The High Spark of Low Trail Bikes - Part 2

As all three of my regular readers will have noticed, I took a long break from posting on this blog. I have various reasons (or excuses) for taking the break, but none of them have anything to do with a loss of interest in randonneuring, cycling or anything vaguely bicycle related. I'm still as cycling obsessed as ever, though admittedly a complete neophyte compared to some of my riding partners. Anyway, it's time to jump back into the blog world.

Many months ago, I wrote a post about "low trail" front geometry and my Trek 311. Since then I've completed an SR series on that bike, not to mention countless just-for-fun rides and literally thousands of commuting miles, so I now have a lot more experience with the handling, both with and without front loads. With that additional experience, I thought I'd write some follow-up thoughts on the old Trek 311 and its low trail front end geometry.

But before I say any more I should warn you, I’m a lousy bike reviewer. There’s nothing rigorous or scientific about my reviews. These are just my thoughts on a bike I own, and I find that I almost always like the bikes I own. Even when they are $75 Craig's List finds (which the Trek 311 is). I may not like everything about them, but I usually find something to like because… well, because they’re mine and because in most cases I built them up myself from a bare frame and a bunch of parts. Furthermore, I tend to ride old “junkers,” so what do I know about good bikes, right? I've ridden a few nicer modern bikes here and there, but for the most part I ride bikes that are either old (Treks from the 80s) or new-ish, but using old designs and technology (VO Randonneur). I love combining an old steel frame with a mix of old and new parts to make a bike that is comfortable and highly functional for me. My bikes aren't vintage museum pieces and they aren't state of the art racing machines, they’re just my vision of good, useful and relatively inexpensive bikes. So, if you’re interested in a thorough and objective review of a bike that’s relevant in today’s market place, you may want to go here or here or maybe even here. But if you’re interested in one randonneur’s esoteric equipment choices and what he thinks about them, please read on.

I reread that last post from February and realized that after a lot more riding, my first impressions haven’t changed much at all. Specifically, I find that the 311 has stable, yet responsive handling both with and without a light to moderate front load. Without a load it’s a little quicker to respond to input, but barely. I prefer the handling with some weight on the front. For commuting, I often take the handlebar bag off altogether (so I don’t have to worry about the bag being stolen while the bike’s parked at work), and it’s just a bit twitchier than I like that way. The couple of pounds of tools, tubes and other crap I usually have in the handlebar bag for most rides seem to stabilize the ride just enough so I’m less likely to swerve off course when looking over my shoulder to make a lane change, for instance. Even with heavier loads like the 7 – 8 lbs I typically carry on a long brevet, the steering is still responsive when I need to avoid an obstacle, but extremely easy to ride in a straight line or hold steady through a fast turn. I almost never carry more than a few lbs in my handlebar bag, so I can't say much about how the bike handles a heavy load on the front.

Early on when I started riding the Trek with a front load I noticed it had a slight tendency to shimmy under certain circumstances. I've read a fair amount about shimmy being a common problem with low trail front geometry, and my Trek seems to support that. But to put it in perspective, after nearly six thousand miles I've only experienced shimmy a few times. It seems to happen when: a) the handlebar bag is very heavily loaded, like maybe more than 10 lbs, and b) I'm cold. No, really! If I'm cold and especially if I'm shivering, the frequency of my shivers seem to match the bike's oscillations and together we get into a shiver/shimmy feedback loop. Talk about being in sync with your bike... It's never been so bad that I felt at all out of control, and trying to relax my upper body and pressing a knee against the top tube does a good job of dampening the shimmy. I've read that a roller bearing headset can fix the problem, but honestly it's never bothered me enough to do anything about it. But, if you're the kind of person who gets freaked by any shimmy at all (and I wouldn't blame you if you were) then you may want to steer clear of the old low trail Treks.

In the earlier post, I talked about the Trek having a trail measurement of about 45 mm. While that’s lower than the typical mainstream road bike trail number by 10 mm or so, I should point out that it's not as low as most of the true French constructeur influenced randonneuring bikes that often have trail measurements in the 30s*. So, perhaps it would be more accurate to describe the Trek as "mid-low trail". Whatever you want to call it, the trail of my Trek is considerably less than almost any modern mainstream road bike you can buy.

My Velo Orange Randonneur (which I no longer own) had very similar front-end geometry to the Trek. Both bikes have a head tube angle of 73 degrees. The Trek's fork offset is 55mm, while the VO's is 53mm. That works out to about 2mm more trail for the VO than the Trek. For the metrically impaired, 2mm is about the thickness of a US nickle, or in other words, not much at all. The Trek and VO feel somewhat different on the road, but they both handle well with or without a light to moderate front load. My guess is that the differences in handling characteristics can be attributed more to other differences in geometry (chainstay length being the most significant), and differences in set up (stem length, handlebar width) than to the slight difference in trail.

Speaking of differences in setup, I've experimented a little with handlebars of different widths over the past year and was surprised to find that handlebar width seems to affect handling at least as much if not more than differences in trail. The extra leverage provided by a 44 cm wide handlebar vs. say a 39 cm handlebar makes the steering feel much more responsive. On some bikes that's a good thing, but I find that my Trek 311 feels better with narrower handlebars. It just seems much easier to ride smoothly in a straight line, or to hold a steady line through a turn with the narrower bars.

Conclusion
Yeah, well I'm not sure I have much of a conclusion (I told you I'm not much of a reviewer) other than: I really like the way my Trek 311 handles. So much so, that I bought another similar old Trek with the exact same front-end geometry to replace my VO as my main geared randonneuring bike (more on that in another post). But does the Trek's low-ish trail really make a significant difference in the way the bike handles a front load? It helps, but I don't find the difference to be huge. Overall, I think some of the old steel Treks from the 80s make outstanding randonneuring bikes, but it's much more than just front-end geometry that make these old bikes work so well. Tubing choices, quality of construction, overall geometry and design all contribute to make for a fun, smooth riding, well mannered and high performing bike.

* Here are a few modern production bikes to check out that have true low trail geometry:

• Boulder Bicycles All-Road and Brevet
• Ocean Air Cycles Rambler
• Soma Grand Randonneur
• Rawland rSogn/Stag and Nordavinden

SIR Spring 600k: Put a Forks in it

Welcome to Olympic National Park

It was on the road between Forks and La Push that I first noticed the moon. It was last Saturday night, and I was about 380 kilometers into the Seattle Randonneurs’ Spring 600k. The night was dark with few stars visible, the only light for miles coming from my trusty headlight and taillight and the running lights of Chris Cullum, my Canadian riding partner who I had been riding with off and on for the past 300 kilometers. Suddenly there it was: the full* moon shining through a gap in the clouds like a saucer of vanilla flavored Ensure Plus®. Then it all clicked in my head (by this point nearly as cloudy as the night we had been riding through). The full moon… The nearby town of Forks… Vampires! Werewolves! What was I doing out here!? I didn’t actually read any of the Twilight saga, but I saw the movies (well, part of the first one anyway)! I know what evil, wrapped in sparkly skin and designer jeans lurks in this damp corner of Washington state!

Ward and Gary on the road near Matlock

A few minutes later the wave of panic passed as I realized that even if vampires were real, they would probably do their best to stay away from Forks. Way too many Twifans hanging around these days. A more well-founded panic returned a little while later as I realized that it was Saturday night and Forks was the only town around with a bar. It was rapidly approaching the drunk driver witching hour, not a good time to be on a bicycle.

In spite of vampires, werewolves, drunk drivers, bad convenience store sandwiches, occasional headwinds and lots of lactate in my thigh muscles, I managed to complete the SIR 600k brevet last weekend. It was an incredibly beautiful route that circumnavigated the Olympic mountain range in a huge clockwise lumpy circle beginning and ending at the ferry dock in Kingston.

Shadow riders

Riding a single speed bike throughout the SR series this year has often made it difficult to find well-matched riding partners, but this time I managed to ride with others at a very compatible pace for about half of the distance. Chris in particular turned out to be an excellent riding partner, happily pulling me through endless rolling hills.

The view from Kalaloch

Every long brevet has it's warts and imperfections, but I really can't think of much about which to complain. Yes, there was a brief rain shower or two. But come on, we were riding through miles of Pacific Northwest rainforest in early June! What do you want? Maybe that last stretch of highway 104 from 101 to Kingston with the hills that took a couple of cheap shots at me when I was down on the ground? But that's not the hills' fault. They were there long before we decided to ride our brevet and they'll be there long after my trusty Trek has turned to dust and returned to the earth. Honestly I have to say this was my favorite 600k yet, and maybe my favorite brevet ever.

Some highlights for me:

• The excellent homemade chocolate chip cookies at the Hood Canal control (Jennifer's recipe and Kole's execution).





It was steeper than it looks, honest



• The lovely rolling, car-free back roads between Matlock and Humptulips, especially that steep dirt section that forced me to use my "granny gear" (i.e. get off and walk).


• Okay, this is for real: In the Matlock General Store the clerk found $40 on the floor and asked if it was someone in our group who had lost it. None of the group I was with thought it was ours. Then at the very next stop in Humptulips, 45 miles down the road, as I was walking to the cash register there on the floor at my feet... two crisp $20 bills. They weren't mine. I asked if anyone in my group had dropped them, but none of us had even come in with two twenties. Weird. I left them with the cashier and walked out wondering if the same $40 would be following us all the way around the Olympic peninsula.


• Chris and I helping a woman with a flat tire along 101. I'm convinced that woman would still be there trying to figure out how to fix that flat if we hadn't stopped (not exactly a whiz bike mechanic). She said she was riding to San Francisco. She'll either develop some bike mechanical skills along the way or continue to depend on the kindness of strangers.





"Dinner" at Kalaloch



• Celebrating the first real view of the ocean at Kalaloch with a dish of soft-serve ice cream.





Leaving Forks at 2:30 AM



• Making the most of the Forks control by stopping there not once but twice. The first time for an excellent bowl of homemade chicken soup to fortify me for the out-and-back to La Push. Then for a fiery bowl of chili and a couple hours of sleep before setting off again at 2:30 AM for last third of the route.


• The quiet and lonely slog from Forks up to the control at mile marker 218.7 in the wee hours (Chris and I had parted ways at Forks and from there on I rode alone). Perhaps I saw three cars in an hour and a half. A great time for introspection and loud off-key singing.


• But even better was the oasis at mile marker 218.7 with hot chicken soup and friendly faces.





Just before the sunrise on Lake Crescent



• Watching the black night turn to grey daylight as I rode along the shores of Lake Crescent.
• East Bank Rd!





Dungeness Spit from the stone bench



• Sitting on the stone bench overlooking the Dungeness spit and reveling in the knowledge that there was little between me and Kingston that could keep me from finishing the ride (but naively unaware of the hills on highway 104 I had yet to ride).


• The feeling of rolling into Kingston shortly after noon having just finished the brevet and a complete SR series on a single speed bike, not too mention it being my second fastest 600k ever. Of course, my spirits fell quickly when I realized I still needed to walk up a flight of stairs to the second floor motel room to get my card signed.

This was really a great ride for me from beginning to end. I felt strong the whole way and was rarely bothered by aches and pains. My bike worked well and nimbly avoided any broken glass and other sharp road debris that conspired to deflate my tires. The route was one I've wanted to ride ever since I started randonneuring. There's something about the remoteness and the idea of going all the way around an entire range of mountains that inspired me. I rode with some good riding partners who shared the hard work, some for a few minutes, others for hundreds of kilometers. Thanks to Chris, John, Gary, Ward and the others I rode with briefly. Most importantly, thanks to Kole and Jennifer, and the many other SIR volunteers for putting on an outstanding event.

*Okay, it wasn’t really officially a full moon until the 5th, but three days away from a full moon looks pretty darn full.

Some Tricks for Installing Aluminum Fenders

I recently installed some Velo Orange aluminum fenders on my Trek 311. I’ve been riding this bike a lot this year and it’s had a set of Planet Bike plastic fenders on it since I built it up in its current configuration back in January. I tend to think of aluminum fenders as higher quality and more “permanent” than plastic fenders, which is why I made the change. But after I installed the aluminum fenders I got to thinking about the differences between plastic and aluminum and the relative advantages and disadvantages of the two types. I’m not sure one type is any better than the other, they’re just different.

For instance, plastic fenders are probably a better choice if you frequently lock your bike up in crowded bike racks where the bike is likely to get banged around. Plastic fenders resist the unavoidable scratches and dents that would have aluminum fenders looking old and beat up in no time. If a plastic fender gets crunched against a rack or another bike, it will usually just snap back to its original shape while an aluminum fender might end up rubbing against a wheel until bent back in shape.

Aluminum fenders tend to offer better coverage which means they keep you and your bike drier and cleaner. This isn't entirely a function of the material. Plastic fenders could be made longer offering greater coverage, but none of the commonly available plastic fenders (SKS and Planet Bike) come in sizes as long as the commonly available aluminum fenders (Velo Orange and Honjo). I suspect that this is partly because aluminum is stiffer and therefore more stable in the longer lengths and less likely to flop around. A plastic fender would probably need to be made heavier or would require additional stays if it were made as long as most aluminum fenders.

Of course there are also aesthetic arguments for aluminum or for plastic. Aluminum fenders just look right on some bikes while plastic looks right on others. It's just as hard to imagine a classic René Herse with plastic fenders as it is to imagine a Trek Madone with hammered aluminum fenders (though I'm sure both have been done).

1950 René Herse porteur

One of the arguments I often hear in favor of plastic fenders is that they're easier to install. In general I'd agree with this, though I think it's not as much a function of the material (plastic vs. aluminum) as it is a function of design. Honjo and Velo Orange fenders are designed to be installed more permanently as an integral component of the bicycle while SKS and Planet Bike plastic fenders are designed to be easily added on as an accessory. You generally won't have to modify much about a plastic fender to get it to fit reasonably well on your bike assuming the bike has room for any fenders. With an aluminum fender, be prepared to do a little bending, drilling, cutting and cursing.

Each time I install a set of aluminum fenders I learn another trick or two that makes the job a bit easier and results in a better quality installation. It still usually takes me more time than installing a set of plastic fenders, but some of these tricks at least remove difficulty-of-installation as a significant factor in deciding which type of fenders to install on a bike, so I thought I'd share some of what I've learned.

• Install one contact point at a time working your way from one end to the other. For instance on the rear fender, attach the fender to the chain stay bridge first, then at the seat stay bridge, then the rear fender stay.


• After each point is attached, work on “shaping” the curvature of the fender to match the arc of the tire from that attachment point to the next. In other words, once you’ve attached the fender at the chain stay bridge work on shaping the curve of the fender only between the chain stay bridge and the seat stay bridge. Once you’ve got that section nicely matched, then attach the fender at the seat stay bridge and begin shaping the fender from the seat stay bridge to the fender stay.


• The curve of the fender can easily be “shaped” by either squeezing the edges of the fender toward each other or away from each other at the point where you want to adjust the arc. Squeeze the edges together to increase the radius of the fender arc (make the curve flatter), and pull the edges outward to decrease the radius or make the curve tighter. A little flexing goes a long way, so go easy. Adjusting the arc in one spot will affect how the fender fits in the adjacent spots so it’s best to make tiny adjustments working along the length of the fender and then go back over it a couple times. It’s sort of like truing a wheel.





Squeeze the edges together to increase the radius






Pull the edges apart to decrease the radius



• Once installed, there should be no tension in the fender. Sprung tension is what causes fenders to crack. In other words, the attachment points shouldn’t be holding the fender in the correct curvature, they should only hold the fender on the bike.


• Use leather washers and rubber spacers between the frame and the fenders to reduce noise and the likelihood of cracks.


• Use nylon lock nuts or locktite on nuts and bolts to keep them from vibrating loose.


• Never, ever embark on a fender installation job without beer.

Those with sharp eyes have already noticed that the rear fender line on my Trek isn't quite perfect. Other than the fact that I'm not a perfectionist and could best be described as a "hack" when in comes to bike wrenching, there are a couple of reasons (or excuses) for this. First, these fenders had been installed on another bike previously and were removed because the rear fender cracked at the seat stay bridge (due to my faulty installation job). I patched the fender back together with a couple of pieces of sheet aluminum and some nuts and bolts as you can see below.

It's not the most beautiful patch job in the world, but it's quite sturdy. While the patch holds things together well, it limited my ability to shape the fender to match the arc of the tire perfectly.

Also, since the Trek has horizontal dropouts, I decided to leave some extra room near the chain stay bridge so that the rear wheel could easily be removed and reinstalled without having to let air out of the tire. I've seen other fender installations that solve this problem by attaching the fender to the chain stay bridge with a spring gizmo so the fender follows the arc of the tire but can be pushed forward when needed to remove and reinstall the rear wheel. I've used this approach before and it does look better, but in my experience it always results in a fender that rattles and eventually cracks. For a randonneuring bike, I'm interested in the simpler, more indestructible approach even if it isn't quite as pretty.

So far this installation seems to be solid and totally rattle free. The 400k and 600k brevets coming up in the next few weeks will be good tests.

The High Spark of Low Trail Bikes

Update: It took a while, but I finally wrote a follow-up to this post here.

 If you spend much time immersed in esoteric bicycle techno-retro-grouchery like I do, you’re no doubt aware of the “low trail” debate. If on the other hand you’re a normal person, then you have no idea what I’m talking about. I’m not going to try to personally answer the technical questions like, “what is trail?” and “how does trail effect bike handling” because if I go there I’ll most likely get it wrong. There’s been plenty written on the topic by smart people who actually know what they’re talking about. For starters, there’s the Gospel. Here’s what Sheldon Brown has to say about trail:

Trail is the distance from the center of the contact point of the front wheel with the riding surface to the intersection of the steering axis (head tube) with the surface. The trail is a function of the head angle, the fork rake, and the tire diameter. Trail has a major effect on the handling of a bicycle. More trail increases the bicycle's tendency to steer straight ahead. A bicycle with a largish trail dimension will be very stable, and easy to ride "no hands". A bicycle with a smaller trail dimension will be more maneuverable and responsive.

You can see that the front wheel of my Trek 311 contacts the ground slightly behind the point at which the steering axis intersects the ground. On my Trek the trail is about 45 mm.

There is no dispute in the bicycle industry that bikes need some positive amount of trail to be ridable. Most current manufactures and custom frame builders seem to agree that the right amount of trail is somewhere between 50 and 63 mm, with 57 mm often being considered the ideal compromise between stability and agility (see Craig Calfee's article Geometry of Bike Handling).

So what about my Trek pictured above with 45 mm of trail? That falls outside of what current manufactures consider to be ideal. Does that make the Trek unridable?

Here's where we get into the low trail debate. Some believe that a bike that carries some load on the front and has relatively wide tires handles better with a lower trail geometry. Jan Heine writes a lot about this in Bicycle Quarterly. He also wrote an interesting series of blog posts in which he discusses how he personally discovered the benefits of low trail geometry for the kinds of riding he does (see Part 4 for the discussion on low trail geometry). While the low trail evangelists are beginning to form a sizable following, it's still far from being accepted in the mainstream cycling industry. For a test, walk into to your local bike shop and ask them to show you some bikes with low trail and you'll see what I mean. "Huh? Low what?"

Why does any of this matter? For randonneuring, I find a front handlebar bag like the one you see on my Trek pictured above to be the ideal way to carry what I need. With a front bag I can get at food, clothing or anything else I might need while I'm riding. It also gives me a nice place to carry my cue sheet so that I can always see it, and the wind resistance is no greater than if I carried an equal sized bag on the back of the bike. And there's no risk of accidentally leaving it open and blissfully leaving a trail of cliff bars and arm warmers.

My first two randonneuring bikes were typical modern designs with trail somewhere in the mid to upper 50s. Decidedly high trail. On my Gunnar I never carried a load in the front mostly because there was no practical way to do it. The carbon fiber fork had no attachments for a front rack and the STI levers had cables protruding right where the bag would sit. With my Surly Cross Check I was able to mount a front bag and that's where I carried my food and gear through a countless brevets and training rides. On the Surly I never thought the handling was a problem. The bike was more nimble when the front bag was empty, but with loads up to 12 lbs, it was still "good enough" to carry me through long brevets without incident.

My experience with the Surly made me skeptical about the benefits of low trail design for front loads. The Surly's handling wasn't perfect, but it really wasn't that bad either. How much better could the handling be by reducing the trail by a few lousy millimeters? I was a skeptic, but I was also curious. And ultimately that curiosity is part of what lead me to buy the Trek. One of the interesting design features of many of the old Treks before 1985 was they had relatively low trail. So now that I have my Trek set up with a front rack and bag, I'm finally able to get some first hand experience with low trail and front loads.

Without a front load, I liked the way the Trek handled from the beginning. The handling is stable and predictable, yet if falls into corners easily. It feels rock solid at high speeds and is easy to maneuver at low speeds. The steering may not be snappy enough to make a good criterium racing bike, but for the long distance riding that I usually do there's nothing about the handling to not like.

The biggest surprise to me when I added the front rack and experimented with carrying some weight on the front is that the handling didn't seem to change much at all. It still falls into a turn easily and handles mid-turn adjustments well. The bike holds a straight line without any effort and even rides no handed almost as easily with a front load as without. One negative thing I've noticed is a slight tendency to shimmy. The only time it's gotten extreme was when the bag was loaded with a lot of weight, like close to ten lbs. With reasonable loads like what I typically carry on a brevet (under 5 lbs), shimmy has been barely perceptible. Also, the front load is noticeable when I get out of the saddle for climbing or sprinting. The front bag tends to throw the front of the bike a little more as the bike rocks from side to side.

I'll need to spend more time on this bike before I can really make up my mind as to whether a few millimeters of trail really makes a difference in the way a bike handles a front load. The Trek definitely handles differently than my old Surly, but so far the differences are both good (easier handling) and bad (tendency to shimmy).

So, the experiment continues.

Single Speed Randonneuse

I’ve owned this 1982 Trek 311 for couple years now and in that time it’s been set up in various ways. This winter I decided to build it up as a single speed brevet bike, and so far I’m really happy with how it’s working out. The 311 was Trek’s cheapest model back in its day. The main triangle is Ishiwata Magny X double butted tubing and the stays and fork are good ol’ high ten (aka "drainpipe"). Definitely nothing to write home about, but somehow it manages to be an extremely comfortable and fun to ride bike. It handles a moderate front load well, though it can shimmy a bit if I put 10 lbs or more in the front bag. That shouldn't be an issue because I usually don’t carry anywhere near that much on a brevet.

There’s actually not much of the original bike left in this build. The frame, fork, headset, stem and handlebars are original, but everything else was scavenged off of other bikes, out of my spare parts "warehouse", or purchased new for this build.

The gearing is 46/18 which works out to about 68 gear inches. I’ve found that gearing to work well on long rides. It allows me to keep up with moderately fast groups on the flats, and still make it up most of hills. When the hills get long and steep, I kick it into the granny gear (i.e. I get off and walk).

Since I started Randonneuring in 2009 I’ve wanted to complete an SR series on a single-speed bike. This year seemed like the right year to go for it, so that’s the vision that inspired this build. So far its longest ride has been only 90 miles, but it handled it with aplomb. I have little doubt the bike is up to the task of a full SR series.

P.S. Did you notice how I did that without any mention of the fact that I haven't posted a darn thing in nearly four months?