Hello folks,
At the risk of being stoned in the town square before the morning I would like to add that.......
While I whole heartedly concur with Mr 1010 Brown and Mariposa Mike; my partner in grime, Susan, just pointed out something less obvious.
You can insert a bigger tire within the confines of the frame with rear facing dropout. Of course a frame can be made to allow this with forward dropouts to a point but so many mountain bikes have such short chainstays that tire removal is difficult with "Vertical Dropouts!"
Amazingly Gary Klein used to use rear facing dropouts with a derailleur! I suppose to shorten the chainstays on some of his older models (It was a feature!). Here at North Road we suffer those wonderfully traditional Pashley Roadsters that not only feature rear facing dropouts but a delightful full chaincase mated with their mudguards. I'm told they still work from the 1928 drawings.
<<Joe King wrote: Really a very simple reason for track ends they give you a greater range of gear ratios than road drop outs I would have thought this was self evident to any cyclist?
From: "Bicycle Specialties" <mike@bikespecialties.com> Well it is not evident to me and I consider myself a bit of a cyclist. It obviously wasn't evident to a guy named Fausto Coppi who I understand was a bit of a cyclist in his day. Coppi's track bike had Campag "Paris-Roubaix' drop-outs fitted with the teeth filed out. They had the advantage of being longer (55 mm) than the Campag 1010 road drop-outs (40 mm). The Campag track drop-outs were 44 mm which is longer than many of the rearward opening drop-outs available today. My point is that current day builders of single gear bikes have had rearward opening drop-outs made with eyelets where forward opening would be far more practical, providing of course that the slots are reasonably long..
If you are using 1" pitch this is especially so. Mudguard eyes on track bikes? Do you mean road-path or road-track which were popular deacades ago?
No I mean the current builders who follow fashion rather than stopping to think, much as the Brits did in the fifties and sixties with their road/path bikes.
Mike Barry. Brazing in drop-outs in Toronto.
Yours in Cycling,
Gilbert Anderson
North Road Bicycle Company PO Box 840 166 Court Square Yanceyville, NC 27379 USA
Our newest direct local Yanceyville Area phone is 336-421-4054 Toll Free Research Triangle Area, NC area 919-828-8999 Toll free Nationwide 800-321-5511
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