Long live Jerk.
Ditto that. Anybody who speaks with such conviction is generally worth listening to, even if they are truly jerks. The jerk needs to lay down how the world works a little more often. I’d specifically like to hear, and dream, about these $4,000 wheelsets he sells.
Well, I can only answer from my own experience and there are two sides to it.
The upside: My custom Litespeed Blade fits me like a glove. I have never had a more perfect Tri/TT bike for my body and it was definitely worth having it built just for me. It absolutely made a difference.
The down side: If/when you try to sell it, if it’s totally custom to you and you have unique proportions, good luck selling it. I’ve been trying to sell said Litespeed for a year and a half and it doesn’t fit anybody!
Adam
Fine. But so what? Custom bikes are usually no better, and frequently worse, and only superficially different from most stock bikes. Who can design a better frame than a Merckx MXLeader or Team Sc, or Pegoretti Fina, or whatever. I don’t think a “a made to measure frame designed around a rider or a rider and a specific course” is really a custom frame, in the sense of this thread … more like a ‘bespoke’ frame, like what Sachs builds. Those frames rock.
TTN – Your examples prove the point. Some people, an infintessimally tiny percentage of bikers, need/want weirdo things. Custom’s great for them. But what reason for a custom, for an average build guy riding a normal road frame … “I’d like a 9 in stiffness and a 4 in comfort, but a 6 in handling, please. Thank you 7 for the purrrfect bike.” Personally, I don’t care what anyone else rides. But the BS needs to be called what it is.
Me … I want a bike with a 30 cm headtube, 90 mm stem and a 73.28 degree STA. Trail … that’s where I would ride this badboy, with a Pabst in the bottle cage.
Love that Walser example … yeah, relevant to us schmucks posting on ST on a Saturday night. That guy builds a bike like an F1 Ferrari … if I could afford it I still couldnt drive the damn thing. But man I want one.
well j-son, in addition to the offbeat bikes i mentioned ( not actually offbeat . . . just specific). there are larry california’s points.
anyway, many of you fellers are happy with off the rack. a few of us aren’t. those few are not saying it is the only way to go - or that it makes a difference in how fast we go. we are saying it represents a fine point of ownership experience that we enjoy. and. cost need not be an issue to access that ownership experience. that utterly forgettable felt that larry mentioned, for example, costs around 2-3 times what my last custom did. 10 years from now that felt will be an embarrassing dated junker not unlike a neon trek 2300 from 1993 - and larry’s rex will still be rocking. it is a funny old world.
the posts about the arcane and mysterious world of the standard bike possessing some impossible fineness of geometry i find simply funny. the bicycle has been around for over 100 years - you do not need to be richard sachs, or ernesto colnago or gerard vroomen to know how to put one together. those guys got you believing that . . . . .funny.
6’9" 255 lbs. 39" inseam
You tell me where in the hell I’m going to find a stock frame that fits. Custom is the only way I can go. The custom builder can also take the riders weight into consideration to make sure the drive train is stiff and not mushy.
If I was 5’9" instead of 6’9" I would not consider the custom. There are so many options for short people, and virtually no options for tall people. Thats why I go custom.
well t-t-n (curious what the letters mean … your initials … or something else?), i think we’re on the same page. same with larry california.
I guess my point, clumsily conveyed, is that most custom bikes I see and have seen, aren’t that different from a well designed stock bike. that’s it, that’s all I was trying to write.
I wasn’t attempting to be facetious about your examples (even if I came off that way). The frames you mentioned are perfect raison d’etre for custom builders.
You’re right about the geometry business. it’s not that mysterious or complicated. But, a lot (most?) bike designeers/frame builders don’t seem to care about building a balanced, well mannered bike. That’s the point. There are a lot of purported racing bikes that simply don’t cut the mustard in the handling department because they aren’t designed well. Or because the rider has no clue how to build a racing bike. IE a 90 mm stem on a Colnago.
I don’t just believe it … I know it. Designers like Sachs, Gerard, Tom Kellogg, Dario Pegoretti etc put careful thought into how the bike moves and balances. That’s what seperates them from the rest.
Maybe Steve Rex is in the same league. I dunno. Never ridden/seen one of his frames before. Larry’s is very pretty (in a classic classy restrained way) and if he says it handles great, I’m sure it does.
i like bikes of all kinds. But especially well designed bikes. Currently, I’ve got 2 Steelmans, an Eddy Merckx, and an old GT mtn bike. None custom, but I did pick the paint on the Steelmans!
Cheers.
You can argue this one till you are blue in the face… there will always be two sides to the story. However, I think many of you are looking at the idea that custom frames are for those with extreme needs. This is just not the case. I personally think that the average rider has a better chance of being fit into a custom geometry. Its the litle centimeters here and the littler centimeters there that drive you nuts when you are trying to fit a bike. Custom bikes do not have this problem.
Also, as far as quality and craftmanship most of the custom frames I have seen are far superior to off-the-shelf bikes. Even Colnago… I looked at them all and can guarantee you (IMHO) that the Parlee I bought does Carbon far better than anything I have personally seen. One bike at a time… on there schedule. Hey and its American made… thats nice!
Andy Pruitt said that a bike is somewhat adjustable and the body is somewhat adapatable
You said:
Its the litle centimeters here and the littler centimeters there that drive you nuts when you are trying to fit a bike. Custom bikes do not have this problem.
If the bike is somewhat adjustable why bother spending the extra money on a potentially unproven custom geometry frame and sweat those centimeters on the adjustable parts of the bike with stock geometry?
I guess you just answered your question… get a Trek.
Why a Trek when makers like Merlin Cervelo Guru offer stock geometry that do that job perfectly? BTW its a rhetorical question in response to your thinking that I know nothing therfore I should get a Trek
I think his point wasn’t to buy Trek specifically, but to go ahead and buy stock. i say buy whatever makes you happy. If you will feel better about a good fitting custom, then buy it. If you will feel just as good with a good fitting stock bike, then buy that because it’s cheaper. For my money, I can build up a bike on a stock frame, and do all the tweeking I need to with components and get just as good a fit, or close enough that I won’t know the difference.
DA551-
I don’t know if this thread is helping you with your decision or not. For a lot of us one standard deviation outside of normal dimensions, we can get by with a stock bike and make it fit fairly well, but we are left to wonder how good a bike could fit if we bought a custom and it was done right.
i’m 5’ 8.5",with a 33.25" inseam. Most dealers think I should ride a 54 cm racing bike, max. On a 54 I would have my arms straight and elbows locked if I ever dared to venture into the drops, and I’m flexible. I have a 57cm c-c steel bike and a 56 cm foco steel bike, both square geometries, and the fit is okay on both, good even compared to the average joe. The 57 has a quill stem, so I can do a lot with the fit. The 56 is harder, just because I don’t have the ability to keep trying ten stems to keep tweaking the fit, and if you get a stem much shorter than 10 cm on a road bike I think the handling gets compromised.
I’ve toyed with the idea of custom for a while, but haven’t pulled the trigger yet. When I get myself a “lifetime” bike, it will likely be custom. I haven’t felt like I really needed it yet, but I’ve never been perfectly comfortable on long rides, either.
hey tom
thanks for the insight into your frame. why do you feel you need to go longer than a 54? is it a question of head tube height or reach? you said your arms would be straight and elbows locked in the drops on a 54cm. Wouldnt a bigger frame be even worse? Thanks
DA-
It’s the head tube and its affect on my saddle-to-bar drop. My seat height will be the same on either frame, but with a 54, especially with an integrated threadless headeset on a carbon steerer, the bars will be a couple of inches lower than on my 56. That is a bigger problem for me than the top tube being long.
I’ve kept an eye on custom frames for a bit, but I’m hoping that some of the newer high-performance bikes that aren’t racing bikes or race bike replicas will suit me. These bikes, like the Specialized Roubaix Pro or the Trek Pilot, are supposedly designed for long spirited rides but not necessarily for crit riders. In theory this would be be good, with longer wheelbases, taller head tubes, and a slightly more relaxed geometry and a trail that’s more conservative. I was actually hoping the Pilot WSD would have a shorter TT than the men’s bike, which would get me closer to the short top tube/tall head tube that I need, but it seems the men’s and women’s Pilots have essentially the same geometry with different components. Also Trek doesn’t publish head tube height on their web site, which to me is reprehensible.