base2 

Your fitting may have been just fine, and well worth the money at the time. Fit changes as age, fitness and flexibility changes. Since there isn't much you can do about age, we can assume fitness and flexibility are the variables. If you have been riding a bunch, we can assume you got more fit and probably have more core strength. Likely, you are developing power differently. The other variable, flexibility...If you got stronger but didn't do stretching on par with yoga or similar, your muscles and tendons got shorter. The bike now doesn't fit because you are positioning/holding yourself differently than before.

Set aside 30/45 minutes daily for Yoga as a remedial fix. After a month of yoga, (or other cycling specific stretching routine), try another fitting if the bike doesn't go back to being comfortable again.

gmilton

stretching, yoga - ugh! tedious and boring - my experience has been too much time for too little result, but I guess there no alternative to look for some kind of program.

Carbonfiberboy 

Only takes me 5 minutes to stretch every morning, but it really needs to be every morning. https://www.bikeforums.net/road-cycli...l#post15372967

noglider 

That was my attitude until recently. Now I find this stuff to be meditative and rewarding. I feel like I'm investing in my day as well as my health.

79pmooney

Or ... you want a bike that can do things outside the norm. The design criteria for my Peter Mooney was that it have the ride and fit of my racing bike (a Fuji Professional - basically a very high BB criterium bike that fit me wonderfully), be rideable in the lower 48 states 12 months of the year (specifically back-country Maine) and be able to self-sufficiency tour.

With that set of requirements, it would have taken me years of shopping to find that stock bike. (I did find one by chance. A mid '80s Miyata touring bike with a weird high BB. But by the time I came across that bike (purchased as a frame for my recently crashed commuter), I had 11 years and thousands of mile on the Mooney.

12 years ago I started putting together bikes that would do their specific jobs better than the all-arounder Mooney and it took a back seat, becoming my (world class!) farmers market bike. It has come back to front and center in my stable because I signed up for a ride for which it is near perfect and that none of my other bikes can do. (Cycle Oregon, which features an ideal mountain elevation profile for a fix gear but also 45 miles of mountain gravel. The Mooney? High BB, clearance for fat 27" tires and horizontal dropouts. (Remember, back-country Maine in January. 700c at the local shop? Really? In 1979?) I can run 35c tires easily. Fix gear? No problem.

My second custom is just a ti road bike that fits and has ideal weight balance between the wheels. (With my best position, I have my weight too far forward on most bikes. plus I usually need an unusual or even custom stem to get better than a class "B" fit.) My third custom is another ti bike, similar to the previous but designed from the start as a fix gear, one that I can put any cog on without messing with chain length. It has a unique dropout that makes roadside wheel flips a 2 minute job, unscrewing cogs 5 minutes. Finding that bike in a shop would be a several lifetimes endeavor.

There are real reasons for custom bikes and they aren't all just vanity or for weirdly sized people. But, as I said above and in previous posts, it helps a lot if you have done enough riding that you really know what you want and need. (And there is the danger you end up like me; a guy who has a frame builder almost on a retainer! In addition to the ti two frames, he has built me 3 stems and two seatposts, repaired a seatstay cap failure, re-brazed all the lugs on an old Raleigh that apparently missed that stop in the assembly line and is now making me completely custom parts to modify the fix gear drive train on the Mooney so I can have three separate, very different gear ratios.

Ben

gmilton

Ben,

Great stuff - thanks. And yes I agree. I almost edited the op to include the cognoscenti and elite sport riders among the custom-worthy. Still, I think that group would be small - and the case for the cost-benefit of a stock solution is for, the majority, compelling.

79pmooney

That frame builder I have "on retainer"? He loves me because not only do I know what I want, I also ride the heck out of what he makes me.

Ben

gmilton

Exactly - and exactly why the average weekend club rider may get more value out of pride of ownership, aesthetic appreciation, etc., (all valid criteria imho) than actual on-bike performance/comfort benefit from a custom.

NormanF

Same here. I'm 5'7" with a 30" inseam and I ride a 54-55 cm road bike.

No need to go custom yet.

philbob57

Competitive Cyclist's calculator says I need a 52.5 cm C-T seat tube and a 55+ cm top tube for an Eddy fit, 55 cm ST & 56.5 cm TT for French fit. I don't believe I can find anything really close to that in a current production bike.

It's only a belief, because I haven't needed to do extensive research. What I have had for 35 years is a 1973 British bike - 54 cm seat tube, 56 cm top tube. BITD, I think the Brits put a 22" top tube on every production bicycle.... :-) Also, the smaller frames seem to have relatively steep ST angles; my bike has 73 degree parallel angles.

79pmooney

A little more on my Peter Mooney while this thread is active. It is now set for Cycle Oregon this September, running a "triple chainline"; three 1/8" chainlines, a "dingle" (doubled up fix gear cogs that screw on as one) on one side, a small down hill single cog n the other. Works really well! Rides like a serious fix gear in all three combinations. (For now, 46 x 13, 44 x 17 and 38 x 21. The 17 and 21 are dingled. I also have single cogs from 12 to 24 and 42 and 36 tooth chainrings so I can go from 133.5" to 40.5", all fixed! The 40.5" will get used on the gravel climbs.

Took the bike out for 50 miles Friday with a 300 foot "bump" near the turnaround that I did both ways. One side has well over 10%, the other a long fast, fun descent. Everything worked really well (and was so much fun I got home hammered!) Bike rides like this was its goal from conception. My first fix gear ride was after I had put 35c Paselas on to see if they indeed would work. (It's tough on the paint wedging the wheel with those tires into the chainstays so I can muscle the axle past the bottom of the dropout, but it works. Paint also suffers from the Pedro's Trixie wrench hitting the guide to the rear derailleur cable. Oh well. It's a 33 yo paint job. This is its last summer.

And back to the thread topic: This bike has led a life that would not be doable on any production frame I have ever seen barring my unusual Miyata and this bike fits and feels far better.

Ben