Tom Bombadil

I made a discovery, at least for me, over the weekend. Based on visual clues, I believed that many of the crank-forward bikes from RANS had a much more relaxed geometry than other crank forwards. That the angle from the seat to the crank to the handlebars was much more aggressive than others.

But then I started studying them a bit closer. What I found was that this impression was largely based upon the angle of the seat tube used in the designs. RANS runs the seat tube directly up from the bottom bracket / crank to the seat, and uses a thicker tube to add strength to the steep angle. Whereas Raleigh (and others) used a more tradition frame and seat tube, but moved the crank forward along a line from where the seat tube intercepts the bottom frame tube.

However when one draws a line directly from the Raleigh's crank to the back of the saddle (where RANS attaches the seat post), you find that the geometry is VERY similar to the RANS. Tilt the Raleigh seat forward just a bit and adjust the handlebar stem and poof! they are almost identical. At least on the geometry. The RANS are still higher performance due to better components and lighter overall weight. However the impression that they are very different designs is just that, an impression.

It is fascinating how the angle of the seat tube has such a strong influence upon how one perceives the geometry of the total bike.

Here are pics of the Raleigh Gruv and RANS Dynamik Pro and my hacked up Raleigh/RANS Gruv