another BD sizing question (Windsor Clockwork Plus)
 

alright guys,

i'm sure you're sick of this, but i'll ask anyway. i'm looking at the windsor clockwork plus and/or possibly the dawes SST steel. i'm leaning toward the clockwork, but one thing i'm not sure of is the sizing/geometry. When I look at the Dawes, the sizing for the 52cm is very similar to my Cannoncale CAAD8 in a 51cm, which felt great to me. http://www.bikesdirect.com/products/...steel.htm#size

Whereas the 52cm Clockwork Plus seems bigger, especially in the top tube and standover department, and the jump in top tube length from the 49 to 52cm looks big. To add further confusion, when I'm on the page for the clockwork plus http://www.bikesdirect.com/products/...kwork_plus.htm and I click the link for the geometry, I get this page http://www.bikesdirect.com/products/..._geometry.html which clearly says "hour plus geometry" in the URL. And when I look at the clockwork (not plus) geometry on http://www.bikesdirect.com/products/...kwork.htm#size it's different from the link above.

If the frames are the same, shouldn't this info be correct for the clockwork plus also? I emailed BD to clarify the two different links above but haven't heard back yet. I'd lean towards believing the geo on the clockwork page, but I would also hope they would have caught the fact that they are linking the wrong geo/dimensions for the clockwork plus if that's the case.

Either way, I did the fit calculator and I'm kind of in between sizes on that frame... so what would you recommend? I guess it depends which is the right geo chart first, huh...

http://i779.photobucket.com/albums/y...75a7cd6841.jpg

Any feedback on the clockwork vs. the SST would be appreciated as well. I like that the SST is plain with no decals or anything and cheaper since I'd probably swap the bars for bullhorns, but the clockwork plus seems to be a bit better all around and I've seen it recommended a lot, plus I dig the deep V wheels. If you'd recommend one over the other, I'd love to hear it. Not a lot of threads about the dawes SST steel lately- I see a lot about the AL model and the old steel model with bullhorns, but not much on the current model.

I'd go with the clockwork geometry chart for the clockwork plus, the hour plus is a completely different bike.

Honestly, for as many bikes as they sell, you'd think they'd put together a halfway decent website...there are so many mistakes. The clockwork plus wasn't even listed on their site at the time I bought my bike, but comes up if you search for it by name.

My favorite error is the misspelling of Eddy on the hour plus description.
And while I'm ranting about nothing...shouldn't it be time instead of distance, considering we're talking about "hours" and beating the clock. Ugh!

No; it's an hour-long race. You can't beat his time. His time is an hour. So would your's be, if you did it.

D'oh! Well, still spelled his name wrong!

OK, so looking at the clockwork geometry chart, the 49cm falls between the Eddy fit & the french fit for me (539mm) and the 52cm is right in the range for the French fit (545mm). The standover should be fine on both. My Cannondale had a 530mm top tube and I felt pretty good on it... Will I even notice a 9mm (or 15mm) difference?

I'm riding primarily in NYC and I like to ride fairly upright. I'm going to probably swap the bars on this bike to bullhorns so I can ride on the top bar most of the time.

email response:
The Clockwork Plus and The Hour Plus use the same frame geometry.



eh?? i'm confused now...

It's the nature of sites that do on-line business. Nashbars search function is just as bad, even if you use the check boxes to narrow down the search, it will still miss products in your search parameter, because there are multiple people maintaining the site.

Ha, I have no idea what to tell you to do. Most likely 10-20mm won't make much difference. If the bike seems to small, you can always do a setback seatpost and longer stem...if it seems to big a shorter stem will fix the issue.