Mike Fabian wrote:
Check out this odd duck - a very small custom 18" / 46 cm road Paramount with what appears to be a bottom bracket height of around 12 +" or so. Auction # 300249847005 Note that the chainstays have no downward slope to them (or do I even detect a slight upslope ?). Very weird - usually a small bike can safely have a LOWER than normal bb height because of the shorter crank arms.
Who knows - maybe someone filled out the custom order form with the wrong dimensions and it never got noticed ? Maybe it was a "Friday Afternoon Job" ?
Or could it have originally been for 24" wheels ? Hmm . . . not too many 1977 Paramounts with short reach brakes, methinks. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Mike -
I think that understanding this frame requires thinking like a builder back then. First, they tried to get the right esthetic. Notice that the distance from front tire to down tube is almost exactly that of rear tire to seat tube. Grant Peterson stresses that aspect of balance in design, and to some folks it was important. I think that one constraint in their minds was the difficulty of tightening up the fork length, given their jigs and conventions about brake clearances. Now, IF you're going to use 700c wheels, then lowering the BB requires either lengthening the top tube enormously (and this one is pretty long and over-square), or raising the bracket a bunch. These high brackets were the standard curse of very small frames back then. The first serious attempt to break out of that box was Bill Boston's work on "small is normal" bikes with 24" front wheels, which was picked up and made successful by Georgena Terry.
Today, with compact frames and small wheels, it is hard to imagine just how constraining our mental constructs can be, but that's the way things were. It was always a concern getting bikes for my wife and other relatively short people.
harvey sachs
mcLean va USA