Old 06-12-09, 09:46 AM
  #13  
Kommisar89
Bottecchia fan
 
Join Date: Aug 2003
Location: Colorado Springs, CO
Posts: 3,520

Bikes: 1959 Bottecchia Milano-Sanremo (frame), 1966 Bottecchia Professional (frame), 1971 Bottecchia Professional (frame), 1973 Bottecchia Gran Turismo, 1974 Bottecchia Special, 1977 Bottecchia Special (frame), 1974 Peugeot UO-8

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Originally Posted by peripatetic
Kommisar, what do you mean by "trail?" Are you talking about wheelbase?
Trail is the distance between the contact patch of the tire on the ground and a theoretical point on the ground ahead of that determined by drawing a line along the steering axis (imagine a line going straight down your steering tube) to the ground. The greater that distance, the more your front wheel will resist turning. Conversely, the shorter that distance the less resistance and if there is to little resistance you get twitchyness. A track bike or crit bike might be intentionally designed with shorter trail for quicker steering response while a touring bike would have longer trail to provide stability. With Short trail, every small bump, rock, or groove in the road can send you off in a different direction requiring a steering correction. In extreme cases this can be dangerous. A smaller diameter wheel will effectively shorten the trail. Whether this causes a problem or not will probably depend on the bike's original geometry, how much trail it had to start with, and how sensitive you are to the effects of that.

If we had all of the measurements we could determine exactly how much trail would be reduced but even then we could only speculate about what the practical effect of that might be. Really all I can say is try it and see what happens.
__________________
1959 Bottecchia Milano-Sanremo(frame), 1966 Bottecchia Professional (frame), 1971 Bottecchia Professional (frame),
1973 Bottecchia Gran Turismo, 1974 Bottecchia Special, 1977 Bottecchia Special (frame),
1974 Peugeot UO-8, 1988 Panasonic PT-3500, 2002 Bianchi Veloce, 2004 Bianchi Pista
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