Bachetta Giro 20 adjustments

[Thegreatthor]

Bachetta Giro 20. I’m getting much more confident now after about 350 miles. Getting faster too! I think I’m falling in love with the thing. I’d still like a bit more performance though.

I’m thinking 3 things to improve my bike a little.

1. I want to upgrade front wheel from 20 to 24 inch. Could anyone recommend a good 24 inch wheel or a rim to get one built.

2. I need to get my seat more reclined now that I’ve had a bit of practise. The stays are as low as they can go though. I’ve noticed that Bachetta supply seat stays in 13, 11 and 9 inch lengths. Mine are 13 inch so keeping the seat quite high. Is there any reason why I can’t just take them off and cut 2 inches off each side? I can’t see why not myself.

3. I’m going to get a better rear wheel. Which again I’ll swap to disc. Could anyone suggest a nice light 26 inch wheel and sticking to roads so don’t need a heavy mountain bike type thing.

2 more things. Anyone know of a rack that will fit or where to get a bachetta one. And I’d like to find a mounting to attach a front light. Where could I get one?

 

[Skyblot]

Bacchetta make a great bike, anything I say is not meant to denigrate their product....

The Giro 20 is great, but you can only drag so much performance from it, after all it is meant as a touring bike.
Depending on the seat you have, there's a limit as to how much it can be reclined. The Recurve with the foam base is a good uprightish seat, the more it is reclined, the more the front of the cushion rises and interferes with the back of the legs. The euromesh is better, but I found that I needed it reclined quite a lot to make it comfortable and by then the pedals were too low for me (another way of saying my body angle was too open).

The Giro 26 offers more performance by virtue of the higher bottom bracket giving the ability to run a more reclined seat. Plus the two larger wheels.

Seat stays - no reason at all not to cut them down.
Rear rack - best I've found is the Bacchetta Universal rack. Or go to the Terra Cycle under seat pannier racks.
Light mount - Bacchetta One Arm Bandit. Mounts the light out in front and avoids the foot flash as you pedal.
The OAB should be relatively economic to order from Bacchetta, the rear rack probably not so much.

I'm presently riding a Giro 26 with Big Apple 2" tyres - great comfort and trundles over any road surface with ease, euromesh seat and a brain box for storage.

 

[Thegreatthor]

Bacchetta make a great bike, anything I say is not meant to denigrate their product....

The Giro 20 is great, but you can only drag so much performance from it, after all it is meant as a touring bike.
Depending on the seat you have, there's a limit as to how much it can be reclined. The Recurve with the foam base is a good uprightish seat, the more it is reclined, the more the front of the cushion rises and interferes with the back of the legs. The euromesh is better, but I found that I needed it reclined quite a lot to make it comfortable and by then the pedals were too low for me (another way of saying my body angle was too open).

The Giro 26 offers more performance by virtue of the higher bottom bracket giving the ability to run a more reclined seat. Plus the two larger wheels.

Seat stays - no reason at all not to cut them down.
Rear rack - best I've found is the Bacchetta Universal rack. Or go to the Terra Cycle under seat pannier racks.
Light mount - Bacchetta One Arm Bandit. Mounts the light out in front and avoids the foot flash as you pedal.
The OAB should be relatively economic to order from Bacchetta, the rear rack probably not so much.

I'm presently riding a Giro 26 with Big Apple 2" tyres - great comfort and trundles over any road surface with ease, euromesh seat and a brain box for storage.

cheers, I was thinking similar. Should I just bite the bullet and order something a bit more focused?

 

[Skyblot]

Perhaps... I guess that depends on your ultimate aim. If you like the G20 and want a bit more speed but still a user friendly experience, the G26 ticks many boxes.

Speed at any cost leads down the rabbit hole of deeply reclined seats, high bottom brackets, and a sacrifice of usability and flexibility. I have an M5 CHR as my normal ride, it's a brilliant bike but gets unhappy on broken surfaced roads and is a challenge in stop/start traffic. The CHR is very fast, but the Giro 26 is much more usable.

Of course there are other bikes, Performer are worth looking at, as well as all the various models from Optima/Challenge/Raptobike and similar that can be found on the used market.

 

[Thegreatthor]

Perhaps... I guess that depends on your ultimate aim. If you like the G20 and want a bit more speed but still a user friendly experience, the G26 ticks many boxes.

Speed at any cost leads down the rabbit hole of deeply reclined seats, high bottom brackets, and a sacrifice of usability and flexibility. I have an M5 CHR as my normal ride, it's a brilliant bike but gets unhappy on broken surfaced roads and is a challenge in stop/start traffic. The CHR is very fast, but the Giro 26 is much more usable.

Of course there are other bikes, Performer are worth looking at, as well as all the various models from Optima/Challenge/Raptobike and similar that can be found on the used market.

cheers, that is really helpful. id still like something quite useable, I’d like to be able to easily roll at 17/18 (perhaps a bit more) on flat road with no wind. I’m about 2 mph off that. I think I can pretty close with this bike by changing tyres, wheels and seat angle. Ultimately though I think probably only so much to get from it. Do you find much difference with the 26/26?

 

[spark303]

I'm not a particularly fast rider, but I found that a dual 26" Performer High Racer was slightly faster overall than my G20. I'm not sure it was that much different on a flat road however. I have the Aluminium framed Giro, but the Performer is maybe 1kg lighter.

However, I personally prefer the riding position on the Giro to the Performer - it has open cockpit bars which I like more than the tiller on the Performer (although that could also be fitted with OC bars I guess). Also, as a shorty, I have quite a lot of heel interference with a larger front wheel which I don't especially like.

 

[Ming the Merciless]

On the flat as stated it’s more the recline to increase speed vs. effort. A smaller front wheel is more aero given same recline. The wind is also slower the lower to the ground you are.

In most typical uk terrrain with an overall average of 1% climbing against distance. So 5,000ft for every 100 miles is fairly average across UK. It’s the pace you can climb at that’ll affect your overall average speed more than pace on the flat.

Virtually any recumbent will be faster than even the fancy aero road bikes, when it comes to on the flat and downhill.

 

[Ming the Merciless]

I read something this week about aliens being stuck on super earths. So the escape velocity is so high that you can’t do it with chemical rockets. So if that applied to humans we would never have left earth and have nothing in orbit. So you have to wait for fusion reactors and other more powerful means of escaping your home planets gravity.

 

[Skyblot]

There's multiple factors going on here. And of course changing one thing effects others.
Each of us have a "best" hip angle , ie the angle of a line drawn from the shoulder to the hip, and another line drawn from the hip to the bottom bracket. Angle too closed and the power falls off, too open and the power falls off. There's no magic figure and as far as I can tell is found by trial and error. For instance I seem to be OK at 144 degrees.

The point of this ramble is that on a bike like a Giro 20 with a low bottom bracket (compared to the seat), reclining the seat for better aero can knock your power (and comfort) down as the hip angle open up. Likewise a high BB bike doesn't work with an upright seat. Throw in handlebar style and position and that opens up another can of worms.

Personally (and YMMV), I find tiller bars cramped and uncomfortable with seats more upright than say 25 degrees, where the open cockpit bars (Bacchetta style) work best with the more upright seats but can be made to work OK with lower seat angles.

Lastly, more reclined seats are harder to balance, harder to see the road ahead, harder to look around for traffic, need a headrest, but are generally faster and I think more comfortable. But that's a personal view too. And you can blow away any aero advantage by wearing loose flappy and ballooning clothes....

 

[fatjel]

Interestingly I just did the reverse and replaced my 26" front wheel for a 20" on my giro 20.
Early days but seems to be better balanced ,has more knee clearance and seems easier uphill
My frame came with "the wrong" 26" forks which I stuck with for a few years as carbon 20" wheel disc forks are kinda rare.
The euromesh seat is more upright despite having moved it to it's most reclined position.
Ran with two 700c mavic disc wheels and skinny tyres for a while and was noticeably easier to pedal and faster

 

[BigT]

To the OP. I wouldn't expect a whole lot from increasing the size of the front wheel on your Giro.
I started out with a Giro-26, but after suffering catastrophic "heel-strike" and rotator cuff surgery, I removed both wheels and replaced them with a pair of 20's.
Sure, I lost a couple mph, but my flat ground cruising speed is still 19-20mph.
A lot of your top speed is more about the "engine" and riding position than it is the wheel size.

Perhaps you should consider a different bike instead of making changes to what you currently have. Maybe something with full-suspension?
The Street Machine and Speed Machine are nice.
Suspended bikes are heavier, and the cruising speed on my old Street Machine was less than on my Giro (15-17mph), but I was faster overall because I knew the SM would pass right over any imperfections in the road/trail.

While riding my Giro, whether with 26 or 20" wheels, if I even suspect there are bumps ahead, I have to slow down to a crawl to avoid being bounced out of the saddle and sending the bike in an unsuspected and unwanted direction.