Originally Posted by
Wilfred Laurier
One of your claims was that you read in 'various books' something that agrees with your outlook on frame design. What books were these?
I don't remember the exact source where I came across this information laid out with more details (it was about 2-3 years ago). Since I found it made sense in terms of physics, I simply accepted it as a fact at that point. Also, since my own experience and that of people I know of agrees with it, I still feel this way. And I wouldn't recommend something I know I personally wouldn't use, hence my post.
Just something from
Sheldon Brown for maltess2 to consider:
Frame
The skeleton of a bicycle. The most common type of frame is called the "diamond" frame, and consists of two (of three, depending on how you look at it) triangles.
- The front triangle consists of the seat tube, the top tube, and the down tube...well, it also includes the head tube, so is is not a perfect triangle, but the head tube is usually fairly short, so it is pretty close to being a triangle. The front triangle holds the saddle, the bottom bracket, and, via the headset, the front fork.
- The rear triangle (or triangles, if you count both sides separately) includes the seat tube, seat stays and chain stays.
The diamond frame has evolved over the course of more than a century, and every dimension has been tinkered with and fine-tuned to the point that it is a nearly perfect design for the tubular materials commonly used.
And also:
Diamond Frame
This is the standard design for a bicycle frame, and has been for over a hundred years, since it supplanted the cross frame. It is one of the most nearly perfect pieces of design known, due to the extreme amount of refinement it has undergone over the last century, and its purity of form. It is unlikely that the diamond frame will ever be surpassed as a way to build a rigid-frame bicycle, using joined tubes as a construction medium. This is not to say that the diamond frame is the end-all and be-all of bicycle design. Monocoque construction with suitable materials has real merit, and the design of bicycles with rear suspension is at a stage where many different designs appear viable.