Originally Posted by
bokerfest
To follow up just real quick before I have to leave....
Yes I bought it about a month ago. I have put about 300 miles on it so far. My longest being a 75 mile day. From the set up from what the pictures shows above I did not have any knee or lower back pains. The only thing was I was always searching for a better hand position. I have adjusted the tint of the bars all over and what the picture shows seems to be the best.
When you say it seems to be an odd size, do you mean because the saddle is so high comparison to the bars?
The frame is a 58cm and I am 6'1. I know that is bit of a stretch I should be riding probably something more like 60cm instead. I went ahead and bought it anyway from the price I paid for it.
Speaking of which... how much does one think this bike is worth? Minus the saddle and pedals. I am afraid to say how much I paid for it because it could bias people opinion of value. Also, it would be embarrassing to know I paid way to much for it, but if that were the case it would not make that much difference since we all have made stupid purchases.
I guess the bar setup threw me off. Doesn't really matter what I think though, as long as it fits you! You can extend the reach a bit by using a stem with a longer neck. Takes a bit of trial and error, and you might have to try out a few different length stems-bit of a hassle, and not worth doing rite now. Will help out though if you'd like to ride more in the drops, or get arm/shoulder pain.
Price is another issue which really doesn't matter so long as you are happy with what you have. For folks shopping for used bikes, craigslist & e-bay are a good starting point to use as a general price guide. e-bay used to let you search closed auctions, so you could see what the selling prices were (don't know if you can still search that way). Again though, there are a whole bunch of variables. What would be worth 50$ to someone, might be priceless to me.
-As to the original question of using a freewheel with a larger bailout gear: I'd go with a large bailout on that bike, 32 or 34. Gearing also depends upon a lot of factors, so the 26/34 or even 26/32 will be too low(slow) for some and both might be too high for others.