Clang

Since nobody has posted the link to the Retro Roadies thread yet: https://www.bikeforums.net/classic-vi...i-s-ergos.html

dksix

Now that's the stuff I'm talking about, Retro Mod Bikes! I saw an old low priced Japanese 62CM frame locally on CL last night, this might be a project that I could get into. I'm still quite new, having to Google terms as they come up......."sti's and ergo's"

USAZorro

There's at least one thread here that displays peoples' conversions of older bicycles to newer components. It is quite lengthy also. If you have something specific in mind, and want to bounce your ideas off people who have "been there", "done that", and are happy to provide opinions/guidance based on their experiences... well, I don't think you could pick a better place to do that.

and yes. Most bikes shops used to fit riders to larger sized frames back in the 70's than bike shops do now. There are probably a combination of factors for this, rather than one single reason.

thumpism 

I don't spend as much time in bike shops as I used to but it seems there are definitely fewer tall frames available new than there used to be. 25" frames were plentiful in my shop days and many manufacturers produced even 27" and 28" for those who needed super-tall ones. Try to find one of those new these days. When shopping used be careful with the listed sizes. Sellers don't always accurately measure so be sure of what you're getting.

I'm still able to ride my various tall bikes (generally 62CM) but I may shrinking as well. The doc tells me I'm no longer over 6' tall but I'm in denial.

Blue Belly

Bike measurements have always been sort of "off the cuff", with no standard to apply. Today, the measurements seem to be even further in askew. & even within that realm, Older frames seemed to get longer to a certain point, then just got taller. I had an old Colnago, for a bit, the was a 62cm. Top tub was like 58cm so, the bike essentially fit me. It was just really tall.

verktyg 

It's normal for people to loose height as they age... Cartilage shrinks, bones deteriorate over time, posture changes and so on.

I peaked out a 5' 11" (180cm) at 22. Fifty years later I'm 5' 9" (175cm). Gravity SUCKS!

My range of frame sizes was 54cm to 57cm center to top (21" to 22 1/2" nominal). Now my 57cm frames are getting too big.

verktyg

Chas.

USAZorro

I will always sneeringly refer to gravity by it's euphemism from the language of physics - the weak force.

Last ride 76 

Don't blame Bernie for the condition of Christie's Roads...

Last ride 76 

Gravity-
My feet got bigger. Much bigger. I have my old Adidas shoes from 1976. They are 42. Now I have to buy 44s if I want to get my feet inside. there are a lot more size 42 vintage shoes available than 44's. I guess I'm not the only one.
Hills seem harder too.

SJX426 

I have always ridden 60cm frames, did in the 70's and do now. I think my 58 is on the edge of the envelope on the small side. I am under 6'. My impression was the height change was primarily in the spine, not the legs.

I have been unhappy with the comfort on the RockHopper so I did some measurements on the most comfortable bike. The center of handle bar to sit bone location of the saddle is 3 5/8", yeah HB below saddle. So I can validate the over 50 comment about raising the HB.

My issue with 58 cm frame is the seat post being at the limit along with the stem. 60 give me adjustment for both. The 58 requires a Brooks Pro that has a higher top to rail distance. A Flite saddle height is constrained by the limit line on the post.

vtchuck

I'm almost 6'2" w/ a 36" inseam & I favor bikes with 24.5" to 25" ~62-65 cm.... especially steel frames. They are fairly rare on CL and ebay. Seems like most are
American or Japanese. French and Italian seem even more scarce. Modern CF frames listed as XL are between 56-58cm.

If you watched taller riders like Froome in the TDF, they have very long seat posts on their bikes, but the sloping top tubes create a shorter
seat tube. I suppose if you ran a level line from the top tube intersection with the head tube, back to the seat post and measured to
that point up the seat tube & seat post you might get an approximation of the older standard frame size.

Can't say I like the look of modern CF frames. Look like oversized BMX frames to me.... but I'm an old dinosaur.

thinktubes 

Has anyone ever seen a vintage 25" in the wild that didn't have the seat slammed?

embankmentlb

The thing I observed about the large size mass market Japanese frames is that they could have a 24",25",26" plus seat tube and still have a 22" top tube the same as a 22" frame.
The sizes only grew in hight and not length. I found it pretty easy to ride a 24" frame Panasonic DX4000 in Jobst Brandt fashion when I actually am a 22"

mtnbke

First of all, even amongst passionate cyclists that regularly post to something like a bicycle forum, its still true that 99% of the bikes on the road are too small for the cyclist that rides them. What changed is the "look" not the fit. Most cyclists have a very poor fit on their bikes and literally are sized to ride the bikes on the hoods. They couldn't ride even 50% of their mileage in the drops if you paid them. Essentially they like the look of an aggressive racing bike from the Giro, Tour, or Vuelta and want to approximate that "look" with their own bikes. Only they look like idiots because they climb in the drops, ride the rollers and flats in the drops, and even have to sprint in the drops because their bikes just do NOT fit.

There are only two things that matter with bike fit, mostly. The first is top tube length. If you have to use a much too short or too long stem on a bike the handling of the bike changes drastically. Its hard to tell this is happening, because most people can't comfortably ride on a 90mm stem if they need a 150mm stem on that bike, everything else being equal. However, how the bike feels and handles gets compromised when using very long stems and very short stems. The second critical factor with bike fit is the relative relationship between handlebar height to saddle. Any cyclist needs a different amount of seat post depending on the size of the bike. A smaller bike requires more seat post, a larger bike requires less. Where riding a too small bike comes into play is that the handlebars end up in a poor position, relatively, to the rider.

If the top tube reasonably accommodates the cyclist with a reasonable stem length & angle to fit, then bike fit really becomes a function of where the handlebar height ends up relative to saddle height. This is what the 99% of cyclists on the road don't understand. In fact strangely some manufacturers have normalized top-tube lengths. What that means is that for a given frame size (adjusted for compact sloping top tubes) bikes are now made with longer top tubes with the understanding that people actually WANT to buy the "look" of an aggressively small bike showing a ton of seat post.

The one thing that has absolutely NO BEARING on proper bike fit is stand over clearance. Which is what almost all LBS use to communicate to a customer that the bike fits them. The sad state of cycling in the US is that the average LBS is predatory. They actually sell a ton of bikes to people which are so poorly fit that the person gets neck pain, wrist pain, and all that weight strains the elbows and hands as well. So the bike goes on the wall, and it never occurs to the cyclist that the idiot kid working retail (that's what a bike shop really is) making $10/hr didn't know what the hell he was doing. So the bike goes on rack on the wall in the garage and the cyclist just thinks "they don't like cycling." Had they been setup with a properly fitting bike that put the handlebars at a neutral position to the saddle, or slightly above, for a given top-tube length/bike size they'd be fine. That's the problem with bike fit. It is incredibly difficult to bring the handlebars up for proper fit on a "too small" bike even if the top-tube fits.

I'm 6'7" and I'm a difficult bike fit. I typically ride old vintage 27" touring size Cannondales that are 68.5cm c-c and 73cm to the top of the seat collar. These are much too small, still in terms of handlebar height, even though they are certainly tall enough in terms of leg extension. The reason that during the bike boom many people rode BIG bikes, even bikes they couldn't stand over, was because you don't ride a bike by standing over it, but actually fitting ON it. A 25" touring bike typically is about a 63cm. I spend a lot of time trying to fit bikes to people that just don't work for that frame. We can't get bigger than a 63cm/25" stock tandem size, which what we have for our Cannondale tandems. Even during the bike boom era what was "one size" from 25" to 27" really is a difference of five sizes from 63cm to 68cm.

Bike manufacturers want you to think that everyone can ride on 175mm cranks and fit on four sizes from S, M, L, to XL. In reality there should be fifteen different sizes of bikes from 49cm to 63cm, in 1cm increments. That's assuming that EVERY single bike size only offers a single top-tube length. In reality, not everyone is proportioned the same. There really should be three top-tube lengths in a given bike size: Normal, +1cm, and -1cm. That would make for forty-five different frames a Local Bike Shop would have to stock to sell properly fitting bikes to anyone within the normal range of 49cm-63cm. Actually, a great many cyclists need bikes over 63cm. I laugh to myself every time I see some fool over 6ft tall riding a bike that is 60cm or smaller. They look so uncomfortable. You'll see some guy who is 5'9" on a bike only a couple centimeters smaller than his 6'1" friend. Its idiotic. With great fitness, youth, and flexibility they can manage a very aggressive saddle to handlebar drop, but the average cyclist can't manage this. Even pros don't ride aggressively fitting bikes after they stop riding for a paycheck. Andy Hampsten wouldn't and can't really fit his LandShark 7-11 bike he won the Giro d'Italia on. He'd be miserable trying to fit on that now, or even ten years ago. His bikes now are about comfort not trying to eke out every aerodynamic advantage from position on the bike. That's where most of us are. However, bike "sizing" assumes we all want the most aggressive saddle to handlebar drop imaginable as if we were a professional domestique in Europe, trying to hold onto to a Div I ticket.

People didn't get smaller. In fact the population has gotten taller, but bikes have gotten smaller, and the top-tube length of a given bike "size" has normalized to be longer to "fit" people on aggressively looking too small frames, which is the market preference. I like to ask people if they they think their bike fits. I usually get a response back like, "I've done Ride-the-Rockies twice, so I think I'd know!" Then I ask them to see if they could ride just the next five miles in the drops. People actually get angry. Its insane. They'd rather ride a bike that doesn't fit, because they've always ridden a bike that doesn't fit, than actually have to come to terms with the fact that even though they consider themselves to be a serious cyclist, they don't know a damn thing about bike fit.

Some good bike fit reading:

How to Fit a Bicycle
https://www.rivbike.com/kb_results.asp?cat=23
Revisionist Theory of Bicycle Sizing

People don't realize how disgusting the bike industry can be. As Fit Kit was coming out with their initial products many LBS actually pushed back. They wanted more "wiggle room" in the final produced recommendation, that allowed the shop to sell what they had on the floor built up, or in stock, not a "best" fitting size that they may have to order. So Fit Kit actually accommodated this. They revised the guidelines, and the recommendation allowed for more flexibility to put a cyclist on a range of sizes, instead of the proper fitting size. Can you imagine buying shoes like this? They measure your feet and tell you that you fit from a 9 1/2-11 1/2? That's insane.

In reality for a given set of controls (Ergo, STI, downtube shifters) and handlebars and stem combo, on a given frame, there is pretty much exactly one best fitting frame size. That variance isn't even 1cm, let alone the huge gaps that exist now with compact geometry. Ideally, fit would be optimized by allowing a normal +1 or -1 top tube length for a given frame size, and crank lengths would return to the 70s/80s offering of 165mm, 170mm, 172.5mm, 175mm, 177.5mm, 180mm, 182.5mm, and 185mm. I actually ride 200mm and 205mm cranks, and it astounds me that cyclists who are 5'7" and cyclists that are 6'3" think they are both "best" on 175mm cranks.

Cycling is essentially a manufacturer that doesn't want to offer you a properly fitting bike, sold by a retailer that doesn't want to take the time to stock a properly fitting bike, or change cranks or stems to make that happen, they both just want to streamline their inventory and distribution to sell you one of four sizes. Imagine if shoes came in four sizes. Would you go back to that shoe store?

An excellent bicycle shop would incorporate a bicycle sizing tool, into selling a bike. They at minimum would put something akin to a Look Ergostem on the bike to identify the proper stem length, angle to fit a given frame/bike. In reality I don't think one bike sold by a LBS out of a hundred every has a single alternative length or rise stem swapped at the time of purchase just to help optimize fit. Imagine getting a corrective vision prescription if the technician didn't show you the "this" or "this" trying to fine-tune your prescription. If he just carried four different vision prescriptions and had you try one, and if that didn't work you just took the next one.

uncle uncle

A majority of the bikes on the local craigslist are either 26 or 27" bikes. On a rare occasion, you will see road bikes that are listed as 700 cm, which is probably some foreign brand of measure. And the occasional 29" mountain bike.

wrk101

Yes. Check out some early 1970s Schwinn catalogs. On some models, small was 22 inch frame, medium was 24 inch, and large was 26 inch.

As far as modern drivetrain on a vintage bike, we have a huge thread on that. Many of us have several vintage bikes with modern drivetrain.


22 inch does not equal 60cm. 22 inch ~ 56cm. 22", 24", 26" = 56cm, 61cm, and 66cm. Imagine ANY bike company offering those as their three sizes now.


Schwinn catalogs, 1971 - 1980 (111 of 579)

blackhawknj

I have been puzzled by the oversized- to me anyway-frames of the older English 3 speeds. Many of them seem to have been built for NBA players yet 70-80 years people-especially in the UK-were somewhat shorter on the average than today. I just found a Raleigh DL-1 with a 22" frame, fits me-5'10", 30" inseam just right, I had 24" one badged as a Royal Scot, I couldn't ride it. Thought I think we understand the importance of correct fit better.

jon c. 

In the 70s, if you had as much seatpost showing as is now the norm, people would think the bike was too small for you.

mtnbke

26" refers to the 559 ISO mountain bike tire size
27" refers to the 630 ISO road bike tire size
700c refers to the 622 ISO road bike tire size
29" is just a 622 tire size on a mountain bike with a wider tire.

mtnbke

and they'd still be right!

Murray Missile 

I've seen several in my garage, does that count? I'm only 6' 1-1/2" and rode this for a couple years............





Of course when I sold it the first thing the buyer did was slam the seat all the way down..........

pastorbobnlnh 

What part of VT are you living in? Or are you 110 and comparing current VT roads to 1930s VT roads?

I'm about 20 miles east of VT in that other little state and drive or ride in VT regularly. I don't see much of any difference between our not so smooth roads and your not so smooth roads.

Certainly, we each have a few well made and maintained State roads. But for every mile of nice smooth pavement with decent sized shoulders, there has to be at least 20+ miles of @oddjob2 like "fine" roads which can't be avoided.

The nice thing about Bernie Sanders and his kind--- is they are good for population control. Which in turn keeps the roads more car free and more bike friendly.

Once the summer people leave in a few weeks, I can go on a 20-30 mile ride in the early evening and sometimes pass or be passed in either direction, by a dozen or less cars.


Back to the OP @dksix, also be careful upgrading a steel frame from the '60s-'70s to a modern groupo. The rear dropouts will need to widened from a 120mm width to 130mm width (easy to do), and the brake calipers will need to have external and not recessed mounting hardware. Best of luck on your adventure into C&V.

NormanF

In my youth, bikes seemed to be made for taller riders

I could just barely clear a 60 cm Peugeot at 5'7". Only later I understood it was too big for me.

I could still ride it comfortably as I could ride my 23" Raleigh Superbe!

okane

...wally world where one size bike fits all!!!

And as to standover height, I found that most novice riders are afraid of a bike unless they can sit on the saddle and place both feet flap on the ground. Talk about knee pain! I think this is the reason I see so many hardly ridden cheap (wally world) bikes at yard sales.

Blue Belly

Yes, I'm speaking of the early days of tour racing. Our roads are certainly not ideal. But, they are paved...in some areas