Brian wrote:
"The great ride, maybe it was their frame design that gave the great ride. Brian Van BaushAnacortes, WAUSA"
**********
I think this subject could make for an interesting thread. I recently sold a nice Gios Super Record (with the coins in the crown)..reason I sold it was that am perpetually out-of-space right now, but also because I could tell pretty quickly that it wasn't my cup of tea: Very steep seat-tube and head-tube, very short top-tube (for the size, at least a centimeter shorter than it should have reasonably been). Quite high bb, from what I could tell, very flat chainstays. More like a track-bike for the road..
I don't doubt that there are many people who like the ride qualities of a frame like this, I'm just not one of them. I've ridden frames like this before and the things that I find most disconcerting about them are that you feel like you're perched up on top of the frame instead of sitting comfortably back over the the rear-wheel--and worse, your body feels thrown forward onto the bars, with a lot of weight on your shoulders, hands, and neck.
So I've always been bemused when the subject of the "legendary Gios ride quality" comes up--as it does from time to time--can someone characterize the positive ride-qualities of these frames, beyond what you'd expect of an italian road-frame of the time (late-70s/early 80s)? I've ridden a number of italian road-bikes of this period (the Saronni Colnago I'm selling, for instance), and they are not quite so radical as the Super Record, ride more reasonably.
Plus, maybe it was the earlier iteration of the Gios frame that deserved all the praise? Was the Super Record more extreme than the earlier frame that the mid-70s brooklyn team rode? The ones you se in *A Sunday in Hell*? The frame with the semi-sloping crown (no coins) and the simpler graphics package? I've always wanted to try one of those, but never have.
And maybe Gios was among the first to go to a steeper, shorter, higher frame, so the difference in ride quality from the older, slacker, lower italian and french road frames was the thing everyone liked--it was different, in short, if not especially better.
Charles Andrews Los Angeles
Q: "Why do people spoil everything for themselves?
A: "In big ways, and little ways too, people do that all the time to themselves. We can't stand prosperity. We have to tinker with the machinery."
--John D. MacDonald