Originally Posted by
Carbonfiberboy
I must be who bikes are designed for, because I've never owned a bike I couldn't ride all day without physical issues other than getting tired. In the past 70 years, I've owned and ridden 10 bikes, only 2 of them bought new.
And how tall are you? More importantly, how close to “average” men’s height are you? I have never had problems with finding a bike that fits and is comfortable for hours, either. However, I’m only slightly above average and bicycles are designed for me. Smaller people…especially very small women…don’t have that luxury. Bicycles for smaller riders are…and have been…just downsized larger bikes. Georgena Terry has a whole video series on what bicycle design for small rider
should be.
The fact that you and I can go out and just buy something off the peg that fits vs having to hunt for something that fits was the point of my post. It’s not about
us it’s about our long suffering petite partners.
When I bought my carbon single, I had the salesperson mount the size I guessed at on a trainer and loved it. I did change out the stem later on. For the 2 new bikes, I picked out about the right size from a catalog and adjusted it. The used bikes I just swung a leg over.
It’s not about you or me or our fit on bikes. We’re average…well, I am and I’m assuming you are. Can your smaller wife walk into a bike shop, point to a carbon bike, and have it fit? Probably not because bike companies don’t make small carbon bikes. That 15 lb wonder bike isn’t available for the people who could really benefit from a 15 lb wonder bike. We are more than 20 years into widely available carbon bicycles but we are still stuck in the sizes from 40 years ago…i.e. 50 cm is the smallest ones around.
It's not the standover height, which we both have. Stoker and I both mount by swinging a leg over the saddle, which as I've said now a couple times is comparatively higher for my stoker than for me. The older one gets, the higher that saddle seems. I've seen too much paint lost of top tubes to like that method. The stoker's compartment is a perfect fit, i.e. Stoker is short enough to fit in a standard Gates belt length compartment.
I’m still not getting your point about the bottom bracket tube. My stoker has a frame that is sized to her…35cm seat tube center-to-center (40 cm center to seat collar). Other than slight hip problems, she has no problem swing a leg over the saddle. But, again, that has nothing to do with the bottom bracket tube.
For my wife, I bought a 7-speed MTB conversion many years ago, all stock MTB except with drop bars and brifters. It's a positively brilliant solution for short folks. She runs 1" tires on it. I'm not that familiar with all the mix and match possibilities for such conversions. I suspect that later Shimano components won't mesh like that. She had owned a mixte before that, an OK bike but heavy and clumsy.
Although this has nothing to do with tandems, I’ll go ahead and address it. Many people think that mountain bikes are perfect for small people because they come in small sizes. But what most people don’t understand is that a smaller frame is proportioned to a larger rider because of the increased top tube clearance for mountain bikes. For example, I ride a 58 cm (23”) road bike but I ride a 19” mountain bike. The mountain bikes I own actually have longer top tubes for the smaller frame than my road bikes because the goal is to center the rider between the wheels better than on road bikes. My daughter (5’6”) rides a 50cm (19”) road bike but a 15” mountain bike. My 19” mountain bike would be a very poor substitution for that 19” road bike because the frame is proportioned for me, not her.
My wife rides a 44cm (17”) road bike. Putting her on that 15” mountain bike as a road conversion would result in a very stretched out rider position for her which would put more stress on her hands and shoulders. She wouldn’t be able to ride that bike “all day without physical issues”. And that’s what I get so passionate about. It takes a whole lot of work to get a bike that is properly sized for a small adult. Manufacturers don’t make it easy, either since they ignore this part of the market. Most people don’t think about that…including small riders…and the small rider gets stuck with a bike that is ill fitting and not all that a enjoyable. In other words, they don’t get to enjoy that “all day without physical issues” riding feeling.