sloping top tubes?
 

ever acceptable? :)

forward sloping, hell yeah.

http://www.yellowjersey.org/axr.jpg

fsnl
sparky

only acceptable with apehanger bars.

Does anyone know the name of the sweet TT crankset featured in the 3rensho pic?
Would love to know for my Schwinn TT build.

Not a problem AFAIC. Hell, I think compact geometry is sexy.

drives me ****ing berzerk. makes me want to grab a sledge and pound it down to where it's level.

How sloping are you talking about? My newest addition to the fleet has a slightly sloping top tube, and I really like it:

http://velospace.org/node/218

Sloping top tubes on both road bikes and track bikes have grown on me over the past few years, as they have become more ubiquitous. If the bike fits and is comfortable, then it doesn't matter what the top tube is doing...

only only only forwardsloping, and i love apehangers as well as that yj rensho

Sloping top tubes are where it's at.

sloping is fine, and practical.
I'm mentally designing my custom frame around a sloping TT. and pacenti lugs.

only if it has an njs stamp on it.

Funny bikes make me dizzy.

http://www.blackbirdsf.org/bikes/ima...ho/3rensho.jpg

makes for a stiffer frame (smaller triangles) + more clearance for your legs when sprinting. I like em'.

Holy s--t! Apes could hang off those drops, Planetdude. What are those ... like 50s? As for sloping top tubes, theyve gorwn on me too. I converted a slopy trek hybrid, souping it up that cycling enthusiasts now wonder what I'm doing riding a 'cross bike fixed.

As a new owner of the much-maligned Bowery, I think sloping top tubes are spiffy. They look aggressive and modern. Horizontal top tubes are functionally inferior to sloping ones, so hanging on to them for basically aesthetic reasons is... quaint.*

It's much like those Harley riders who pay all that extra money for an engine that's so poorly designed, it literally shakes itself apart over time. It also gets 75% of the power of comparable engines with different strokes. Why do folks keep riding Harleys? Adherence to 'tradition', and a smidge of 'it sounds cool'.

* This is my first post in the SS forums, so in keeping with the way everyone else seems to talk to each other here, I've added a gratuitous troll. Feel free to hurl whatever insults you want, because I'm 100% hipster-proof.

Sloping up...ugly. Sloping down...thumbs up.

totally acceptable!

http://img497.imageshack.us/img497/9...iki12050hy.jpg

funny bikes don't make me laugh

bleh.

that looks dap, plant. nice ride. i'm gonna slope it at 4.5 degrees i think. at least now that i checked wif ya'll! thanks! :)

go for it!

not trying to be a pain in the ass, but how are horizontal top tubes functionally inferior? are we talking stiffness here? and would it even matter to someone like me who never races his bike aside from the occasional alleycat?

this one slopes 5 degrees

Just so you know, the pacenti slant 6 lugs are built around an oversize + oversize tubeset with a 1 1/8 head tube, 1 1/4 top tube and 1 3/8 down tube aka mountain os. I built my cross bike with them, and it's pretty, but also pretty beefy.

as the rumours say, darrell at lewellyn bikes in oz is coming out with a 1" headtube road os sloping lugset this year. those two are the only sloping lugsets in the universe afaik.

good luck

I'm a relative newb, so I'm not going to pass myself off as an authority. However, in this thread:
and, from the previous Bowery thread:
So, I'm not the one saying it. I'm quoting others. To be fair, I'm quoting all that out of context - I cut all the grousing out about how ugly sloped top tubes are. :)

I'm not a good enough rider to tell the difference, myself. I'm just taking issue with the notion that sloping top tubes and compact frames are useless... they have functional benefits, but they're untraditional and not to everyone's tastes.

Two thoughts:

1) a sloping top tube provides the geometry for a longer head tube, which means more distance between the headset top bearing and bottom bearing, and, intuitively, this seems stronger and allows a lower stand over height for a given head tube length; and,

2) the smaller frame requires a longer, weaker, heavier seat post, and the whole idea amounts to a meaningless styling gimmick.

:)

The above said, the bikes posted by potus and plantdude look beautiful to me.

http://static.flickr.com/19/104272616_2353d03058.jpg

i've got a little slope.

This reminds me of a similar argument i had when discussing why some wine bottles moved from cork to plastic, for the cork allowed air to pass through which causes all sorts of problems, from the growth of mold to the distortion of taste. Despite plastics clear advantage over cork, most wine guru's prefer a bottle sealed with cork for it is the wine tradition. This relates to sloping top tupes, for thier lack of acceptance is due to thier lack of following tradition, which, imho, is ridiculous, considering that there are advantages to its shape/geometry, which should be more important than just asthetics, unless you are too much of a poser to give a s**t. I guess thats why my fixie has a slope in the tt.

Now now, let's not sling around 'poser'.

What if, once you balanced out everything, it's still a better solution? Just because the seat post is longer doesn't mean it isn't still a superior solution. Engineering is about balancing trade-offs. There is no such thing as a '100% win', where a change benefits something without hurting something else.

In my original post on the subject, I presented two thoughts:

1) a sloping top tube provides the geometry for a longer head tube, which means more distance between the headset top bearing and bottom bearing, and, intuitively, this seems stronger and allows a lower stand over height for a given head tube length; and,

2) the smaller frame requires a longer, weaker, heavier seat post, and the whole idea amounts to a meaningless styling gimmick.

I tend towards the first thought.
The bike pictures posted in this thread which exhibit a downward sloping top tube have short head tubes and thus very little distance between headset bearings.
This looks obviously weaker than headset bearings spaced further apart.

An upward sloping top tube allows more distance between headset bearings and, at the same time, a lower stand over height.
I think this has relevance for the smaller versions of a given frame.



.:Jimbo wrote the above, I assume, in support of upward sloping top tubes; however, he did not give any examples of "advantages."

Joshr posted a picture of a really interesting looking Bianchi.
Could he tell me something about it?