What do you consider before you say a bike "rides nice."
 

We've all felt it. We get on a bike and it just feels... nice. It rides smooth, no rattles, rolls nicely, feels comfortable, brake feel is good. But then there is the opposite. The bike you get on, expect it to ride nicely, but it doesn't. The ride is jarring, bike feels stiff instead of compliant, brakes don't work well, etc. I notice the biggest differences in similar bikes with vintage bikes. (Most modern bikes ride... similarly, sure some are lighter than others, but unless you really go out and hammer it you'll have a hard time pinpointing differences.)

For example, we recently had a few older schwinns in. One was a traveler, one was... something else, no decals... perhaps an old continental. I expected the traveler to feel nice, but for some reason the bike was just uncomfortable. I can't pinpoint what it was. The bike rolled fine, the brakes were ok. It shifted good. (Friction shifters after all.) Tires were new. The saddle was uncomfortable, but that usually doesn't affect my judgement.

I don't know, to me the bike just felt.. rickety? I'm not sure what would make a bike feel that way. I really liked the bike and hoped that it rode well, but as soon as I got on it I was disappointed. It's not a bike quality thing either. I've had really cheap old Nishikis ride REALLY nicely, but a "nice" old schwinn which sold for 2x the price originally ride crappy.

So what is it? What makes an old bike ride nicely compared to old bikes that ride not well at all. (I know, it's all subjective and different for every bike, but I'm appealing to C&Vs experience. Some of you must know what I'm talking about...)

If I want to sell it, it rides nice.

For me, that's the biggest thing. I don't care about the name or price of a component. If it will take and hold an adjustment, I'm good. I'm OK with a small degree of flex in certain things too. But we all know that "Rickety" feeling, and on some bikes/parts it just can't be adjusted out.

In addition to a solid feeling, I love when I bike is dead quiet.

This will not be helpful, probably, since it's really subjective. There are two feelings for road bikes, the steamroller feeling like the bike will just keep going forever, and the efficient feeling like every erg is converted to forward progress. I've gotten the former from sport touring bikes that are very different, like a 531 Paramount and a heavy, straight-gauge Super Sport; and the latter from racing bikes like a 2000-ish Cannondale CAAD and from a steel Diamondback Expert TG. From my mountain bike, and my commuter cross bike, and my Priority, I get neither. I thought I'd get the steamroller feeling out of the cross bike and I'm not sure why I don't. I think it might be the tire quality. That does make a difference... the mountain bike now feels analogous to a climbing shoe since I've put a nicer fork and some race-level tires on it. I can have confidence it will go where it's aimed and stay upright.

A machine that goes where I'm looking, holds the line through a roughly surfaced off-camber high speed turn, and responds without conscious effort "just feels... nice".

-Bandera

Not much to add to the already rather simple formula of what makes a nice bicycle. With vintage builds I'm always concerned about that 'rickety' feeling as well, and I think that goes a long way towards describing any bicycle in general. Most modern machines right off the rack feel tight and will probably last for seasons or years of use if they are properly maintained, feeling quite new all the while. With an old bike, unless if a complete refurbishment has taken place (nut-and-bolt), I've found a surprising number of less than appealing aspects about vintage bikes I've ridden!

As long as a bicycle is functioning properly and built up in a way that makes it feel like a 'new bike' (whether that's the new of yesteryear or of today depends on the bike's age), then I would say it is nice. Even if it lacks the finest components, or is not made of my favorite tubing or doesn't quite fit me, it's easy enough to see whether or not it's performing as it should. Any fault beyond that is likely to be my own imagination at work!

Peronal preferences considered, everyone can be picky and I am no exception. I built a couple of nice bikes that I simply did not like riding because they weren't my cup of tea, whether I had issues with the comfort of the frame or the function of index shifting... But discussing such personal considerations doesn't seem to add much to the concept of 'niceness.'

I'm not a loaded tourer, or an urban cyclist. Not an endurance person, nor a racer.


I want my bikes to feel 'lively'. 'Nimbleness' is a favorable characteristic. A vintage keeper must be 'responsive and handle well'.


Clear as mud - right?


edit: Sometimes it may be necessary to augment frame/fork with tubular wheels and excellent tires.

I consider what the bike is intended to do, and how the ride compares to other bikes I've ridden that were built to do the same thing. An example is, my judgment of a nice riding crit bike will be completely different than a century bike. The crit bike might ride like crap on a century, and the century bike will have issues spinning up after the turns and probably wouldn't want to be pushed through corners.

Knowing what a bike should feel like will ultimately result in more bikes. Then, you'll undoubtedly want a nice all rounder...

Obviously a nice bike is subjective. I think it starts with what you started off with or your needs were in the beginning of your cycling journey. For me it meant a bike I could train on and race on. Since my racing was triathlons that usually meant a road bike with italian geometry and aero components and it still does. But a nice bike still needs to be solid no rattles, nimble enough to take a tight turn and stable enough t hold your line in a pack. When you find one buy five more, that's what I did.

Any quality bike is going to feel nice to me as long as the fit is good. Fit is everything.

I don't like the ride quality of any of the basic Schwinn ten-speed models either, to my mind they ride like heavier bikes than they actually are, and I suspect it's because the frame construction and thick tubing transfer a lot of vibration from the road to the rider. This makes bumps feel bigger, riding into a small pothole feels like dropping into a chasm, and unlike quality frames that flex a little bit and give the rider some subtle feedback about the forces going into the frame, the road vibration masks those signals and you end up with a 'dead' ride quality.

It's a kind of magic, I suppose:

Kind of, this.

If I can sit up on the saddle while rolling and feel balanced, it's a good sign. Fit has a lot to do with this, obvi.

Another word that comes to mind is *predictable*. If a bike makes me think, I'm not happy. If it goes where I want it to go without much conscious effort, I am happy. Become one with the bike, yo.

I'm still in the process of trying to find out how 'nice' works, but this is definitely a big part of it. I have a bike that fits this description: a Gitane TdF. Like an extension of my body.

That, combined with the silvery tingle of the right freewheel. Pure heaven.

This is a great question. I have a bunch of ideas about it, but I'm not even sure that these correctly reflect the actual criteria that go into my subjective impressions of a bike. This is just what my conscious mind tells me I care about. I think I have these in more or less the order of importance to me.

1. Fit -- I don't know when this happened but I have become princess-and-the-pea sensitive to bike fit. I've got a set of measurements I use to set up my bikes and I'm at the point where I can actually feel when my saddle is 1/8" too low and when I get home measurement confirms it. I try to get every bike set up exactly the same way, but with limited range of fore-aft adjustment on the saddle rails and 10mm increments in stem length I can't get every bike precisely the same. I have one bike that within three pedals strokes of leaving the driveway gives me that "Ahhh..." feeling like you get when sinking into a comfy recliner. Given how immediately that feeling appears, it can only be the perfect fit of the bike. I'm constantly measuring my other bikes to see if there's something I can change to make them more like the magic Lemon D.

2. Silence -- I'm nearly as OCD about my bikes being silent as I am about the fit. I do things like putting a thin strip of rubber between my fenders and their mounting bracket because a little bit of rattle drives me crazy. If anything clicks, creaks or squeaks I am hunting it down. If I could find tires that didn't make road noise, I'd probably buy them. Objectively, most noises probably don't have any effect on the performance of a bike, but psychologically I think it's a huge factor in my impression of how the bike "feels".

3. Responsiveness -- I feel like this is still a pretty vague and ambiguous term. A lot of different things can ruin the responsiveness of a bike. For me to think a bike really rides nice they all have to come together to give me that feeling that I somehow am faster than usual when riding that bike. I guess this is part of what marketing types are trying to get at when they talk about a bike being stiff. I don't personally associate any lack of responsiveness with flex, but maybe that's what it is. I think of it as a sluggish feeling at the pedals. With some bikes when I spin the pedals it feels like I have a flat tire or the brake is dragging or I'm riding through mud or riding into a headwind or all of these. With other bikes, I move my legs, the pedals spin and the bike goes forward; it doesn't "feel" like anything is resisting me. The things that I believe contribute to this are (probably in this order): (a) gearing, (b) tire construction/suppleness, (c) tire inflation, (d) drivetrain cleanliness, (e) bike geometry, (f) hub and bottom bracket bearing smoothness, (g) tire and wheel weight, (h) tubing material and shape.

4. Cornering -- Once a bike fits, is quiet and is responsive, the next thing that separates one bike from another for me is the way it corners. Until about five years ago I rode mostly cyclocross and mountain bikes and this wasn't even something I considered. Then one day I decided to buy a road bike (a LeMond Nevada City) and the first time I rode it I was just going through a residential neighborhood and making a 90 degree turn that I didn't need to slow down for and it was like "Wow! What was that?" Since then I've bought more and more road bikes and even in my cyclocross bikes this is something I focus on. I guess this is all about bike geometry.

I'm not even sure what I prefer -- different days I want different feeling for cornering. That's part of how I justify my N+1 habit these days. My LeMond dives into corners and feels like it's pulling me through, like the bike wants to go faster. My Pinarello Gran Turismo feels like it's somehow straightening out the road, it just really flows through corners. My Trek kind of dives like the LeMond but it pops back up quicker and feels eager to go straight again. All of these are fun, but they're all different.

On the flip side, I've had bikes that felt like they were trying to talk me out of going around turns. Navigating a windy road was like reading "The Monster at the End of this Book" -- "Oh no, another turn...wouldn't your really rather keep going straight?" I guess that's what people who prefer stability are looking for. I had a Surly Long Haul Trucker that was like that and most of the time I didn't like it, but when I actually loaded it down and went touring, I was like "Oh, OK. I get it now."

5. Shifting and braking -- This would be higher on the list, but I'm less likely to blame bad shifting or braking on the bike itself. That's either my fault or the fault of cheap components. Either way, it's generally fixable. Of course, nothing can ruin a ride for me like bad shifting (except maybe bad fit or constant creaking).

6. Buzz absorption -- This also could be much higher on the list, possibly as high as number 3. The reason I put it here is that I hardly ever find big differences in this area between bikes that pass the first two criteria. A bike that fits comfortably and doesn't make noise is probably absorbing road buzz pretty well. That is until I get to a road with chip seal, and then my experience is that there's nothing for it except fatter tires.

Chief and foremost is how many nods of approval I would get from the internet.

THis is a good start:
https://encrypted-tbn2.gstatic.com/i...NKddhexEZlbpxw

Seriously! Almost all of my favorite bikes have been full 531db.

SP
OC, OR

There you go, we're starting to develop a consensus. ;)

If it doesn't ride nice, I sell it.

More than one form of 'nice ride'.

Yes, on the several versions of R531.

I suppose I could dissect it, but generally it's just a cumulative effect of everything coming together and just "working" for me. So usually some combination of smoothness, fit, responsiveness that seems to match my inputs intuitively, plus subjective intangibles. If I'm wistfully thinking about riding that bike again a day or two later, then it's a nice ride.

When I no longer notice the bike, then it's nice.

What feels "right" to me is a road bike with a fairly conservative, relaxed, traditional sports-touring frame geometry. I hate to say it, but my crummy old 1970 Peugeot UO-8, which has a reduced-rake aftermarket fork, is fun and stable to ride, although it is just a bit long in the top tube.

I really like my two Capo frames, which are also 72 degrees parallel, but with just the right step over height and top tube length for me to get comfortable. (Top tube length would not be not as big a deal with the Sieger, which has the Ambrosio adjustable-reach stem.) The Modell Campagnolo's plain gauge 531 provides civilized ride qualities without any whippiness or sponginess.