Help and assistance, please, folks.
I'm about to order a frame from the Chinese People's Bicycle Factory #2081
(www.xacd.com.cn) and can't decide which frame to get. My last attempt showed that unless you know pretty much what you want before you order it, they get very shirty about discussing tweaks - "Why so long delay? Is very simple!". They are fabricators, after all, not design consultants.
The bike will be a singlespeed fixed, but for general day rides i.e. it needs to be comfortable on rolling terrain for anything up to ten hours. I usually ride about a 70" gear.
XACD's standard 53cm road frame has a seat angle of 74.5, a head angle of 71.5 and a wheelbase of 986cm according to their drawings. It also has lots of gubbins I don't need, so I could go for the track frame where the equivalents are 74, 73 and 974. They point out that I can customise any frame as much as I want, but I'm reluctant to interfere too much with the standard geometry because I don't know enough to do so with confidence.
My gut feeling is that a 73 degree head angle is going to be twitchy in normal riding, particularly with the 10cm shorter wheelbase, and I would be much better getting them to put track dropouts on the road frame. Am I right in that?
I'm about to order a frame from the Chinese People's Bicycle Factory #2081
(www.xacd.com.cn) and can't decide which frame to get. My last attempt showed that unless you know pretty much what you want before you order it, they get very shirty about discussing tweaks - "Why so long delay? Is very simple!". They are fabricators, after all, not design consultants.
The bike will be a singlespeed fixed, but for general day rides i.e. it needs to be comfortable on rolling terrain for anything up to ten hours. I usually ride about a 70" gear.
XACD's standard 53cm road frame has a seat angle of 74.5, a head angle of 71.5 and a wheelbase of 986cm according to their drawings. It also has lots of gubbins I don't need, so I could go for the track frame where the equivalents are 74, 73 and 974. They point out that I can customise any frame as much as I want, but I'm reluctant to interfere too much with the standard geometry because I don't know enough to do so with confidence.
My gut feeling is that a 73 degree head angle is going to be twitchy in normal riding, particularly with the 10cm shorter wheelbase, and I would be much better getting them to put track dropouts on the road frame. Am I right in that?
In fact you can specify whatever droputs you want and they even do one I have never seen anywhere else, a track dropout with a derailleur hanger.