x100
Hendley knows what he's talking about, and I could not have said it better. I'm 6'0 w/35" inseam, and found traditional geometry frames with >170mm head tubes were the target. Professional fitting told me stuff like BMC Team Machine and Marinoni's were the way to go if I didn't want a lot of spacers under my stem. Like the OP, I like the seat tube length of 60cm bikes, but that's where the love affairs ended.
More and more, I think ST is a bad way to size a bike. Tell me the head tube length, and horiz TT. A good bike fit goes a step further and tells you the ideal saddle setback from the bb spindle centre.
BTW, I have a Marinoni over in the classified that may fit the bill if you're after steel....
Originally Posted by
Hendley
Long head tube relative to top tube is what you're looking for. With long leg/short torso proportions, it's all about trying to get the bars high enough without massive spacers and stem kludges on a TT that is short enough for your upper body.
Often this means the "comfort" versions of road bikes (which, if you are long-legged/short-torsoed will provide a fit similar to what average proportioned riders experience on standard bikes).
Don't know much about steel/titanium brands, but for general road bikes, these brands/models tend to work better than others:
- Almost all Specialized bikes (except the Tarmac team, I think?). The Roubaix is especially good.
- Trek Performance geometry
- Cervelo RS (only, the rest of the line is long TT, short HT)
- BMC road bikes
- Ridley (although the high BB negates the long HT somewhat)
In steel, I know the Soma is short-torso friendly, whereas Surly is most definitely not. Note that most steel bikes will have external headsets, so you can add 2 to 3 cm to the headtube length as listed on the geometry tables.
(I have no idea why Colnagos are always suggested in this context, as on all the geometry tables I've seen they have rather short HTs compared to TT).
Edit about going down a size: I really do NOT recommend going down a size (to a 56 in your case), because you will either have a huge saddle-bar drop, or so many spacers and a flipped up stem that the reach ends up too short.