oddball

I have had a Giro 20 for a year and 2000 miles. You will become more stable as you get more miles on it. The key is to RELAX your grip on those handlebars. The bike will go straight if you just let it, assuming it assembled properly of course. I have had it over 30mph and it does feel better as you become used to it.
If you are at the upper end of the size range for the frame you are buying this will make the bike seem a little more "twitchy". This is because you are unweighting the front tire. You can correct this by running the tire at a lower psi. Putting a wider, heavier tire will slow down the handling a bit too. I ride mine with a Primo Comet, 1.5". When I started out I ran the front tire at 50 psi. I am 6'2" so my front tire is very lightly loaded so it is safe to run it this low.
The lower pressure will also tame down the bounciness of the small front tire. The 20" front tire needs a little help dealing with roadway imperfections.
A heavier tire on the front will also make it more stable as it will increase the gyroscopic effect of the spinning tire.
As far as the difference between the 20 and the 26. The 26 is a little more stable due to the gyroscopic effect of the larger, heavier wheel. The 26 is a little harder for a new rider to get used to but will give better performance if one can get used to riding it. The 20 will be a little easier to handle in tight turns due to less pedal to front tire interference. The 20 might be a little easier for stop and go city traffic for a shorter person, changing the seat from the standard recurve to a euromesh will make it easier for you to touch the ground because it has a smaller bottom seat pan.
As you become more comfortable on the bike reclining the seat back further will enhance the stability of either bike. At a certain point the recline may necessitate switching to the euromesh seat which is designed for the more reclined, sporty position.

charly17201

Biggest thing I had to learn when riding my SWB/USS was to 'palm' the handle bars instead of gripping them. That made the biggest difference in the (twitchy) steering.

The first time I went down a good hill and started really crankin' I scared the doggie-do out of myself. Now my downhill is the bomb.

Jay D

**Update**

As others have mentioned before, it's not the bike that is twitchy, it's the rider--they're absolutely right! The weekend after I posted this tread I spent a good three hours at the local bike shop that sells recumbent bikes trying out both the Giro 20 and 26. After that amount of time switching back and forth between both bikes I was equally comfortable riding both however the Giro 20 just felt right to me which is what I ended up purchasing. Since then I've been riding the bike so much that I do not miss the upright bike I just recently sold at all. The Giro 20 is simply a blast to ride and very stable at even high speeds!

Thank you all for your help!

just4tehhalibut

My 2 cents:
I've had a Giro 20 for near 8 weeks and done just under 2000km, this includes a 9 day supported tour (the 'Great Escapade') through the hills down south of where I live, the south-west of Australia. Myself and 1800 other riders toured the scenery and tackled the terrain. As to the OP's question I noted three things about the Giro during this event, I could hit 60 or 70 km/hr with complete control (I did 75 km/hr out of one sudden dip), I could brake with full control, and the squirrelly front wheel was a symptom of my riding and set up, something that has disappeared after a bit of mileage. The Giro had no problems up or downhill, performed better than me, in fact.
As to the braking, consider the V-brakes as more than adequate, and the simple apportioning of your bodyweight more to the back wheel (sort of like DF riders are told to hang their buts over the back of the saddle, to keep the weight back, in emergency braking) seems to be a winner. Just like the ideal set up on the recumbent makes you more aerodynamic it also puts you in a better position for when hard braking.
Since my x-seam puts me close to the limit for the large frame I used to think that the front wheel squirrelled because of issues with where my bodyweight was. However, as others on this thread have said, it really all was about riding in a more relaxed manner and having the correct setup. A couple of thousand kilometres and more particularly a re-read of the Bacchetta website about rider setup and things have improved a lot.

P.S I spent a lot of the downhills passing DF riders, even on the occasional gravel patch. I had to try not to let any packs of the lycra mob get past me near the crest of any large hills or I'd just have to pass them on the way down. Giro20 and hills, not a prob.

LWB_guy

Very good advice!
I learned to do that myself, after riding awhile.

oddball

I palm the handlebars instead of gripping them also. Helps a lot.

BlazingPedals

Congrats on the new bike Jay D!

n559br

I remember when I was first learning to fly that I had a death grip on the wheel. After a few weeks I was down to just a hand. After getting comfortable I could control the aircraft with just 2 fingers. I have found my Giro to be the same. Once you get comfortable with it you find that it doesn't neet to be man handled. A nice gentle caress will get it where you want.

Doug5150

Not to pick on you specifically, but how long can any of you guys ride any (two-wheeled!) recumbent on a street (with no car traffic or parked cars) while looking backwards over your shoulder? On both the couple recumbents I've owned and the other few I've tried riding, doing so is basically suicidal. If you couldn't see it, you had very little sensation that the bike had veered off a straight line. They required constant steering and straight-ahead visibility--unlike any upright bike, that can be steered fairly well with your eyes off the road for a few seconds.

The front wheel stability improves with speed, wheel size and tire weight.

The "steering feel" stability of any upright bike, I've not found in any recumbent I've tried yet. This is a matter of the head tube angle that most recumbents tend to use, to avoid problems with steering tiller and to avoid using remote steering. I think bikes like the Ryan Vanguard/Longbikes Slipstream might approach the steer feel of an upright, because they use a normal steering tube angle..... but I have not had the chance to ride either yet.
~

Jay D

What type of recumbents did you own?

One of the determining factors of me buying a Giro 20 over the 26 was the ease of being able to sit up easier and rotating so I can see behind me. Yeah, it's not as good as a DF, but it is do-able. However I feel my line of site when riding normally is far better than a DF, no more strained necks and looking at the ground all the time!

Dchiefransom

That's why they make mirrors.

oddball

I use a Take-A-Look mirror no matter what I am riding. Due to the high attachment points and size of my trapezoids I have trouble looking over my shoulder no matter what I am riding. Almost every 'bent rider I know uses a mirror.
As far as needing constant steering correction I can ride mine no handed. Constant steering correction is common with people inexperienced to 'bents. With time in the seat it goes away.

yangmusa

I had a Challenge Hurricane, and now have an Actionbent Tidalwave 3. On both I could sit up and twist my upper body round to look backwards, both while coasting and pedaling. I don't think I have superhuman balance skills either, but I do ride quite a lot so practice may be a factor. Just don't try to demonstrate while drunk, that's the only time I almost fell off

bobbycorno

IME, it's not just steering geometry. My RANS F5 has very "road bike" steering geometry (73 deg, 4cm of rake), but the steering is NOTHING like a road bike. Of course, it also carries more than 60% of its weight on the rear wheel, where a road bike is typically in the 50-55% range. My Actionbent MidRacer feels very much like a road bike, in terms of steering anyway. It's also far more stable at all speeds than the F5, despite having 26/20 wheels vs the F5's 26/26 format. I haven't done a "scale test" yet, but I'd guess that the weight distribution is 50/50, or maybe a little more on the FRONT wheel. Based on that, I'd have to say that f/r weight distribution is at least as important as steering geometry in determining stability, handling and overall steering "feel".

SP
Bend, OR

BlazingPedals

I have no trouble looking over my shoulder to see behind me when I'm riding my upright; but on any of my recumbents, I use a mirror. Oh, I can sit up and turn around while riding, but it's way too inconvenient to do it on a regular basis.

Artkansas 

I've had my Giro 20 for almost two years now. The "twitchiness" that the OP referred to almost put me off buying one. But now I understand the situation better.

It's true, unlike my diamond-frame bikes, I can't take my hands off the steering and expect to continue in a forward direction, the front wheel will veer right or left. I don't know enough about the geometry to explain this.

It's true that at high speed I can lean the Giro 20 into a corner farther and faster than I would dare to go and it tracks like it's on rails. I don't have a speedometer on my bike, but in the mountains I've come into turns marked 35 and had to brake hard to get my speed down enough to make the corner. That said, in such situations, I feel like I'm in the smallest most agile sports car.

The twitchiness is extreme sensitivity to rider input. It's true that having a 90 degree bend in your arms is the worst possible way to steer a bike because every tremor or small motion of your arm is picked up by the handlebars, and at 90 degrees there is a lot more movement than if your arms were straight out as they are on a standard bicycle.

Not gripping the handlebars helps as does learning to pedal more smoothly.

gcottay

I'm not all that good at shoulder peeks on a DF let alone a bent, so a mirror is important to me. I'm one of the many Take-a-Look fans.

I've only put major miles on a RANS Rocket and know what you are taking about with the eye steering, but, after a while, found it to be no problem. I can even reach for the water bottle without doing a circus turn.

Riding no handed for sixty miles or so is also no problem for me. Just substitute "inches" for the last previous occurrence of "miles."