Gunnar Cycles USA Message Board

At the risk of incurring the wrath of the Old School Gods I'm curious to know if the asymmetric trend in carbon bikes is being considered in steel as well. The proponents suggest that the drive side incurs enough additional weight, torque or force to warrant larger tubes than the non-drive side. If that's true in carbon wouldn't a custom steel bike benefit from the same asymmetric design. Just a thought as I consider replacing my aluminum cyclocross with a Crosshairs.

_________________
Kneel to the steel...

I know nothing of frame building so take that into account...but as far as I know carbon is much easier to mold into pretty much any shape you want to. Not so much with steel.

I was actually thinking that just the seat and chain stays on the drive side would be slightly bigger tubes than the other side as the main tubes simply are what they are.

_________________
Kneel to the steel...

By the time a bike design has a provable, let alone noticeable difference in performance because of asymmetrical design, it would not have a enough of a margin of safety to be structurally reliable. The key difference between the drive and the non-drive side is the compressive force along the chainstay. The other forces, such as torsional flexing of the bottom bracket, depend on the strength and stiffness on both sides of the frame.

The one area where asymmetry sometimes makes sense is to allow clearance around the drivetrain and hence increased functionality. Schwinn did this with their early 1990's, mountain bikes, using a bent drive side chainstay to reduce chain slap and suck issues. Another more current example are the belt-drive designs with the drive side stays positioned to prevent the frame from being split apart as on the low-end GT, Trek and Schwinn belt drive bikes.

_________________
Richard Schwinn

Yep, my 1995 Schwinn s[9-five].5 had assymetric chainstays.

I loved the geometry of that bike.

Same here, love it!
Thanks for sharing...how to deal with depression

Thanks for this.


car games fishing games zombie games typing games ninja games amazon coupons iphone cases