Kevin, I believe the problem you experienced here has to do with the trail -- that is, the distance between (a) the point where an imaginary straight line through the centre of the head tube hits the ground, and (b) the point where a vertical line from the centre of the front axle hits the ground (i.e. where the tyre contacts the road). The fact that point (a) is a few cms ahead of point (b) is what makes the wheel tend to straighten itself. A bike with a long trail is easy to ride no-hands but handles heavily, which makes it tiring to ride with a loaded front wheel. A short/low trail bike may feel a bit twitchy unloaded, but should behave nicely with a bit of weight on it. I believe this is the effect Mr Braxton was aiming for, though of course he may have overdone it on the frame you rode.
One (admittedly impractical) solution to the Braxton conundrum is to ride around with permanently loaded panniers. This puts me in mind of my mother-in-law, who used to keep a pile of bricks in the back of her garage, convenient for loading into the back of her Morris Minor estate car whenever she went motoring alone. Her reasoning was that since the vehicle had self-evidently been designed to carry passengers, it might become unpleasantly frisky with no one but herself aboard.
Giles O'Bryen London, UK
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Message: 7 Date: Mon, 17 Jan 2011 13:52:53 -0800 (PST) From: "Dr. Paddle" <drpaddle@yahoo.com> Subject: Re: [CR] Braxton touring on ebay To: classicrendezvous@bikelist.org Message-ID: <47140.21792.qm@web39306.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1
Sam built a bike for me in the early '80s. It was gorgeous. It had the front
and rear racks, Mafac cantis, brake and stay bridges that pierced the stays,
and excellent workmanship. The equipment was top-line French with Phil hubs
as in the eBay offering. Thing is, though, I never liked the way it rode. It
was nearly impossible to ride with hands off the bars. The front wheel would
fall to the side, even when the bike was unloaded. I theorized that the bad
handling was due to the very shallow head angle. Do you have a similar
problem with your Braxtons?
?
I kept the bike as an object of art more than anything else until the early
'90s when a cashflow issue associated with a new family and house forced me
to sell most of my bike stuff. I consigned it through R&E in Seattle, as
there was no market for touring bikes in San Diego at the time.
?
Kevin Montgomery
San Diego, California