hurri47
Well-Known Member
I am the third or fourth owner of a converted mountain bike. When I bought it, it looked like this:
Once I determined that I was able to ride the beast, I started thinking of ways I would like to make it more my own. Here are the things I didn't like:
1) The seating was more upright than I was used to on my other recumbents - my hip angle likes to be more open - and it was already at the limit of adjustability.
2) It was too tall to fit upright even in my minivan.
3) The steering felt excessively flexy, due to both the height and general spindliness. It seemed to violate John's principle of minimizing joints in the steering train for best efficiency. In addition, the quill adapter kept loosening to the point that it would move during rides, even with scary amounts of torque applied to the tightening bolt. (The vertical stem bore may have been ovalizing.)
4) It was geared way too low. I never once even touched the granny ring, and in even the highest gear, I would spin out any time the road went downhill.
The seat recline was the easiest to solve. I slid the pan forward by 3/4 inch, using existing holes, which also tipped up the nose of the seat by a pleasing amount. I also tried a layback seat post, but this turned out to be excessive. After doing a comparison with my most comfortable bike (a Barcroft Virginia), I found I was able to duplicate that hip angle using the original seat post, with adjustability remaining both ways.
The handlebars seem to give trouble to many of us. I would have been happy with my knees either in front or behind the bars, but no matter what I did to raise, lower, reverse, or adjust the adjustable stem, my knees always came up directly under the bars. I was only able to lower it no more than an inch from the position in the pic.
The solution seen in the picture below was out in my garage. I stole the flat bar from my son's mountain bike, and I mated it to the stem I had left over from when I had modified the steering on the Virginia. My knees now come up in front of the bars and around five inches higher.
I have ridden bikes with both Superman and praying hamster steering, and I much prefer my hands up and in rather than out straight. The downside in using that on this bike is that I'm asking much more of my arms than before. I am choosing to regard that as a good thing in two respects. First, I get a better upper body workout using biceps/triceps instead of pivoting stiff arms from my back. Second, I have motivation to do more foot steering and less bar wrestling.
I can now load the bike upright in my minivan through either back or side door, but it's close. I'm still looking for a half inch improvement in lowering the height.
With the height problem essentially solved, I spent actual money having my local shop (Ajo Bikes, in Tucson) change out the mountain triple for a road triple. I still haven't seen a hill that forced me into granny gear, and my experience with the big ring is still fleeting, but I like having the options at both ends. With the big mountain cluster, a double may be more ideal, but I'll cross that bridge at Silvio time.
-Dan
Once I determined that I was able to ride the beast, I started thinking of ways I would like to make it more my own. Here are the things I didn't like:
1) The seating was more upright than I was used to on my other recumbents - my hip angle likes to be more open - and it was already at the limit of adjustability.
2) It was too tall to fit upright even in my minivan.
3) The steering felt excessively flexy, due to both the height and general spindliness. It seemed to violate John's principle of minimizing joints in the steering train for best efficiency. In addition, the quill adapter kept loosening to the point that it would move during rides, even with scary amounts of torque applied to the tightening bolt. (The vertical stem bore may have been ovalizing.)
4) It was geared way too low. I never once even touched the granny ring, and in even the highest gear, I would spin out any time the road went downhill.
The seat recline was the easiest to solve. I slid the pan forward by 3/4 inch, using existing holes, which also tipped up the nose of the seat by a pleasing amount. I also tried a layback seat post, but this turned out to be excessive. After doing a comparison with my most comfortable bike (a Barcroft Virginia), I found I was able to duplicate that hip angle using the original seat post, with adjustability remaining both ways.
The handlebars seem to give trouble to many of us. I would have been happy with my knees either in front or behind the bars, but no matter what I did to raise, lower, reverse, or adjust the adjustable stem, my knees always came up directly under the bars. I was only able to lower it no more than an inch from the position in the pic.
The solution seen in the picture below was out in my garage. I stole the flat bar from my son's mountain bike, and I mated it to the stem I had left over from when I had modified the steering on the Virginia. My knees now come up in front of the bars and around five inches higher.
I have ridden bikes with both Superman and praying hamster steering, and I much prefer my hands up and in rather than out straight. The downside in using that on this bike is that I'm asking much more of my arms than before. I am choosing to regard that as a good thing in two respects. First, I get a better upper body workout using biceps/triceps instead of pivoting stiff arms from my back. Second, I have motivation to do more foot steering and less bar wrestling.
I can now load the bike upright in my minivan through either back or side door, but it's close. I'm still looking for a half inch improvement in lowering the height.
With the height problem essentially solved, I spent actual money having my local shop (Ajo Bikes, in Tucson) change out the mountain triple for a road triple. I still haven't seen a hill that forced me into granny gear, and my experience with the big ring is still fleeting, but I like having the options at both ends. With the big mountain cluster, a double may be more ideal, but I'll cross that bridge at Silvio time.
-Dan
