. We'd love to publish your experiences as an additional piece to the puzzle. Jan Heine Editor Bicycle Quarterly http://www.bikequarterly.com Follow our blog at http://janheine.wordpress.com/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/rbw-owners-bunch?hl=en.
