hsuBM

Do they exist?

tl;dr- looking for canti brakes, 41cm reach, 54cm stack, 74deg headtube, fender mounts, room for 32c + fenders, really just a wide tire roadbike, not a slick tire trail bike with drops. Sick of gambling on used 60s-80s road/club frames and want something new with warranty. If it’s ss/fixed capable, bonus tacos.

The closest I’m finding is Wabi Thunder 58. The only real hangup on that is trackends instead of dropouts. Hoping for other suggestions just so I can say “I asked the forums to do my homework for me” before hopefully buying my last frameset for a couple of years.



[deep breath]

I’ve gone through a lot of bikes with different geos and I’ve found that I’m at my best on a racey road bike. More than 0% of the concern is avoiding collisions in town with drivers who belong in buses or the back of taxis. More than 80% of the concern is that “party time!” feeling that makes each pedal stroke call for ten more and each mile feel like thirty feet.

I commute on bike and the commuting is both more fun on my classic race/club frames and feels safer in adverse conditions/situations, but they’re as durable in the face of six months of salt and 4-6 days/week of potholes and jetsam as one would expect a 30-50yo racing frame to be. Also, finding them with fender eyelets and fender clearance is a pain. Finding them with both the stays pushed off to one side or with cracks and the P.O. saying “I totally checked it through and through. It rode perfect last time I was on it” is getting old.

I’m on my second hydraulic disc brake bike, and I’m certain that it’s gonna be too long till the industry gets rid of the nails on chalkboard sound you get 2/3 of the year if you ride quickly enough to have to use them. That bike is pretty much on spare/sunny day status till I move someplace with some mountains. I hate that I spent so much on it and just don’t love it at all. Part of the lack of love, I’m sure, is the geo. It is slack. It’s pretty much a stupidly expensive CrossCheck with less tire clearance. I don’t want to spend more than $50 on another frame that is just not as fun as a beat up old race bike that I bought for $100. $500 on a frame that is less fun than a $100 beater is to difficult to digest. $2k on a bike that I mostly use as a spare for a bike that I got for $100 is embarrassing.

I’ve had a few bikes with cantis and I just don’t understand what the internet’s complaints with them are. They’re perfect. Setting them up is, for me, easier than discs or sidepulls. And they’re fantastic in the snow and slush.

I am slowly saving up for a Waterford that’ll hopefully be a perfectly ideal copy of my favorite road frame except for it being able to take 44c tires in the summer and 32c tires plus fenders most of the rest of the year and having bosses for my trusty old deerhead cantis on the fork. It’ll be great.

Until then, my main bike needs a “new” frame, and I want it to be either an actually new frame or NOS made in the last decade, and I’m very much stuck in the Made in Taiwan price bracket for now.

My three hangups on the Thunder are 1) are they going to make it through covid and actually receive their new batches of frames this autumn or will they fold up just in time for snow to start flirting with us? I’ve gotta be prepared for the latter. 2) track ends instead of dropouts. Wth. 3) I dimensioned in SolidWorks my favorite two roadies and a bunch of steel allroad/cx/sscx framesets (Surly/AllCity/BlackMountain) and a few upandcoming American made OTP framesets trying to get a stack+reach+hta+trail equivalent. When wearing 44c tires, the Wabi was the only one close to my roadies both when zero is set at the bb center and when it was set at the front contact patch center. I worry the steering will get weird with post-snowstorm crunchycrustslush-cutting 28c tires that I have to put on sometimes as the trail changes a bit.
So if there’s a 74*hta canti frame out there that I buy the 73.5* Wabi instead of, and have the whole internet available to tell me about it, I’m gon feel dum.

I didn’t find any aluminum canti frames with greater than 73deg hta, but if you know of any, please do suggest them as well.

Thanks in advance, folks!

unterhausen

I got to the head tube angle and cantis and I'm pretty sure the answer is no. If there was such a thing, it's not in current production. Gravel bikes are headed the other way on head tube angle, more slack than the normal 73 degrees.

The All City Macho man is steel, but it meets all your requirements except for hta. Not current production, but there might be some around.

I don't know if you are going to talk a framebuilder into a 74 degree HTA either.

mstateglfr 

Why a 74deg HTA? That's only half the equation when it comes to front end steering feel.
Whats your fork rake?

A 73 or 72.5deg HTA with a different fork rake than what you have can make for a steering feel thats effectively what your want.

Trakhak

Carrots? This isn't the TalkBass forum.

hsuBM

The hta and trail/rake are known variables for me, and while the trail/rake can be easily tweaked with a fork swap into my version of perfection, the hta cannot without major surgery. “Close enough” is fine for a $50 frame and amazing for a free frame. When I’m going over $500, though, in a somewhat flooded market, I’d like to get better than close enough. If better than close enough [for me] is out there, I’d like to know before slurping down the cold porridge.

Wabi does do the Thunder with a 74 in the next size up, but the stack on that is just a bit much for me.

Apologies, after some reading on here I’ve found that, just as there’s not just “road race bikes” but distinctly Aero bikes and Endurance bikes, I guess Allroads and Gravels are distinct and it’s from the Allroad family I should be searching.

hsuBM

I know. It’s a bit of a bummer how far off the fun:condescension/combativeness is on here.

Wilbur76

Bikeinsights.com has a filter for finding specific models with the head tube angle (and other specs) you’re looking for.
https://bikeinsights.com/search?quer...e_angle.min=70

chas58

Probably not available.

I was in the same basket as you. A bike like this is a great urban warhorse. Realistically though the most aggressive frames with that tire size and frame size are 72.5 to 73mm. Really, what you are looking for is an old school cross bike (as ever since gravel, cross bikes don't have mounts any more). Or of course some of the latest road bikes can easily take 32mm tires.

I had one of these for a while - tends to meet your objectives as good as anything.
Save Up to 60% Off SRAM Rival Cyclocross | Cross Bikes, Road Bikes - Motobecane Fantom Cross Pro

If you really want to change the head tube angle, there are headsets that allow you to adjust that (without major surgery).
(PS: there is a pretty noticable change in "trail" when moving from 28mm to 44mm tires)

hsuBM

WINNER!

thank you so much!

chas58

I thought carrots won...