Phil wrote:
Sorry, if anybody on this list has the bona fides to back up his opinions it's Brian. And he's not alone. I hate the Riv lugs with the extended head tube that can't be cut off. Hideous. Phil Brown You don't need it with a properly sized frame in San Rafael, Calif
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Phil's right about getting a frame 1 or 2cms bigger. I don't ride 58cm c-t frames ordinarily, and I wouldn't buy one usually, but I have a couple of 50s and 60s italian and british racing frames that have a wonderful ride that are 58cm c-t and I wouldn't let them go. For awhile I had a 60s Pogliaghi road frame (the same one I eventually traded on to Jack Bissell, who had an incredible restoration done on it..pics can be seen on the web) at 59cm. It was too big for me, but I set it up just right, and I hung with some pretty fast riders a few times on it. It was a lot of fun. But it fit Jack better than it fit me, and I knew he'd do right by it, so away it went. Why get that ugly extended head-tube when you can just get a bigger frame indeed?
That said, the pre-1970 frames seem to both look, and ride, better when slightly oversized, as compared to later frames. I have no idea why this is, but I've tried both, and a 59cm late 70s/early 80s racing frame does not feel right to me in sizes that are a little big for me...whereas the older frames do. Maybe something to do with those low bb shells.. I'd be interested to hear more discussion about that.
As for Riv lugs... I have a 2000 Riv custom, with the new lugs, and I wish I had had it made with the Sachs lugs, which were still available at that time. I've mentioned this before, I know, but the Sachs lugs are clearly the work of a pro with an artistic eye, the proportions are just right, and I will NEVER understand why Grant went away from those. They were perfect..different from anything else out there even now, and made a great statement for the bikes.
Instead, he decided to roll-his-own, the result shows it: they're ill-proportioned; a chorus of italian, french and english lug styles that isn't the least bit harmonious. They're thick and clunky..all wrong. Take a look at the Carpenter I snagged on ebay recently, and you can see the difference. The Carpenter (or Ephgrave) lugs are what the Riv lugs SHOULD have looked like. They're just the result of an amateur trying to do the work of a pro.
Grant is great at many things, and I have a lot of respect for him, and for his slaving away in these fields for so long... but those lugs... they are ugly, no two ways about it, and I own one!
That said, the lugs on the mixtes are rather nice in a 50's Torpado-sort-of-way and I like them..still too thick and clunky, but, that's just me. We all taste these things differently. But, really, it does seem to me as if the Riv-custom lugs would be admired only by someone who had no real exposure to the way it should be done..and, it does seem that Grant sells a lot of frames to people just like that. No slam intended..just the way it is.
Charles Andrews SoCal
"The deeper I go in considering the vanities of popular reasoning, the lighter and more foolish I find them."
--Galileo Galilei