I have one of the early-2004 versions of this bike. I never noticed anything disastrous about the steering but then I am taller (6'2") and so I had the seat moved all the way back, and the riser was basically straight at the pivot. It did tend to ride squirrelly, but not much differently than other SWB's I test-rode. The handlebars seemed rather too wide, but I never changed them.
A short person probably couldn't set it up that way. That hardly makes it defective however; most bents (and other bikes as well) won't fit a really wide size range of riders effectively.
The front wheel was jittery in gravel at first, but that was because both tires were inflated to 100 PSI (their max). If you drop the front tire down to 80 PSI or so the steering gets a lot nicer on bad surfaces.
I got tired of the chain tube noise, and got rid of most of mine: why doesn't this board software allow you to paste text???? what's this stuff about editing mozilla config file? no other website seems to need that.....
As it happens mine is for sale but only because the frame turned out to be a bit too short for me; I got knee pain that did not occur on a second LWB bent that adjusted to much longer than I needed. (-I was asking $500, and got no interest--so I guess now I know why.... but a Speedster is still a big step above a BikeE however, and BikeE's commonly trade for $300).
The next year (2005) they offered two sizes of frames; the larger one is two inches longer, but I was not certain that two more inches would have been long enough. If they had offered a frame six inches longer, I would have considered it.
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A short person probably couldn't set it up that way. That hardly makes it defective however; most bents (and other bikes as well) won't fit a really wide size range of riders effectively.
The front wheel was jittery in gravel at first, but that was because both tires were inflated to 100 PSI (their max). If you drop the front tire down to 80 PSI or so the steering gets a lot nicer on bad surfaces.
I got tired of the chain tube noise, and got rid of most of mine: why doesn't this board software allow you to paste text???? what's this stuff about editing mozilla config file? no other website seems to need that.....
As it happens mine is for sale but only because the frame turned out to be a bit too short for me; I got knee pain that did not occur on a second LWB bent that adjusted to much longer than I needed. (-I was asking $500, and got no interest--so I guess now I know why.... but a Speedster is still a big step above a BikeE however, and BikeE's commonly trade for $300).
The next year (2005) they offered two sizes of frames; the larger one is two inches longer, but I was not certain that two more inches would have been long enough. If they had offered a frame six inches longer, I would have considered it.
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