*9s parts no doubt will be available form some while, but it will be falling down the food chain as time goes by. Justification or excuse?, I’ll let you form your opinion on that. Thus I have a reasonable (to me at least) justification for a new bike. If I keep the tourer at 9s and eek 9s out as long as possible* by keeping it a dry weather use bike, a Rohloff bike could be used for bad weather club rides. Roll on Mr Shimano’s ridiculous progression of derailleur development and rapid obsolescence of parts helped my decision. If it replaced an existing bike, which one would have to go? The mountain bike was the obvious choice, but replacing a bike a rarely used with a Rohloff seemed extravagant. I have always had a desire for a Rohloff geared bike, but had trouble justifying another bike. (The tourer was relieved of heavy touring in favour of the mountain bikes bigger tyres).
As it was only used occasionally, the steering flop behaviour was tolerated, but always with the memory of the tourer with its rock solid handling fully laden tended to stick to the road like glue and went exactly where to wanted it to. The bike had intermittent use (I only used it periodically camping, I had soon given up riding much off road – the mud wasn’t worth it!). A flop one way would be followed by an over compensating one the other way. Slow steep climbs needed concentration to avoid the risk or a wrestling match with the steering. Starting/stopping needed attention, as the steering had a tendency to want to flop to the left or right. However, with front panniers slow speed could be tricky. On the flat and on the open road, steering was fine. The design look OK, though like most people I didn’t give the steering geometry much thought – 72 deg head angle, 26” wheels – as I had said what I wanted to use the bike for. I had a mountain bike (no suspension) built, to do some off road riding and for use as a camping tourer in places with rougher roads. (*A 1970’s Holdsworth Mistral tourer, still giving good service as a fixed gear runabout). I had some new forks made with the same rake as the Holdsworth, and the custom built frame has handled superbly (for me at least) loaded and unloaded ever since. The 2 bikes had the same head angle, the custom frame a 2”/51mm fork rake/fork offset, the Holdsworth a 2 ½”/63mm fork rake/fork offset. My previous tourer* however seemed absolutely fine and rock solid steering on the same curve in the road. It definitely seemed 4 pannier handling was better than no load handling. Going round a particular curve (not too tight or fast) it seemed unstable, as though I was teetering on the edge of something not good. But unladen it seemed nowhere near as good. The fact I don’t really remember suggest it wasn’t too bad, or if it was bad, just what happens when you put lots of luggage on a bike. I forget how it handled loaded (rear panniers + low riders).
It was the early 1980’s, so it had brake bosses for 27” wheel, these were soon moved down a tad for 700c rims, as the direction of travel for rim sizes became apparent soon after I had the frame. In reading up on this, i thought I'd write this to put all I found in one place.
On one bike I like the steering, on one bike I didn’t like the steering but changed the forks, so I now like the steering, and one bike I don’t like the steering at low speed. Occasionally front wheel/mudguard clearance with feet/toe clips gets a mention, and that is about as far as it goes. How many people consider the steering geometry of their bike, or of a bike they are thinking of buying? I often hear discussions about tyre/mudguard clearance, rim vs disc brakes, gear ratios, does the frame have the required braze ons etc. An overview of bicycle steering geometry part 1
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