After a reasonably low-mileage year in 2012, it's taken me about 2 1/2 months to get back to my bikes feeling "springy" this year...
Specifically to your questions: The Rambouillet and the Romulus are as much the same bike as you are likely to find. (Minor variant of course being the "Canti-Rom" which may have used slightly beefier seatstay tubing for the canti-mount posts). So anything said about one can be inferred to the other. The Ram/Rom and Hilsen are different bikes, as you would expect from a wider triangle and different design ideas separated by a number of years and iterations of models. Hilsen with more clearance for tires and probably a bit beefier tubing overall. Different lugs and dimensions. I'd say if you are looking for a refinement of the Ram/Rom towards the "snappy" end of the spectrum, I'd go to the Roadeo. In my mind, Roadeo is to Ram/Rom as Ram/Rom is to Hilsen. The idea of Urge / Surge / Springy / Planey has a ton of inherent variables. Cadence. Pedaling Style. Gear Choice. Rider Condition. Topography. That's _before_ you get to the whole issue of component choice. When I test rode the Hilsen for the first time, it only had 28 mm tires on it. (At the time, they were still waiting for the first batch of Jack Browns). It was a different ride. I would use the term "snappier". But, I sure wouldn't go to that tire size for my regular type of riding, which needs to deal with pavement, fire roads, rocks and singletrack (hopefully on the same ride). You also have the idea of "platform-specific-strength". For example, with the gearing I run on the Quickbeam (fixed 77"), I develop a certain cadence and way of pedaling for the roads in my region. When I switch over to the Hilsen with its coastable, multi-gear setup, it leaves me pretty torched for the first ride or two - pushing bigger gears at slower cadence and lower gears at high rate is a whole different set of muscle firing sequences. I do have to ask why you want to duplicate a bike you already have. I find that Rivendells in particular lend themselves to tweaking and refinements and reworking. If you get a little tired of a setup, they respond well to upgrades and changes. If you are looking for something that has more clearance for bigger tires - a development which is really pretty amazing - then as I say, Hilsen is a little stouter and Roadeo is a bit snappier. Hope that helps a bit. - Jim / cyclofiend.com -- 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 http://groups.google.com/group/rbw-owners-bunch?hl=en-US. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
