Just sent @Orloved the vsalad thread a couple of weeks ago.
My Holstein clone Rick Jones is still and probably at this point will forever be my favorite bike.
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Sometime in there wesbarf and Fred and I rode our bikes on a ridiculous decommissioned road and I tried Fred’s bike for ten minutes and immediately regretted my choice get a 700c bike (the ultra-low trail bike that I believe rawland released in 2011 or 2012 that came with a five year no-conditions warranty that I had to harass him on Facebook to honor)
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I love that they left in a couple of spots where he eats shit. Also. The fuckin tennis net!
That bit about 2:10 where he goes up the stars using a nose piroutette was lovely.
didn’t he have to get that warranty frame from
his BIL or something?
What do yall think of these new long chainstay rough road touring bikes that have been popping up? Low Q, fat tires and better weight distribution with a setback saddle appeal to me somewhat.
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don’t hate it, would be curious if it’s solving a problem or just selling a geo configuration that isn’t currently getting sold elsewhere.
stability, 68mm shell with 3.0 tires and balance between the wheels strike me as the obvious potential improvements. I like to be a bit more upright on this kind of bike, and I feel like the front tire is often too unloaded when I’m upright and on a setback post
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My RL has chainstays of substance (450mm) and while its not the most ‘flickable’ or whatever, the thing is stable as hell and still mega fun on single track. Makes blasting chunky rock gardens a blast.
All of which is to say, make em longer!
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I think these are 500 - 530 chainstays. Production for the Mahall is 500
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Obviously not the same class of bike and not nearly as long, but just putting forth as an example that long works
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I really miss the long chainstays on my LHT. I don’t miss much else about it, but the stability was really nice with a light load on rougher stuff.
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so more upright and less amenable to technical terrain, but also with wider tires for more control in non-technical terrain?
I’m not saying that I know that this doesn’t work, it just seems like it’s bike design Mad Libs at this point
I’m not sure its pointing at full-grant levels of upright, just more upright than I might like to be on a day ride on an XC bike. A lot of my need for a wide tire right now is for float on sand rather than for tech.
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Long stays aren’t really new though. 3" tires ARE new but early mountain bikes and “ATBs” had long stays, touring bikes had long stays, Riv has been adding more an more stay length every revision it seems. So it would make sense that builders would see that longer stays = stability and the room to fit a modern plus tire with fewer compromises.
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Another potential benefit being more stability through chunk without a really slack HT, which seems to promote front bags to me.
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I built this dirt tourer with 470ish stays:
But I’ve also toured on my fat bike with 420 stays:
and the only significant difference is the hand loading from different seat tube angles (the fat bike also has a 29+ wheelset)
The long stays are a little smoother I guess, but in terms of handling loaded bikes already have too much stability and on tour I’m not pushing the envelope in anything rough.
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I’m going with rider load distribution being the driving factor. Seems like some similar things are happening over in MTB land with a bit of backing off from keeping the rear as tukt as possible. A couple of brands have made size-specific stays on some full-sus platforms that increase rear-to-center on bigger bikes to keep rider position similar between the axles across sizes.
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