Road bikes with sloping top tubes

[steve garro]

IMG_7774.jpg

The best part about building your own stuff is that you can make it exactly how you want it.

The middle one always has to be level, always.

- Garro.

[Rody]

The middle one always has to be level, always.

- Garro.

Nerd

:)

[steve garro]

Nerd

:)

Takes one to know one!

- Garro.

[Heinrich Sprietsterbach]

You know what talking about pipes it would be cool to thread up some schedule 80 black pipe. And build a frame, I might just do that.

[AlexB]

I am not a builder. I built a single frame at a frame building course, but I built it with a lot of top tube slope.
I just wanted the bike to be visually different and I like the fact that on my mountain bike I can stand over the top tube with no hassle.

That said, it has some disadvantages: the rear triangle is very small - so it's pretty stiff vertically. If I'd known this, I would have used skinnier stays to give me a bit more compliance, but I wanted to use Llewellyn socket lugs, so that nixed the skinny stays.
That small rear triangle is where my pump sits, on a peg along the left hand seat stay - because the stay is so short, so is the pump, so it's not very efficient, it's basically a long mini-pump.
The sloping top tube actually slopes too much for me to sit on comfortably!

That said, the bike gets a lot of compliments.

Alex Ball

[sk_tle]

I like sloping top tubes because they annoy hipsters who crave only old steel shitty road bikes. Well I don't say these bikes were bad but compared objectively to modern standards I have no nostalgia for an 1970-80's Colnago.

On the other hand I love Amaro's road bikes.

[andrew flowers]

I dont mind it either way

I have an issue with sloping top tubes because finding a post over 350mm in length is tough, which I often need on sloping bikes

on the spooky I run the 400mm enve and it looks really good

ymmv

[abbeyQ]

I'm dragging this back to the top because I noticed this thread, maybe he knows exactly what he actually wants. Maybe they don't know. Point is, it's not about one person. The things that get mentioned on this forum live on for a long time. When people come here looking for information they may not have the context to know that it's just a bad habit and that most of the people that use that term actually know what they're talking about. Some people don't know and worse yet, some use it knowing it's wrong.

Frame building happens in a tiny bubble of the greater fabrication industry and it's important to know some basic terminology when dealing with that greater industry. If you call Aircraft Spruce and ask for pipe they'll tell you they don't sell pipe. If you went to your local steel yard and asked for 400mm of 1" pipe they might scratch their head over the millimeter part but would ultimately hand you a chunk of material that measure 1.315" OD with a wall thickness of .133". Obviously that's not suited to making any part of a normal bicycle. If this bad habit is just within the bubble of frame building it doesn't much matter as many pointed out. When you have to interact with the greater fabrication industry it's an important detail and keeps you from getting material or tools you can't use. That costs you time and money and if you want to be a professional you have to know the difference between the two.