Originally Posted by
msurch
Hi Dave,
First, I want to thank you for being so generous with your time here. Your replies are thoughtful, insightful, and gracious. ...............................
Ok, so blah blah aside, here is my question: If you were able to build with any tubing diameters and profiles available in steel, how would you go about deciding which tubes to choose for a given rider? Or, in other words, would you agree that a bike for a fairly strong rider getting into 'cross, for example, should be constructed out of different tubing than another rider of the same size and weight, but higher power and greater fitness? My rationale is that less strong riders will tend to ride most of their race in the saddle, thus requiring plenty of flex for pedaling efficiency, while the stronger rider will attack out of the saddle much more and desire more torsional stiffness. If this sounds reasonable, would you be likely to run a 25.4 TT for the more flexy bike? I know some feel 25.4 TTs lead to shimmy, but I'm not so sure that's true. Along the same lines, contra the position that a 'bike' is a 'race bike' if its raced, I wonder what your thoughts are with regard to flex for an all-day ride sort of bike versus a shorter, more spirited club ride/weeknight World Championship sort of bike? I can attest that my steel fixed gear with standard diameter tubes gets pretty squirrely at 60kph downhill in a 44x16!