Rat Bikes! Pub Bikes Beaters! Frankenbikes!

its the traditional position for older bikes with that geometry

Not rat, beater or franken......just old, try again

no need to quote all the above pics

Do we not?
Oh, sorry.

A few nice bikes I saw in Paris

unfortunately missing front wheel....

Not rat, beater or franken......just old, try again

You try again. Old bluey up there is freakin ace.

Not rat, beater or franken......just old, try again

Let me see, old, beaten up a bit, re-welded, and obviously used... does this not equal the very definition of rat, or even beater?!

Lolz!

Yeah a longer wheelbase should make it stabler at higher speeds, but I'm not sure just how much the wheel base effects the handling itself.

Erm, how to explain it... a bit like how maybe a mini would be affected be a small bump in the road, while a coach would not be... I think?

Anybody else got any insight, please?!

Do you mean the steering handling? because I would have thought the wheelbase would be quite critical, I mean the longer a bike is, the harder/less responsive it'll be? Or that's what I'd have thought anyway...

Is it just me who feels a bike with slack angles - ie a downhill bike takes the same corner faster and feels better than a road bike?

Just need to HTFU and clock miles upon the road bike? Maybe I need to put a speedo on them both to see which is actually faster.....

^ +1

My theory (and correct me if I'm talking rubbish) is that a slightly slack headtube helps you steer more smoothly (it takes a bit more effort).
A slack seattube puts all your weight on the saddle so you're not leaning down on the front wheel even when you're on the drops

This makes it loads easier to get all your weight on the outside pedal and steer smoothly through a corner.

Many modern road bikes have steep crit-like geometry which makes them rather skittish and precarious with so much body weight on the front wheel.

...Naturally though, this also makes the road bike considerably quicker when it comes to straight-line speed.

Plus, a DH rig has suspension, which allows you to squat into a corner and much larger tyres that give more grip (at least off road) meaning the ability to take corners safely at higher speeds and disc brakes that mean you can brake harder and later and the fact the your center of gravity is a lot lower.

As for my previous analogy, I was kind of close, but not quite there - if you think of the rear wheels as a pivot point, then the further away the front wheels are, the further the distance they have to travel to complete a turn, just as the longer a circles radius is the longer its circumference, so I guess that a shorter wheel base would indeed mean quicker handling as the front wheel has to travel a shorter distance to have the desired effect... I think that makes sense?

Or I'm talking shit

I'm guna test it, roll down the hill take the corner as fast as possible, slow down the rest of the hill to home, check speedo.

Would a slack head angle actually make you slower in a straight line? Like if it was a normal road bike with a crazy slack head angle? Everything else the same.....

It wouldn't make your straight line speed any slower or faster, but the head angle would effect the speed you could take a sharp corner.
The steeper the head angle, the more "skittish" the steering would feel at higher speeds and quicker to react to any rider input, whereas a slack head angle would feel more stable as it would take larger movements of the bars to turn.

More here

better move that quickly before the big yellow train hits it

^^ Apart from the gearing, that looks like a lotta fun.

What's wrong with the gearing, beside the slack chain? Couldn't it be 44-16?

Dunno, looks more like a 18-44 to me.
But then, if the rider has the ability to spin fast enough to make that gearing usable, then good for them, prolongs their knee joints!

Dunno, looks more like a 18-44 to me.
But then, if the rider has the ability to spin fast enough to make that gearing usable, then good for them, prolongs their knee joints!

that's still around the 65GI mark (based on a guess of those being 25c), not super spinny for casual riding it's probably perfect, although i think the cog looks closer to 16 as said above

Yeah, you're right.

Really need to learn to keep my opinions to meself sometimes!

Mind you, if I did that, no one would ever point out to me where I'm going wrong...

It's these bikes that make me want a rat more and more