Current Projects chat and miscellany

i iz confused. Am I right that normal thinking is that steep angles and little rake (which is the same as offset right?) give twitchy/fast steering? Which is what track bikes have.

Whereas slack angles and big rake gives slow and stable steering, which is what eg. Dutch bikes have.

Tester, are you saying this is incorrect? Is there a good online article to explain all this? Wikipedia didn't clear anything up for my stupid brain.

You sort of have things backwards.

They built it so it could barspin (a very odd choice for Bob Jackson) so as far as I can tell they slackened the headtube, and gave it straight forks. It feels normal to ride, perhaps a little slower steering than my rixon, but not that noticeably.

Yeah, you can see the headtube angle is quite slack to compensate.

The whole rake/offset/trail thing comes round every now and then on here. Track bikes often have more trail and thus slower steering than road bikes, ostensibly to offset the lower rear end stability that results from the high bottom bracket.

Steeper head tube angle = Faster steering
More rake = Faster steering

Whereas,

Slack head tube = Slow and steady steering
Less rake = Slow and steady steering

Which is why track bikes have really tight angles so they can be responsive and quick, but have to balance out the twitchy steering which gets worse the faster you go (and last time I checked track is fast) with less rake which slows the steering down a tad to make it ridable.

Fast bikes always have a balance of rake and head tube angle (BB drop and chain stay length also effect handling and steering too), which is why tourers, which are generally used at slower speeds, can have actually have much faster steering and handling than a fast road or track bike, as they are used at slower speeds.