noglider 

Ah yes, I hear great things about that model.

Lamplight

We have lots of great gravel trails in my town, and I usually use my Univega for those.



My old Mongoose commuter bike is probably a little better suited for that sort of riding, but it's not nearly as fun (or as fast).

southpawboston

My newest gravel grinder isn't really C&V, in fact it's a brand new Rawland Stag. But it's a classically designed 650B frame with standard diameter steel tubing, horizontal top tube and French-curved high-rake fork with lugged twin plate Pacenti PBP crown. And it's built up with mostly modern parts but I think it looks pretty classic. I rode the annual D2R2 ride in Western Mass last week on this bike, a mostly dirt road climb fest, and it performs very nicely indeed on gravel!

vitaly66

Have you experienced any shimmy with this bike on fast descents?

redcaymatt 

I've been riding this one a lot on the Delaware Raritan canal tow path. I love it!

southpawboston

Unfortunately yes, the bike does shimmy if I ride no hands above 25 mph, but not with at least one hand on the bars. This is not a defect, per se, and it's debatable whether a different headset can make a difference. It's simply a matter of trail, load, tire size and tire pressure. Low trail and fat tires both conspire against a bike to promote shimmy.

I have my own thoughts on headsets and how they may prevent shimmy. And it's not what most people think.

jimmuller 

Okay, now I'm curious. 'Splain please.

gomango 

Yes, please do.

I'm going down a similar road with a build next year and I'd love to hear your opinion.

southpawboston

Oh boy. I'm probably opening a can of worms here. Basically the argument for roller bearing (or needle bearing-- the same thing for this argument's sake) headsets being the cure for shimmy is that they better distribute the load across the bearing contact surface by being able to withstand higher pre-load. This may be true, but I don't buy this argument as the reason for reduced shimmy because any modern cartridge bearing (angular bearing) headset can do a fine job of distributing preload. But if you ask what else helps eliminate shimmy, the typical answers are (1) holding the handlebar, or (2) increasing the front load, like by adding some weight to a handlebar bag. To me, both of these suggest a simple damping affect. So could it be that a roller bearing headset simply introduces more friction resistance (and therefore damping) to rotation of the fork (roller bearings are known to have more friction than angular bearings)? Seems plausible, because several people claim that after installing a roller bearing headset, they feel more resistance to fork rotation, and reduced steering responsiveness. So do you really want increased resistance? Because then you're going to compromise the ability of the steerer to respond to your body's inputs. Seems to me that the solution one problem is the introduction of another. I've also heard that high quality angular bearing headsets (Chris King, Cane Creek, etc) are capable of withstanding higher preloads than lower quality headsets, and since I have a Cane Creek, I will first investigate whether slightly increasing the preload on mine will cause the shimmy to go away without having a noticeable increase in resistance to rotation. If so, problem solved. If not, I may just live with shimmy because in the end it might be less of a problem than reduced steering responsiveness.

Barrettscv 

Needle bearings, roller bearings and ball bearings have a lower capacity for thrust loads. The headset has two forms of thrust load, the weight on the fork and the preload. If the capacity for thrust load is exceeded, the bearings will bind to some extent.

Angular or Tapered bearings have a high tolerance for thrust loads and don't bind. However, Angular or Tapered bearings are costly and difficult to install correctly.

Installing a larger diameter bearing is an economical way to use ball bearings in a headset without exceeded the thrust load capacity. Modern bikes are now starting to use larger lower bearings to improve performance.

vitaly66

Is the downtube on your Rawland skinnier than the seat tube? It looks to be so in other photos I've seen online. And that top tube is even skinnier.

In any case, whatever remedy for the shimmy you may find in headset selection/adjustment, isn't it a treatment for the symptom of shimmy, rather than the cause of it?

Apologies for going way off-topic. It's just that this is the second mention of shimmy I have seen in reference to the Stag today. Very interested in experiences with this bike as I am also contemplating a 650b build soon. I do love the classic looks and sensibilities of this machine!

koolerb

Just finished this.

crank_addict

My '10 Rapid 1 is my fave do it all ride. Compact road frame and flat bars gives incredible manners and a light enough sub 19 pounder. Its a fast GG! Sometimes it gets racked and fenders for light tour duty but with a little change of set-up, I find the most fun off-road. Shimano 105 group w/ thumbies, short cage rear der. Takes 700 x 34 knobbies by first deflating the tire and then when in the frame, air-up. I cut the handlebars down and depending on the days ride, swap out road drop bar-ends to Icon off-roads. An identical second set of wheels but with the different rubber and gearing makes it a quick ordeal. Most stable at high speed and predictable drifts in high speed downhill curves. Quite a sensation to first overcome but what a riot.

Six jours

I have long suspected that increased friction is the reason that needle bearing headsets can often help a shimmy problem. But that friction is not at all noticeable as such, and is not a "problem" in the least. If it is noticeable, you either are using a poor quality headset (I despise the Velo Orange offering) or have not installed it correctly. I have been using Tange needle bearing headsets for decades (I have one that has literally been in continuous use since 1989) and have never noticed a handling difference between it and "standard" ball bearing headsets - but when I installed it on low trail 650b rando that had previously shown a tendency to shake its head at certain speeds, the bike calmed down immediately. I just don't see any downside...

shelbyfv

Six Jours- could you provide a model and possibly a source for the Tange headset you like? thanks

southpawboston

That's good to know, six jours. I wonder if it's worth trying to increase the preload on my existing Cane Creek unit or just scrap it and swap it out for a roller bearing unit. I happen to have a Miche roller bearing unit that I bought at the same time as the Cane Creek, but I had heard mixed reviews of it, so I installed the Cane Creek instead.

Also, why the dislike of the VO unit? Any opinion on the Miche unit?

jimmuller 

Thanks for the shimmy description, spb. Interesting. I've never seen nor ever worked out the physics of front-end shimmy but I know enough about oscillating systems to hazard a guess that it occurs when two or more degrees of freedom have similar resonant frequencies. There are a number of possibilities here, too many to analyze without doing serious work (which I won't do!) and without data. Adding friction would certainly dampen oscillations, perhaps enough to help. It should also broaden the resonance frequency, FWIW.

dddd

Tapered roller bearings introduce rubbing friction from the big ends of the rollers rubbung against the inner raceway's retaining flange (the turned-up edge that prevents the rolles from moving away from the steerer's centerline).

The rollers in a Stronglight headset aren't tapered, so one source of friction appears to be removed, especially as these needle rollers are smaller in diameter and any friction (with the bearing retainer cage in this case) at their ends is acting on a smaller radius about the needle's centerline.

BUT, the needles rotate faster because of their smaller diameter, AND they scrub along the races because of the diametral difference of the races where the two ends of each roller make contact.
Thus, any needle roller headset with straight rollers (rollers themselves not tapered) shows increased friction as the steering movements exceed a minute movement in either direction. Very small movements however do not immediately introduce this scrub friction as there is a bit of freeplay between each roller and each corresponding slot in the retainer cage.

So indeed, a Stronglight needle-roller headset can show a noticeable increase in steering effort even as the straight-ahead steering feel is identical to that of a good ball-bearing headset.

RFC

That is a very gravel worthy rig.

photogravity

Here's what I'm using for gravel road exploration. It has modern geometry (73°-ish) but fork rake that would make a French builder blush. I have found this bicycle to be stable no matter the surface it is on, yet still fast enough for me. It just plain works and takes all challenges I throw its way. At the moment I am running Grand Bois Cypres tires which measure 31mm wide on Velocity Synergy rims. I have rode this on various gravel/dirt roads in the past and only yesterday took it for a 40 mile ride about half of which was dirt roads. If I could have only one bicycle, there is no doubt in my mind that this would be it.


Norman Rapide on a Sunny Sunday - 1 by Sallad Rialb, on Flickr


Norman Rapide on a Sunny Sunday - 2 by Sallad Rialb, on Flickr



Norman Rapide on a Sunny Sunday - 4 by Sallad Rialb, on Flickr

azgreg

Love it. Any details?

bikemig 

I ride my 1993 Bridgestone XO-2. I built it up from a frame with parts I had in my parts bin. I'm running shimano 105 7 speed derailleurs and the wheels are built around suntour cyclone sealed hubs. The one odd choice was the stronglight 99 crank I guess but it is such a beautiful lightweight crank and I had an english threaded stronglight BB to go with it. The bike was originally designed to be a do everything bike. I really like the combination of road geometry and 26 inch wheels:

koolerb

I bought it new in 1993. I wanted a CX bike for the fall and didn't have the money to buy one so re-purposed this one. It was a Mongoose Rockadile SX. The frame was getting pretty beat so stripped and powder coated it. Went to a solid chromoly fork, from 3X7 to 3X8 gearing, and friction/index shifters to Alivo rapid fires. Going with the 8 speed gearing I was able to keep it pretty inexpensive. I was tempted to go to a single ring up front but figured the triple is already there so why not ride it.

Six jours

It's called the G-Master and has been out of production for years. I occasionally see them pop on on Ebay and they don't seem to be garnering serious collector attention yet...

Six jours

I think you're on the right track with your thinking. I hope you will try increasing the preload and let us know the result.

I have heard one report on the Miche unit, and it was reasonably good. Apparently it does what it's supposed to without drama. I don't have any personal experience with it, though.

The two V/O units I tried both had a serious binding problem. No matter what I tried, and which bikes I tried with them, I could not get them to run freely across more than 20 degrees or so. Normally when this happens I assume that I screwed up the installation or that the frame is introducing misalignment, but between two different units and six different frames (all of which work fine with other headsets) it's obvious that the V/O units just aren't held to acceptable tolerances. I hope it was just bad luck or a bad run or something - I am generally a fan of Velo Orange - but I'm done with that model of headset.