Help! I'm test-riding 2 Sevens

[KnottedYet]

My steel Waterford only weighs 1 1/2 lbs more than my boss's ti Seven. I gotta gloat over that, cuz she was giving me sh!t over buying a "heavy" steel bike.

[SadieKate]

Steel heavier? Not necessarily. My Kelly Bonestock in True Temper OX Platinum is stiffer, more responsive, snappier than my Litespeed Tuscany. It is almost identical in weight (and less than some other Ti frames I've seen) even though the Litespeed has lighter wheels and components. Deb is right though in that it doesn't absorb the road buzz as well.

The Kelly whips up hills and leaps forward under acceleration. The Litespeed absorbs road buzz far better. It rides like lugged steel from a road buzz view but without the weight and not as slow a response time.

It really comes down to the tubesets and how the builder manipulates the tubing and the geometry. Seven stocks so many different types of tubing in the different frame materials that they can really tune a ride. I'd love to see what they could do with Ti for the road buzz but a stiffer acceleration. Ti can get a little wimpy in large frames, but you don't need to worry about that. Have you looked at Roark? I seen some nice frames from them.

Bill's Seven steel/carbon is snappy fast and light. It is far too large for me to try, but I get the impression from him that it absorbs road buzz very well.

[bikerz]

The smoothness of the ride on both bikes was remarkable, compared to my Al bike - it was definitely the most notable ride aspect. And the second most notable was what felt like the sluggishness. Some of that could have been the wheels because my regular wheels are very stiff.

I'm not sure who else is reading this thread, but I guess I'm asking SK abd Deb for starters: To what degree do you guys think that the tubing and geometry manipulation that could be done to increase the snappiness (is this vertical compliance?) would be or should be affected by rider weight? (And not just snappiness, but any other ride characteristic). Specifically, I am a pretty heavy rider now, and I have about another 30-40 pounds to lose. It seems like that level of fine-tuning would be more likely to be affected by my weight than other factors like fit or componentry. Is that true?

I do plan on riding as many other bikes as I can - carbon, other steel and Ti, and so on. I don;t knwo anything about Roark - I'll look them up.

Thanks for all your thoughts - this is a really fun process!

[SadieKate]

Sluggishness in handling or sluggishness in acceleration and climbing?

For the latter, I'm guessing that the two bikes you rode have bottom brackets built for someone like me (I'm guessing you and I ride near to the same size bike - at least close enough for horseshoes). Bottom brackets are where you get that snappiness in acceleration. A good custom builder will use different tubing to tune (uh, beef up) the bike's bottom bracket to the rider's weight.

Then, there is the whole discussion of acceleration from wheels. Argg!

What do you want from the bike? If you were telling a builder in your own way what you want, what would that be? What riding characteristics do you not like about your own bike?