70's & 80's Geometries: Raliegh, Fuji, Peugot, and others?

In article <[email hidden]>,

pinnah said:

Hey folks,

I've become interested in 70's and 80's production bikes. While I can
find some sources for catalogs and such, I'm having a hard time
finding information on frame geometries.

Could anybody point me to resources where older 70s and 80s vintage
frame specs might be found?

Or could people volunteer info they've found?

I'm particularly interested in the documenting the frame angles, fork
rakes and chainstay lengths of sport touring bikes of that era
compared to production race bikes.

What do you plan to do with this information?

--
Michael Press

hi pinnah.

i would say that the book, "The Golden Age of Handbuilt Bicycles" by
Jan Heine. I have a copy of this book and you'll find it an excellent
resource. Interestingly, Jan is also the editor for the vintage bicycle
quartely magazine, published four times a year.

This link will tell u more about the book, and how to subscribe to the
magazine. Link : http://www.vintagebicyclepress.com/goldenage.html

Also, in the month of june, if you're ready to do some travelling to
North Carolina, then you can attend the classic and handmade bicycle
show, and be part of some seminars.

The link is : http://www.classicrendezvous.com/Cirque.htm

hope this helps,

ron

Michael Press said:

What do you plan to do with this information?

Incorporate it in my spreadsheet of bike geometries here:
http://home.comcast.net/~pinnah/DirtbagPinner/bikes/bikes.html

-- Dave
==============================================
"It is impossible, or not easy, to do noble acts
without the proper equipment."
Aristotle, <<Politics>>, 1323a-b, trans Jowett
==============================================

bicycle_disciple said:

i would say that the book, "The Golden Age of Handbuilt Bicycles" by
Jan Heine. I have a copy of this book and you'll find it an excellent
resource. Interestingly, Jan is also the editor for the vintage bicycle
quartely magazine, published four times a year.

Ron,

I've corresponded with Jan a few times on the i-Bob list and he's been
very helpful.

My understanding is that is his book focuses on the early handmade
french bikes of the 50s and 60s.

I'm more interested in production bikes that hit the US in the 70s and
80s.

Some background... I've read about a zillion discussions about why
long trail (short rake) designs are supposed to be more stable but
have recently gone back to a '79 Trek Sport Touring bike. I can't
believe how much further I can ride with less effort and how much more
stable that bike is over bumpy rough roads. I'm glad to see the
Specialized Roubaix (among others) moving to slacker HAs and more rake
but I get the sense we are just rediscovering what once was common.

More generally, I'm interested in the classic sport tourer and am
wondering now how widespread it was in the 70s and 80s. My
recollection is that most of the bikes I sold back then were 73 degree
parallel designs with 5.5 cm of rake and about 43 cm stays. But its
pretty hard to find anything more than the angles documented and
often, not even that.

-- Dave
==============================================
"It is impossible, or not easy, to do noble acts
without the proper equipment."
Aristotle, <<Politics>>, 1323a-b, trans Jowett
==============================================

well pinnah...

go to sheldon brown, see if he has any thoughts on this subject... 🙂 i
couldnt help u any better..

-ron

pinnah said:

bicycle_disciple said:

i would say that the book, "The Golden Age of Handbuilt Bicycles" by
Jan Heine. I have a copy of this book and you'll find it an excellent
resource. Interestingly, Jan is also the editor for the vintage bicycle
quartely magazine, published four times a year.

Ron,

I've corresponded with Jan a few times on the i-Bob list and he's been
very helpful.

My understanding is that is his book focuses on the early handmade
french bikes of the 50s and 60s.

I'm more interested in production bikes that hit the US in the 70s and
80s.

Some background... I've read about a zillion discussions about why
long trail (short rake) designs are supposed to be more stable but
have recently gone back to a '79 Trek Sport Touring bike. I can't
believe how much further I can ride with less effort and how much more
stable that bike is over bumpy rough roads. I'm glad to see the
Specialized Roubaix (among others) moving to slacker HAs and more rake
but I get the sense we are just rediscovering what once was common.

More generally, I'm interested in the classic sport tourer and am
wondering now how widespread it was in the 70s and 80s. My
recollection is that most of the bikes I sold back then were 73 degree
parallel designs with 5.5 cm of rake and about 43 cm stays. But its
pretty hard to find anything more than the angles documented and
often, not even that.

-- Dave
==============================================
"It is impossible, or not easy, to do noble acts
without the proper equipment."
Aristotle, <<Politics>>, 1323a-b, trans Jowett
==============================================

In article <[email hidden]>,

pinnah said:

bicycle_disciple said:

i would say that the book, "The Golden Age of Handbuilt Bicycles" by
Jan Heine. I have a copy of this book and you'll find it an excellent
resource. Interestingly, Jan is also the editor for the vintage bicycle
quartely magazine, published four times a year.

Ron,

I've corresponded with Jan a few times on the i-Bob list and he's been
very helpful.

My understanding is that is his book focuses on the early handmade
french bikes of the 50s and 60s.

I'm more interested in production bikes that hit the US in the 70s and
80s.

Some background... I've read about a zillion discussions about why
long trail (short rake) designs are supposed to be more stable but
have recently gone back to a '79 Trek Sport Touring bike. I can't
believe how much further I can ride with less effort and how much more
stable that bike is over bumpy rough roads. I'm glad to see the
Specialized Roubaix (among others) moving to slacker HAs and more rake
but I get the sense we are just rediscovering what once was common.

More generally, I'm interested in the classic sport tourer and am
wondering now how widespread it was in the 70s and 80s. My
recollection is that most of the bikes I sold back then were 73 degree
parallel designs with 5.5 cm of rake and about 43 cm stays. But its
pretty hard to find anything more than the angles documented and
often, not even that.

Around here we say fork offset, not rake.

Stable can have different meanings. One of my bicycles is
very quick to turn and requires more skill than average to
ride no hands; yet it tracks like a laser on descents.

--
Michael Press

bicycle_disciple said:

hi pinnah.

i would say that the book, "The Golden Age of Handbuilt Bicycles" by
Jan Heine. I have a copy of this book and you'll find it an excellent
resource.

Does it have information on "70's and 80's production bikes" which is
what pinnah asked about? From the title, it sounds like it's about
fancy handbuilt bikes, not the same thing.

JT

****************************
Remove "remove" to reply
Visit http://www.jt10000.com
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The book primarily addresses constructeur (custom, very high-end)
French bikes of the '30s through '50s. It discusses a classic make
produced in the '90s. I don't recall it spending much space at all
about geometry details. Some generalities, few details. Pinnah wants
to make quantitative comparisons.

Ken

"John Forrest Tomlinson" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

bicycle_disciple said:

hi pinnah.

i would say that the book, "The Golden Age of Handbuilt Bicycles" by
Jan Heine. I have a copy of this book and you'll find it an
excellent
resource.

Does it have information on "70's and 80's production bikes" which
is
what pinnah asked about? From the title, it sounds like it's about
fancy handbuilt bikes, not the same thing.

JT

****************************
Remove "remove" to reply
Visit http://www.jt10000.com
****************************

pinnah said:

Some background... I've read about a zillion discussions about why
long trail (short rake) designs are supposed to be more stable but
have recently gone back to a '79 Trek Sport Touring bike. I can't
believe how much further I can ride with less effort and how much more
stable that bike is over bumpy rough roads. I'm glad to see the
Specialized Roubaix (among others) moving to slacker HAs and more rake
but I get the sense we are just rediscovering what once was common.

More generally, I'm interested in the classic sport tourer and am
wondering now how widespread it was in the 70s and 80s. My
recollection is that most of the bikes I sold back then were 73 degree
parallel designs with 5.5 cm of rake and about 43 cm stays. But its
pretty hard to find anything more than the angles documented and
often, not even that.

Have you been to http://www.vintage-trek.com/ ?

In article <[email hidden]>,

pinnah said:

bicycle_disciple said:

i would say that the book, "The Golden Age of Handbuilt Bicycles" by
Jan Heine. I have a copy of this book and you'll find it an
excellent resource. Interestingly, Jan is also the editor for the
vintage bicycle quartely magazine, published four times a year.

I've corresponded with Jan a few times on the i-Bob list and he's
been very helpful.

My understanding is that is his book focuses on the early handmade
french bikes of the 50s and 60s.

Much wider range than that- from the teens to the present day, but
focusing on custom built bikes for randonneuring and the like.

Quoted message said:

I'm more interested in production bikes that hit the US in the 70s
and 80s.

Try Classic Rendezvous.

pinnah said:

I'm more interested in production bikes that hit the US in the 70s and
80s.

Some background... I've read about a zillion discussions about why long
trail (short rake) designs are supposed to be more stable but have
recently gone back to a '79 Trek Sport Touring bike. I can't believe
how much further I can ride with less effort and how much more stable
that bike is over bumpy rough roads. I'm glad to see the Specialized
Roubaix (among others) moving to slacker HAs and more rake

BTW, more rake = less trail = less stable. Less rake = more trail = more
stable. What's important is having the right amount of trail for a given
head angle and intended use.

Quoted message said:

but I get the sense we are just rediscovering what once was common.

This is probably true. There's been a retro trend by fancy brands like
Rivendell and Waterford, with more affordable brands like Surly and Soma
following. But perhaps "retro" is the wrong way of looking at it. These
are just normal bikes. What we've really had is an extreme race bike fad
for the last 10-15 years, to the exclusion of all else.

Quoted message said:

More generally, I'm interested in the classic sport tourer and am
wondering now how widespread it was in the 70s and 80s. My recollection
is that most of the bikes I sold back then were 73 degree parallel
designs with 5.5 cm of rake and about 43 cm stays. But its pretty hard
to find anything more than the angles documented and often, not even
that.

Actually this was standard for race bikes through the 70s and 80s. And
it's not too different from what we have today. You'll hardly feel a
degree difference in frame angles, or a cm or two in chainstay length.

A few years ago I had an early 80s Bottecchia race bike with about those
dimensions. It was a very sweet handling bike. So there's one data point
for you.

Sport tourers were often a little slacker, but they ran the gamut. "Sport
tourer" referred to any bike that wasn't really a touring bike, but wasn't
being marketed as a race bike either. Of course if you wanted a race bike
they wanted you to buy their top of the line, so they called those "race
bikes" and the cheaper ones "sport tourers." The differences in geometry
were as much to differentiate the more expensive models from the cheaper
ones as to provide some on-road advantage.

Taking this one step further, race bikes got more extreme over time, for
no good reason other than marketing. Super short chainstays became the
trademark of a "real race bike," to the extent that Cannondale even had
cantilevered dropouts to make their seatstays more vertical and their
chainstays look shorter. The same happened with head angles, with steeper
being considered racier. Of course anyone who really races knows that if
anything, you want a more stable bike when you're being bumped and swept
over potholes by the peloton.

Matt O.

i ride a rererebuilt '87 raleigh lugged steel - am advised geometry is
parallel to the lightspeed tuscany?
i slowed handling down with a longer trail fork as it was too
nervous-tiring over transistion surfaces -eg asphaltsandasphalt google
search - frank berto - frank specs 3 frame categories from the '80's -
the one I ride is generally a "sport-touring" frame
i guess that all frame in that category have similar geometries

Quoted message said:

Have you been to http://www.vintage-trek.com/ ?

Yes. It's a fantastic resource. I even have pics of my 79 510 posted
there. Unfortunately, this is the only resource I can find for bikes
in that era that have frame geometries listed. Sheldon's
Retro-Raliegh site has old Raliegh catalogs, but the don't have specs
published. Classic Rendezvous has a Fuji catalog, but they don't give
info other than the frame angles.

-- Dave
==============================================
"It is impossible, or not easy, to do noble acts
without the proper equipment."
Aristotle, <<Politics>>, 1323a-b, trans Jowett
==============================================

Matt O'Toole said:

BTW, more rake = less trail = less stable. Less rake = more trail = more
stable. What's important is having the right amount of trail for a given
head angle and intended use.

Nod. I really depends on what you mean by stable, too.

My experience is that low trails bikes track better on rough road
surfaces. For slow solo riding (compared to fast pack riding), I find
I can ride much further, faster and more comfortably on low trail
bikes. More of my thoughts on this are here:
http://home.comcast.net/~pinnah/DirtbagPinner/bikes/bike-geometries.html#SPORT

Jan Heine, editor of VBQ, describes his thoughts on the "flop factor"
here:
http://search.bikelist.org/getmsg.asp?Filename=internet-bob.10512.1460.eml

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

More generally, I'm interested in the classic sport tourer and am
wondering now how widespread it was in the 70s and 80s. My recollection
is that most of the bikes I sold back then were 73 degree parallel
designs with 5.5 cm of rake and about 43 cm stays. But its pretty hard
to find anything more than the angles documented and often, not even
that.

Actually this was standard for race bikes through the 70s and 80s. And
it's not too different from what we have today. You'll hardly feel a
degree difference in frame angles, or a cm or two in chainstay length.

Hrmm.. Heres the link to a '75 Fuji catalog.
http://www.classicrendezvous.com/Japan/Fuji75specs.htm

Note that the race models of the Professional and Newest both had
steep angles but the sport tourer America didn't.

And here's a link to a '78 Trek catalog showing the use of a 4.5 cm
rake fork on their "race" bike.
http://vintage-trek.com/images/trek/Trek2pg3.gif

Quoted message said:

Taking this one step further, race bikes got more extreme over time, for
no good reason other than marketing. Super short chainstays became the
trademark of a "real race bike," to the extent that Cannondale even had
cantilevered dropouts to make their seatstays more vertical and their
chainstays look shorter. The same happened with head angles, with steeper
being considered racier. Of course anyone who really races knows that if
anything, you want a more stable bike when you're being bumped and swept
over potholes by the peloton.

I don't disagree but it seems that a lot of folks see it differently.
The Specialized Roubaix is getting close to that classic, lower trail
front end geometry but generally 4.5 and 4.2 cm forks are pretty much
standard these days.

I agree, btw, that CS length can't really be felt. This is more a
pannier clearance & versatility issue for me.

-- Dave
==============================================
"It is impossible, or not easy, to do noble acts
without the proper equipment."
Aristotle, <<Politics>>, 1323a-b, trans Jowett
==============================================

pinnah said:

Matt O'Toole said:

BTW, more rake = less trail = less stable. Less rake = more trail = more
stable. What's important is having the right amount of trail for a given
head angle and intended use.

Nod. I really depends on what you mean by stable, too.

My experience is that low trails bikes track better on rough road
surfaces. For slow solo riding (compared to fast pack riding), I find
I can ride much further, faster and more comfortably on low trail
bikes. More of my thoughts on this are here:
http://home.comcast.net/~pinnah/DirtbagPinner/bikes/bike-geometries.html#SPORT

Jan Heine, editor of VBQ, describes his thoughts on the "flop factor"
here:
http://search.bikelist.org/getmsg.asp?Filename=internet-bob.10512.1460.eml

You might find this, from Tom Kellogg, interesting:

http://www.spectrum-cycles.com/612.htm

In article <[email hidden]>,

Matt O'Toole said:

pinnah said:

I'm more interested in production bikes that hit the US in the 70s
and 80s.

Some background... I've read about a zillion discussions about why
long trail (short rake) designs are supposed to be more stable but
have recently gone back to a '79 Trek Sport Touring bike. I can't
believe how much further I can ride with less effort and how much
more stable that bike is over bumpy rough roads. I'm glad to see
the Specialized Roubaix (among others) moving to slacker HAs and
more rake

BTW, more rake = less trail = less stable. Less rake = more trail =
more stable. What's important is having the right amount of trail
for a given head angle and intended use.

It's not as simple as that, _Bicycling Science_ 2nd Ed. notwithstanding.
Basically they had Jones's URB experiments to base their chapter on and
this has dominated the conceptualizations of trail. At least it has
dominated *my* understanding of handling. The 3rd edition revises the
ideas on trail and handling significantly, and other recent publications
comparing different steering geometries makes it clear that "more trail
= more stability" is just not automatically the case.

The old French randonneuses often had very low trail figures, a few as
low as 11 mm, while remaining quite ridable. The lower trail bikes were
found to be more rather than less stable,allowing riders to go right
down the fog line in the dark for hours at a time. 40-45 mm trail was
not at all unusual with those bikes compared to the 60 mm which is
considered "standard" nowadays. The randonneuses tended to have steep
head angles (73-74 degrees) and a large fork offset (50-60 mm).

Ozark Bicycle said:

You might find this, from Tom Kellogg, interesting:

http://www.spectrum-cycles.com/612.htm

Bookmarked and saved to disk. Given that 99% of my riding is solo
riding (and thus low speed), his description of the handling
characteristics of a low trail bike reads like a big ol' feature list.
It also corresponds exactly with my experience with low trail bikes.
Nice to know that I'm totally insanse.

Still would love to find refs to 70s and 80s vintages geometries to
trace the decline of the low trail design.

Thanks for the great link.

-- Dave
==============================================
"It is impossible, or not easy, to do noble acts
without the proper equipment."
Aristotle, <<Politics>>, 1323a-b, trans Jowett
==============================================

Quoted message said:

More generally, I'm interested in the classic sport tourer and am
wondering now how widespread it was in the 70s and 80s. My
recollection is that most of the bikes I sold back then were 73 degree
parallel designs with 5.5 cm of rake and about 43 cm stays. But its
pretty hard to find anything more than the angles documented and
often, not even that.

To put the frame geometries you have in perspective, I've just taken
some measurements for you from what is a pure touring bike, a Dawes
Galaxy, probably from the early 1980s (dating clues: oval headbadge,
cantilever bosses, cable stops on down tube).

Sadly, because it is something I have rebuilt from an old frame - that
came without a fork - the fork rake figure is not the original, it's
something else ( a Thorn Ventura in fact, but looks similar to the
original). Here is what it looks like:

Reynolds 531ST, DB main tubes

head angle 71deg
seat angle 71deg
seat tube 22 inch
top tube 24 inch
chainstay 19.5 inches
wheelbase 45 inch approx
BB drop 2 inches approx

fork rake 65mm (not the original)
I measure the trail as about 50mm.

Compared to the figures you have, which look quite 'racy', this is an
extremely long bike with very laid back angles - note the 50cm
chainstay! The BB drop is very small too.

This may not be a typical Galaxy, according to the 1984 catalogue the
Galaxy has 72 deg angles and doesn't look as long as mine.

The interesting thing about 1970's Carlton Raleighs, or so I've heard,
is that they were just about all of them parallel 73 degree-angled
bikes (according to my bocama lugs stamped '73'😉, and the top tube
length was more or less constant - no matter what the size. This
allowed them to use the same miters on top tubes, perhaps saving some
$$$ in production cost. Just the stems got longer. I personally love
the aesthetic of these bikes, especially the 23.5" and 24.5" models.

- Don Gillies
San Diego, CA