Originally Posted by will dehne
Everybody recommends TEST RIDE. It sounds so simple unless you live in a mid size town which is not focused on road biking. We have a few LBS's but nothing like the bigger towns in bike friendly locations.
Now what? I need a new bike for another coast to coast credit card tour. Litespeed was the most popular bike on the last tour. Add another few Titanium frame bikes from Roark and others. Seems as if Ti is the choice of these tours, or is it not? There were several full carbon bikes also but from many manufacturers. None dominated.
My local LBS carry Trek. That is it. My weight is 195 and not much fat (6 ft).
Any comments?
In the UK- of the Ti frames that are about and have a good reputation- Litespeed keeps coming to the fore. Have not ridden a Road frame- but rode a Litespeed MTB on one ride. (The mad fool of an owner and his partner both had Litespeed Mountain bikes and The reason they were fools was that they wanted to try the Tandem) I have an aluminium Bianchi MTB that works. I ride it aggressively but after a long ride it can hurt. Riding the Litespeed was an experience. Very lightweight, very reponsive and very easy on the body. I know this could be down to a great number of factors but for a bike to feel this good- it had to be a good bike in the first place. The components were not that good but this was a Cheap build from the owner just buying the frame. Then again, and not a frame I have ridden- One of my old riding partners has a Russian Built Ti frame that he built up into a Lightweight MTB. No front suspension and this thing works. The owner is as good as Crashing as me so it has had a rough time in the 10 years it has been about. Any scratches on the frame are taken out with wirewool and it looks as good as the day it was built. Incidentally- This Russian frame is no longer made as Apparantly it was made from tubing that was surplus to the Space project and when the source of cheap Ti dried up- it could not be made economicaly