Originally Posted by
mtnbke
Are you being funny? The fastback seat stays on your Trek are worthy of drooling over. Getting fastback seat stays with an integral seat clamp is just a brilliant bit of frame building flair that so many of the BIG bikes that fall to the rest of us are missing. That's special, considering the crap we usually get. If you go look at the Trek Project BIG from earlier in the thread, he had fastback stays with the integrated seat clamp as well. Very jealous.
I was impressed with the rear derailleur cabling running through the inside of the chain stay. Thought that was nifty. Also I think 89 was the last year Trek made a steel road bike, although they continued to make steel touring frames into the 90's. I guess I never thought of it as anything but standard production bike. However, the tubing is quite light and its one of my favorite rides.
I'm fortunate that I'm only 6'2" so I can ride 24" to 25.5" although my 24" frames seem small. I find 175mm cranks a must and I've fitted a couple of smaller frames with the Nitto Techmatic tall stems to bring the bars up.