Bikeforums.net is a forum about nothing but bikes. Our community can help you find information about hard-to-find and localized information like bicycle tours, specialties like where in your area to have your recumbent bike serviced, or what are the best bicycle tires and seats for the activities you use your bike for.karavshin
10-30-08, 05:56 AM
Many fitting systems I've read about target a physiologically-optimal frame geometry spec for a few different bike styles (mtb, road, tri, tt, etc). The idea being it gives you either/and most efficient possible power delivery or the least-damaging for joint/muscle.
Then when I am reading about designing a frame, it discusses geometry in terms of how the bike handles as a function of frame geometry (trail, wheelbase, etc).
The issue will be that the physiologically ideal point (it seems like most of these fitting systems produce a single optimum point description) isn't going to necessarily going to match your desired bike handling characteristics.
It seems to me that the practical answer I really want is to imagine the physically healthy geometries set and the handling geometries set, and find out where those two sets overlap, and somewhere inside there is the bike geometry(ies) you actually want.
In particular I'm thinking about this for MTB and travel/touring frames, where there are more considerations than just efficiency and speed.
So a couple questions:
1) has anyone seen a fitting system that optimizes for both physiological fit and handling fit?
2) has anyone seen rideable adjustable bikes? Would be nice to actually experience what arbitrary geometries ride like. Or at least allowing some parameters to be adjustable (wheelbase, trail, angles).
Then when I am reading about designing a frame, it discusses geometry in terms of how the bike handles as a function of frame geometry (trail, wheelbase, etc).
The issue will be that the physiologically ideal point (it seems like most of these fitting systems produce a single optimum point description) isn't going to necessarily going to match your desired bike handling characteristics.
It seems to me that the practical answer I really want is to imagine the physically healthy geometries set and the handling geometries set, and find out where those two sets overlap, and somewhere inside there is the bike geometry(ies) you actually want.
In particular I'm thinking about this for MTB and travel/touring frames, where there are more considerations than just efficiency and speed.
So a couple questions:
1) has anyone seen a fitting system that optimizes for both physiological fit and handling fit?
2) has anyone seen rideable adjustable bikes? Would be nice to actually experience what arbitrary geometries ride like. Or at least allowing some parameters to be adjustable (wheelbase, trail, angles).