Polo Bikes

Long forks and a tiny headtube? Not the strongest combination.

I wouldn't say 75deg is excessively steep

595 TT on a bike that small?! You will also be sitting uncomfortably far behind your BB. I ride 74.5 STA now and like it. I doubt you will find a frame builder who will bend a seat tube that much.

You could make it from a pair of tubes - make the curved section then mitre it to a straight section of seat tube. If you have the seatstays joining where they are in the above pic it should take the stress.

some of the stuff is just to make it look perty, main things I'm after is angles and lengths etc, it's mostly a copy of ste's bike but I've tried to make it a little longer as I found his a bit short

ain't arsed about head tube length, I'll let the builder sort out those kinda things

You could just lengthen the stem - less twitchy.

could do, I'd prefer to do it on the bike a little, then adjust more with stem if I needed, I played a few games on ste's and really liked it, just felt it was a little high and a little short for where I like to sit, so I figured keep most of it but adjust a little to what my current bike is like, it ends up a bit like the above, what do you reckon I should be aiming at with the tt then?

for someone your height, 560? I ride 595 and I'm 6' 3.33333"

ste's is 560 and i was trying to hang off the back of the saddle the whole time

56cm is about right imo

I think if you could persuade Ste to let you swap the bars and stem it might sway you a little. If you try a 70/80mm stem with 1" risers it could be more to your suiting. Flat bars are better for polo because you can then get the brake where you want it.

risers look better though, plus I have them quite wide so no problems with brake stuff

the effective tt does seem pretty long, that's longer than my tarck frame which has an effective 62cm seat-tube...

Maybe the level of curve, ultra setback saddle has effected the original geo?

Do changes in the frame geo, make more of a difference than tweeks with layback seatposts, longer stems etc? (I know if having a custom frame built, then you want it perf, but just curious.)

Change the forks. Low rake and low axle to crown and you'll be able to design a bike which has a similar trail value at a much steeper headangle. Your bike will handle the better for it!

Ste's has a slacker headtube angle because he wanted to use his old forks. Doesn't mean that those values are what you should be aiming for yourself.

35mm is a lot to be adding to a toptube because it feels a little short. In terms of mountainbikes there is usually in the region of 15-20mm between sizes.

if someone can do a clever potato on the bikecad's of the two, may prove useful...

if I change ST to 76 i get a 585 TT, the forks are my current ones as well, I could maybe get new ones but was trying to keep price low as I can

this is ste's cad jobby

i think I've got quite long arms too

and legs

but no body

Rules of thumb: If I remember this correctly; Long arms, long legs and no body generally means in terms of fit you'll end up most comfortable with a shorter toptube but with your bars lower than your saddle else you put a lot of unnecessary weight through your arms. Do you run full saddle height when you play?

if you carry most of your weight in your upper body you should be running a slacker than average seat-angle and if most of your weight is in your legs you should be running steeper.

I also second what Oz says, keep your headtube long. In frontal impacts with a short headtube the forks make the headtube want to pivot around the point the tubes intersect. In other words snap right off.

I hate rules of thumb. Gah!

I'm off to the pub, g'night

I learnt pretty much everything (anything) I know about bike geo from colin (glowbike), listen to him, he knows his stuff.

I put my saddle down a little to play, I'd put it up higher if I could to ride home, just got the tape measure out on my polo bike, it's about 570 tt and the saddle is right back, and I'd go further back if I could but no amount of googling found me a 25.4 layback, the esb, which fits nicer is about 580, I have the saddle quite far back and it's ibeam so does go quite far back, maybe 585 is about right

I'll try and ride a few other peoples bikes in brizzle and see what they're like, can't order anything until I sell the esb anyway

Extreme bendiness was fucking everything up more than I realised, should probably leave that all to the builder guy, would probably be more like above then

well if you're going to use marino, then he can't bend more than what you've seen with stes anyway.