Originally Posted by
Campag4life
Some may prefer a bike with a bit more trail and less flop like me. This type of bike can be ridden as fast as a nervous bike with less trail and more flop...
But there's a twist... For road bikes within the usual range of HT angles and fork rakes, more trail almost always means more flop. So you increase the trail and the bike will resist steering, but you've also increased the flop and the bike will want to fall into the turn more, and vice-versa. This again shows how little sense it makes to focus on a single measurement, as you and others have been saying all the time.
Originally Posted by
Carbonfiberboy
I have a 52cm '99 Trek 5200, a ~2002 Nashbar 53cm aluminum road frame with an Easton EC50 fork, a 50cm CAAD9 with a C'dale "Premium" carbon fork, and a 2003 Medium-Small CoMotion Speedster with a WoundUp carbon tandem fork. They all have slammed -17° stems, standard setback seatposts with the saddles all the way back. The Trek and CoMo have 100mm stems, the Trek and Nashbar 110mm stems. The C'dale has ~4" drop, the Trek ~3", the Nashbar ~2.5" and the CoMo ~1.5". The CoMo requires the most inside pressure in the turn, the rest are not particularly different. The borrowed Giant was a little small for me, maybe about like the C'dale. I have no idea of the size or setup particularly. I fit it OK but could have used more stretch. I don't remember where the saddle was other than about the right height. It was one of those, "Can you ride this OK?" "Yes, I think I'll be OK" type of things and away I went. Once I got out of the parking lot without making a fool of myself I was OK. 30 miles later I was beating it like a rented mule.
I would guess the Giant had less reach and less drop than your Cannondale? I believe that you would likely get a similar sensitive steering if you flipped up the stem on the Cannondale, perhaps added some spacers. It would be a simple test to do if you are interested. Of course, there are so many other factors at work there that would not make it an apple to apples comparison - the saddle position would still not be the same between the Giant and the Cannondale, the front center, HTA and trail are surely somewhat different. Most importantly, you did hop on to the Giant straight from the tandem which has some drastically different handling parameters - trying to compare the feel of two bikes from memory can be very deceptive.