Compare handling of 80's Atala Pro, Gios Torino, Basso Gap, Pro Miyata, Cinelli, Trek, Colnago...

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In article <[email hidden]>,

Jeff Potter said:

OK, I'm looking for a new road bike. A new old one. I like the 80's
bikes.

I've had a Pro Miyata forever and I like how it handles. I also had a
Trek 760 and another sporty lugged Trek. Liked those, too. I didn't
like an 80's Cannondale---too harsh.

So I'm looking at a wide variety of nifty old top road bikes.

Does anyone care to comment on how these various bikes rode and
handled? Are they hugely different from each other?

Quoted message said:

Basso Gap

_ I don't know about the rest, but I picked up a relatively new
Basso Gap frame on Ebay this summer and it's very nice. It's
definitely racy, but not unreasonably twitchy. I haven't been on
any rides longer than about 3 hrs with it yet, but I don't get
that "fighting" the bike sensation that sometimes get with racier
bikes when you get tired. It's not as quite as "unconscious[1]"
as a longer wheelbase bike, but it's not a radical change
either. With reasonable components it build up into a 21lb
bike. Plus the paint job is really nice....

_ Booker C. Bense

[1]- i.e. the bike just goes straight, no matter how tired and
sloppy you get...

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well, i have an '93 rb1 with campy chorus/record parts and it handles great!
i've taken it on long rides (4.5hrs) on flats, uphills and twisty downhills
and love it! the handling is great. even on the long flat rides it felt
fine. i understand the geometry is like japanese sport touring
bikes...slacker seat angles and longish top tubes.
i also have an older (mid 80's) bianchi with NR parts that felt much more
twitchy on tight turns. then again, i was a new rider and the setup is not
identical so...maybe i'll set it up again and give it another try...

"Jeff Potter" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

OK, I'm looking for a new road bike. A new old one. I like the 80's
bikes.

I've had a Pro Miyata forever and I like how it handles. I also had a
Trek 760 and another sporty lugged Trek. Liked those, too. I didn't
like an 80's Cannondale---too harsh.

So I'm looking at a wide variety of nifty old top road bikes.

Does anyone care to comment on how these various bikes rode and
handled? Are they hugely different from each other?

Atala Pro
Gios Torino
Basso Gap
Pro Miyata
Cinelli Super Corsa
Trek 760
Colnago
Bridgestone RB1

Thanks for your views!!! --JP

outyourbackdoor.com

Booker C. Bense said:

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In article <[email hidden]>,
Jeff Potter <[email hidden]> wrote:

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

OK, I'm looking for a new road bike. A new old one. I like the 80's
bikes.

I've had a Pro Miyata forever and I like how it handles. I also had a
Trek 760 and another sporty lugged Trek. Liked those, too. I didn't
like an 80's Cannondale---too harsh.

So I'm looking at a wide variety of nifty old top road bikes.

Does anyone care to comment on how these various bikes rode and
handled? Are they hugely different from each other?

Quoted message said:

Basso Gap

_ I don't know about the rest, but I picked up a relatively new
Basso Gap frame on Ebay this summer and it's very nice. It's
definitely racy, but not unreasonably twitchy. I haven't been on
any rides longer than about 3 hrs with it yet, but I don't get
that "fighting" the bike sensation that sometimes get with racier
bikes when you get tired.

I used to borrow a friend's Basso Gap, which I enjoyed riding. I wouldn't call
it twitchy either, despite the 75 degree head angle. However, I think Basso put
a lot of effort into making them handle well, by matching the fork offset to
each frame size.

Also, it depends a lot on your own size. Taller riders get squeezed onto the
same short wheelbase as everyone else. This is stupid, the result of a fetish
with "racy" short wheelbases. As a result, race bikes get twitchier as riders
and frame sizes get taller.

Quoted message said:

It's not as quite as "unconscious[1]"
as a longer wheelbase bike, but it's not a radical change
either. With reasonable components it build up into a 21lb
bike. Plus the paint job is really nice....

Nice fillet brazing and nice lugs on the same bike, can't beat that!

Quoted message said:

[1]- i.e. the bike just goes straight, no matter how tired and
sloppy you get...

Like my new Klein...

Matt O.

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In article <[email hidden]>,

Matt O'Toole said:

Booker C. Bense said:

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In article <[email hidden]>,
Jeff Potter <[email hidden]> wrote:

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

OK, I'm looking for a new road bike. A new old one. I like the 80's
bikes.

I've had a Pro Miyata forever and I like how it handles. I also had a
Trek 760 and another sporty lugged Trek. Liked those, too. I didn't
like an 80's Cannondale---too harsh.

So I'm looking at a wide variety of nifty old top road bikes.

Does anyone care to comment on how these various bikes rode and
handled? Are they hugely different from each other?

Quoted message said:

Basso Gap

_ I don't know about the rest, but I picked up a relatively new
Basso Gap frame on Ebay this summer and it's very nice. It's
definitely racy, but not unreasonably twitchy. I haven't been on
any rides longer than about 3 hrs with it yet, but I don't get
that "fighting" the bike sensation that sometimes get with racier
bikes when you get tired.

I used to borrow a friend's Basso Gap, which I enjoyed riding. I wouldn't call
it twitchy either, despite the 75 degree head angle. However, I think Basso put
a lot of effort into making them handle well, by matching the fork offset to
each frame size.

Also, it depends a lot on your own size. Taller riders get squeezed onto the
same short wheelbase as everyone else. This is stupid, the result of a fetish
with "racy" short wheelbases. As a result, race bikes get twitchier as riders
and frame sizes get taller.

_ I've dabbled in a lot of sports over the years and it's really
interesting that there's so little understanding of how things
actually work and how unnecessary understanding them is to
doing them. Skiing, biking and windsurfing all have in common
that most of the people doing them don't really understand how
they turn and how changes in the gear affect turning. If you have
to think about it, you can't do it.

_ Bicycles have been around for a relatively long time and
perhaps outside of rowing was the first "gear" sport. Yet even
after 100 years, there is no standard way of talking about bike
handling. It's can't be that complicated, yet it seems to be so
poorly understood, look at the drivel I wrote above. A bike is
just a rather simple machine, there ought to be a way to quantify
it. This dilemma suggests to me that we just haven't found the
right metric. We're measuring isolated things and making profound
statements based on them, when we should really be looking at
some derived quanity based on an integration of the various
measurements. For me that seems to be how wide my smile is
after a 100 miles....

_ Booker C. Bense

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