Re: Go Faster New Bike Recommendations ?



H

Harris

Guest
In rec.bicycles.tech Chris Neary <[email protected]> wrote:
> >> The only personal experience I can offer is comparing a Santana Sovereign
> >> (4.5cm trail) to a Co-Motion Speedster (5.7cm) (both tandems). The bikes
> >> handled very differently, with the Santana requiring large inputs to steer
> >> while the Co-Mo required much smaller inputs, yet remained stable. I felt
> >> like I was driving an oil tanker on the Santana, while the Co-Mo behaved
> >> like a (long) single.

> >
> >Are you confusing "rake" (offset) with trail? Trail is normally 5 cm
> >(2") or greater. If a bike had only 4.5 cm of trail it would be
> >anything but sluggish in the steering department.



> Remember, these are tandems, so the envelope of trail which is desired is
> different than singles.


Why do you say that?

And I still can't believe that a tandem with LESS trail handles more
sluggishly than a tandem with more trail as you claim.

If you're talking about less fork offset, that's another matter.

Art Harris
 
>> >Are you confusing "rake" (offset) with trail? Trail is normally 5 cm
>> >(2") or greater. If a bike had only 4.5 cm of trail it would be
>> >anything but sluggish in the steering department.

>
>
>> Remember, these are tandems, so the envelope of trail which is desired is
>> different than singles.

>
>Why do you say that?
>
>And I still can't believe that a tandem with LESS trail handles more
>sluggishly than a tandem with more trail as you claim.
>
>If you're talking about less fork offset, that's another matter.


Here's links to a couple of discussions concerning tandem steering geometry.
The participants in the second are all tandem manufacturers:

http://www.bikeforums.net/archive/index.php/t-27604

http://home.att.net/~thetandemlink/articles/headtube.html

Hopefully they can clear the fog in this discussion, but this being Usenet,
who knows?

Best regards,



Chris Neary
[email protected]

"Science, freedom, beauty, adventure: what more could
you ask of life? Bicycling combined all the elements I
loved" - Adapted from a quotation by Charles Lindbergh