Vonruden

Not a great pick, my 1994 Bontrager Race has a Wishbone stay as well

SvenMN 

I am missing a C&V version. However I do ride a slightly newer frame that may qualify?

cbresciani

My C40 HP has got the wishbone seat stay and it's an awesome ride! I think wishbone seat stays look great.

repechage

Strawberry makes two types of wishbone seat stay junctions. Both are pretty good looking.
While the argument as to why two seat stays are better is rational, one of the stiffest bikes I have ridden used the "wishbone" design.
There is more going on than what a reasonable conjecture would indicate.

But I never bought in to the promotion that the Cinelli full sloping fork crown was stiffer either.

poke em

I had one of these for a short while and really like the looks of the wishbone.

[IMG][/IMG]

seanile

i love wishbones! made sure to have it put on my road bike, had the exact one picked out beforehand haha. my mountain bike is gonna have a segmented one too.

Vonruden

Very Nice Seanile!

thirdgenbird

Want

gomango

Pretty incredible condition as well.

Very cool.

Vonruden

Hasn't seen the road in all these years, which will change soon thanks to your help with the Dura Ace group

gomango

No problem!

It really will look just right on that beauty.

Performance is excellent as well.

RobbieTunes

Not quite, he said exactly what he said. The increased costs in the many frames that this forum caters to were not matched by performance advantages, so they did not become a standard part of frame construction for the vast majority of classic-type frames. The very early lugged and wishboned carbon fiber bikes actually did a good job of pointing out the increased side-side flexibility. They were light, but boy, could they get noodly. You could literally wiggle the bike and feel it flex.

One example is the 1988 Centurion Dave Scott Ironman Carbon vs. the 1988 Centurion Dave Scott Expert/Master. The wishboned Carbon model was way lighter, but it could really get wiggly, and almost had a gyro effect, fairly unnerving in a pace liine, and it was $1195 with DA. The Master was $749 with tricolor 600 and the difference in precision was night and day. The Expert at $698 with 105 and gave up only that difference to the Master.

An opposite example, the Trek 2500 Composite, was as stiff, if not stiffer, than the Trek's steel offerings. It had an aluminum rear triangle and an aluminum head tube, and was very light, and was built by Aegis. It was also expensive. During Aegis' development, the engineers realized monococque was the future, even though Trek continued to build and sell the composite bikes. The wishbone became very prevalent, still is, in the scores of models that feature carbon seat stays wishboned to an aluminum main triangle. It's notable that Cannondale, as recently as 2008, won a TdF stage on a bike with "normal" seat stays, with a brake bridge.

When Aegis and then Kestrel began to tune the monococque production of carbon fiber frames, the flexibility of the stays on a wishbone became less of an issue. Now, nearly all mid-upper end carbon bikes have a wishbone-style rear, but in a much more liberal interpretation of "wishbone" than the OP may have intended.

Back in the really good steel era, it just wasn't smart engineering for the money to build them a lot of them that way.

pedalnmetal

I'm a fan of the wishbone aesthetic, too, although some do it for me more than others. I can't claim to know the pros / cons in terms of engineering and handling, and this isn't a vintage example (yet), but my Titus FCR Cross has a wishbone stay that I think is easy on the eyes ...

Chombi

If wishbone rear stays meant flexy frames years ago, does it mean that steel bikes with fastback stays might had also given up some stiffness when compared to bikes with conventional seat cluster designs....
Otherwise, I have seen some older frames (not monocoque) with oversized, ovalized (in the horizontal plane) central tubes (mostly CF) for their wishbone stays that might have at least approached similar stiffness to what I think a fastback rear stay design might have had....

solidtyres

My very early Aegis

Sixty Fiver

From a manufacturing point of view and unit cost assessment the wishbone stay is primarily an aesthetic feature with no functional improvement over the lower priced conventional seat stays.

My Proctor feels rather stiff but I only weigh 150 pounds and don't lay down the same kind of frame twisting torque I used to.

If they offered a significant advantage on steel bikes they would be common and the price point would be lower as there would be more people casting them.

Vonruden

Very nice!

neo_pop_71

I have a few bikes with wishbone designs and I love them all, I find each to be very snappy when I get all over it. Each of them have been described by various friends as being "rocketships" and i couldn't agree more. Here are a few...

1989 Schwinn 974 - licensed from Gary Klein with many similarities to Gary's bikes from the same era



My 1996 Smorgasbord Country Style Buffet - Reynolds 853 made by Chris Daily out of Hershey, PA



1992 Bontrager Race Lite Singlespeed - Bought from a member of the Bonty race team back when they toured in Keith's old station wagon

TheDavid 

Wishbone seatstay on the new-to-me Proctor-Townsend



...and a close up...

gomango

Gracious, there are handsome bicycles in this thread.

Not a clinker in sight.

Thanks for sharing.

63_dorinte

Missed this one the first time.

Strawberry (Andy Newlands)



Ron Stout


IMO, the Strawberry is all-around beautiful. The monostay on the Stout, while the craftsmanship is good, the stay is ugly (sorry Ron ).

Henry III

I built my 650 frame with the Strawberry style wishbone lug. Honestly I thought it looked easier to do then the standard seat stays the other two guys did in class. Though my instructor said he probably wouldn't have another student build a frame with a wishbone again because of the difficulty.

buldogge

I like that Stout just above…looks a lot like a Biemmezeta.

Here's the rear of my Meech…Dimitri fabbed it to my design by bi-ovalizing a stock piece of tubing and adding s-bend stays.



-Mark in St. Louis

gomango

That one always makes me just a little jealous.

So cool. It would perfect for my style of riding.

I hope my "new to me" Serotta/Winter turns out that nicely.

pcb 

Without a doubt, the Strawberry looks more elegant and refined. The Stout is both more industrial and more chest-thumping to my eyes---look at how much mitering and brazing he needed to do to pull that off! He didn't plaster his name all over the frame for nuthin'. The brazing on mine is very clean, the alignment and symmetry are spot-on: