Purpose of the adjusting screws on droupouts

[Benjamin Weiner]

Sheldon Brown <[email protected]> wrote:

> Yeah! ;-) Long wheelbase is sometimes a Good Thing! With those frames, a sus fork would be gilding
> the lily. I'm not maintaining that this is a great design for technical offroad use, but those old
> "California cruiser" mountain frames were _super_ for heavily-loaded touring.

True. Or commuting. Some old Rockhopper frames have all sorts of luxuries, like not just rack mounts
but threaded fender braze-ons on the stay bridges.

Probably a dedicated singlespeeder is better off getting a purpose built frame or the complete bikes
available now, but a conversion, if available, is nice for trying it out with minimal cost.

Speaking of which, I'm still curious about the dwindling supply of road frames convertible to fixed
that you mentioned. Should I start hoarding Miyatas, or 531?

> >>It is unfortunate that these early MTB frames were generally rather heavy and overbuilt, because
> >>the builders of the day had exaggerated ideas about how stressful mountain biking was to
> >>equipment.
> >
> > Yes. OTOH, it seems like people on Usenet are always complaining about breaking today's MTB
> > stuff, aluminum frames especially. (I know, the vast majority of bikes don't get ridden hard and
> > don't break.)

> Thesis. Antithesis. Synthesis.

> Sheldon "Dialectic" Brown

Indeed. Or, if you like, the MTB industry, having evolved to dissolve, consolidate or bankrupt many
of the original and small innovators and firms, to the point where the remaining names are pasted on
cookie-cutter frames that are still underbuilt, and the only thing remaining is the hype, follows
Marx's paraphrase of Hegel [*] that events in history occur, as it were, twice: the first time as
tragedy, the second as farce.

Ben

[*] In "The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte." Marx was speaking of Napoleon and Louis Napoleon,
although I like to think that he was prefiguring the best examples of tragedy and farce, Hank
Williams and Hank Williams Jr.

 

[Ryan Cousineau]

In article <[email protected]>, Benjamin Weiner <[email protected]> wrote:

> Sheldon Brown <[email protected]> wrote:

> > >>It is unfortunate that these early MTB frames were generally rather heavy and overbuilt,
> > >>because the builders of the day had exaggerated ideas about how stressful mountain biking was
> > >>to equipment.
> > >
> > > Yes. OTOH, it seems like people on Usenet are always complaining about breaking today's MTB
> > > stuff, aluminum frames especially. (I know, the vast majority of bikes don't get ridden hard
> > > and don't break.)
>
> > Thesis. Antithesis. Synthesis.
>
> > Sheldon "Dialectic" Brown
>
> Indeed. Or, if you like, the MTB industry, having evolved to dissolve, consolidate or bankrupt
> many of the original and small innovators and firms, to the point where the remaining names are
> pasted on cookie-cutter frames that are still underbuilt, and the only thing remaining is the
> hype, follows Marx's paraphrase of Hegel [*] that events in history occur, as it were, twice: the
> first time as tragedy, the second as farce.

Underbuilt? More like overburdened. The real problem is that going off a 10' drop is more than
double the force of going off a 5' drop, and the big boys will do 25' drops. At some point, there's
a limit to how much punishment even a 45-pound suspended bike can accept.

The frame breakage rate for XC riders is probably about the same as that for road bikes. But all
bets are off once you talk about freeriding.

That said, there are heavy bikes with a reputation for surviving the big stuff.

--
Ryan Cousineau, [email protected] http://www.sfu.ca/~rcousine President, Fabrizio Mazzoleni Fan Club