Head tube angle, trail and tiller

I was going to mention tiller. I'm always conscious of trying to balance all these things out, so neither tiller, trail or HTA are too extreme, but the situation is being made more difficult by having handlebars really quite close to my body. However, sitting on the bike stationary and just imagining where my hands would like to be if I were to start afresh, indicates a more forward position, which would cut down the need for quite so much tiller and thus facilitate a steeper head tube angle. That will be the next job, to look more closely at the ergonomics of the handlebar position.

Thanks for the feedback Geoff, really appreciate it.


Edited by garryb59 - 06 April 2015 at 9:31pm

garryb59 wrote: Andy TS wrote: Thought I recognised the bike. Hope you had a good ride back from your break at Winnersh Thanks for posting Andy - it's always good to put a name to a face. It was a relief when I knew you were coming from a knowledge base, I thought I was going to have to answer one of those 'what's that thing like to ride' questions [perfectly fine even though the question is], but after 270km, it's not always easy to find any spare grey matter that feels like answering the question!

GeoffBird wrote: Your design looks a good compromise to me Gary. You've built a few bikes - does your experience tally with mine?

Well....problem is Geoff, I tend to come from a non-scientific background of 'not quite sure what I'm doing but I've heard that this is what needs to be done'...kind of thing. I have a decent practical aptitude, but do not possess a technical, scientific background, and let's face it, the two can obviously work well together.

I've also definitely not built a bike with a HTA greater than 74dg, so your 'up to 80dg' answer is interesting, particularly when you talk about slow speed stability....and for me, that's very important!

Looking at the tiller on this latest bike, It comes in at around 7". I'm not sure I'd want any more than that. Thing is: if you had two bikes, one with 80dg HTA, zero offset and 50mm of trail, and another with a HTA od 72dg, 30mm of off set and trail of 50mm would the handling charachteristics be the same?

Now I rememebr the feeling - as soon as you've built one, you want to build another bike straight away !!

As an aside - I've looked, but I think it's a no-goer, but is it possible in your experience to source 20g 1.3/4" - 45mm steel tubing, that would be MIGable? I've not seen anything like this that is commerically available. The best I can get is 18g 1.3/4". 

Second question - ever used a mandrel bender?  Might they be ok for thin wall steel tubing? I'm constantly amazed how welding can make a length of steel tubing so much heavier. How does that happen? A few lap joints, bit of gusset support and it totally seems to change the weight character of a length of steel without seemingly adding much extra metal??

I've got that carbon fabric sitting here, but I still can't let go of the fact that it must be possible to build a steel bike for Audax that doesn't weigh a ton. Sure, it's not going to be light, I don't expect that....but just not quite so heavy as the 38lber that my latest offering is. Am I delusional? [Why do I even ask he question :-)]