March 24, 2011

I love offset seat tubes!

A couple of pictures of Kimberly’s frame, and a couple of thoughts.

-I really like offset seat tubes. Not only do you gain some nice tire clearance, you also get a nice open area for the chainstays to be welded in. No compound mitering to the seat tube, not nearly as tight to get the torch in there – great stuff. This is a very easy setup to build, as opposed to say, a road bike, where the chainstays are crammed together and compound mitered to the seat tube. I hate those! Well, not really, but I much prefer this!

-The low mount Paragon dropouts are also nice, because the seatstay tabs sit up high, so the stays meet the seat tube at pretty close to 90 degrees (well, not really – these are at 77, but it’s common to be at