Lou Deeter wrote:
>
> I must have been paying too much attention to little things on my ride this
> morning, but I noticed that this bike I just built (Weigle) positioned the
> brake hoods directly over the front hub and it felt 'right'. I checked my
> bikes when I got home and all of my bikes that seem to ride just right have
> that same hoods over hub positioning.
Dave Moulton wrote a five part series in Cycling Weekly in the late 1970s that was run in Velo News in the early 1980s about the geometry of the modern racing bike. The brake hoods being even with the front hub axle was one of the things mentioned in a correctly designed racing frame. His analogy was of sitting on a garden gate and waging side to side if your hoods were behind your axle instead of being over your axle.
The point being that when you are riding out of the saddle either climbing or sprinting the bike would go straight down the road instead of weaving.
Chuck Schmidt
South Pasadena, Southern California
http://www.velo-retro.com (reprints, T-shirts and Campagnolo Timeline)