[CR]Rearward facing dropouts

(Example: Framebuilding)

From: Tom Sanders <tsan7759142@sbcglobal.net>
To: <classicrendezvous@bikelist.org>
Date: Fri, 20 Oct 2006 07:47:22 -0400
Thread-Index: Acb0PYEr39XP0RGFRxeq77phLIMyYw==
Subject: [CR]Rearward facing dropouts

In the face of so much expertise and folks whose mechanical knowledge dwarfs my own I hate to jump into this one, but I am thinking of a bike I recently owned with extremely short stays and horizontal dropouts. It was meant to use the 18 mm racing tires that were in vogue when it was built. I found that when using the 23 mm tires I preferred for road usage I had to deflate the tires to get them into the forward facing dropouts on the bike...a huge pain if you were on the road and had a flat and your mini pump was what you had on hand to inflate it with. I finally had a bike builder modify the drop outs so that I could more easily get a larger tire into place. Could this rearward facing scheme have been to accommodate the often larger tires used in things like path racing and still be able to get them into a bike with extremely short stays?
Tom Sanders
Lansing, Mi USA