Originally Posted by
LupinIII
okay, well new to me. I saw this on craigslist, was attracted to it's strangeness. I called about it and found out it had a decent groupset (shimano 600), was made of decent material (tange 2 tubing), and was in ridable condition.
so i took the 40 minute drive out to see it. the seller was a bit eclectic with bikes. his house didn't really have any furniture, just bikes. his kitchen was full of bike parts, his garage was full of random wheels, frames, and pedals. Nice guy, a bit odd, but nice. I was surprised when he brought the bike out and how clean it was, compared to the more or less disarray of everything else.
I didn't know what to expect since there seems to be very little about these bikes. all i heard was that you'll probably kill your neck from the angle and that they're twitchy. I don't know about the neck part, but this thing is twitchier than a squirrel on cocaine. once you get it straight though, it absolutely flies and accelerates like mad. rode it a couple blocks and I was hooked on it.
anyways, he swapped out the clipless pedals that were on there since i don't have any road clipless shoes for some random clipped ones we found in his pile of pedals. after all was said and done it came to about 200 bucks, not too bad considering this frame is light, the components are equivalent to ultegra, and I found out it had NJS stamping on the stem. and it shouldn't be hard to sell in davis (not that i'm looking to sell anytime soon)
Hello,
I've got one of these in my garage. I raced on it starting in the mid 1980s until 2000. Actually there was about a 10 year gap where I didn't do any TTs in those 15 years.
I think that you might be doing something wrong or that the seller psyched you out because the bike is far from twitchy. Yes, the position is pretty extreme but I raced three 40 Km TTs on it and didn't suffer any permanent damage.
Originally Posted by
ridethecliche
Get a fork with less rake. That's going to make it less twitchy.
That bike is awesome though!
You aren't going to be able to find a better fork for the bike unless you get someone to build a custom fork. Like I said, though, the bike rides fine with the factory fork.