tvcreative":drxkqekg said:
Cleland? I'm so glad I got a rise out of you blokes.
Next you'll tell me that a DL-1 with knobbies is the best racing bike ever made...
There is no mythical bike, just variant degrees ride and of taste...I have owned hundreds of bikes, thinking each was better than the one before using some biased made up criteria for justification...
I am not really sure how you get a scaffold of a bike to roll properly down narrow singletrack or better yet, when you are looking to get a hole shot - in a race - how you can sprint out of it with bars that high....
please what does it weigh? 3 stones?
You certainly stimulated some heartfelt responses.
Sorry to be so ignorant; I don't know what a DL-1 is, and racing for me is not very interesting.
You are so right about there being hundreds of bikes, marketed by people whose primary intent is to make money out of riders who believe that each variant is a major improvement over the previous one. You could call it design evolution, or you could ask yourself:
"If the last bike was so fantastically brilliant, why has it just been redesigned?". It's worth noting that the Cleland design hasn't changed in esscence for over 30 years, and I spent about 20 years of design development previously to get to that point. You could consider the Cleland 'mythical'; there are possibly no more than 50 extant worldwide.
The millions who have not ridden a Cleland do, quite reasonably, wonder how the hell it can ride so well. Recently a rider who discovered just this, could only say "It's ridiculous!"; he couldn't marry the appearance of a Cleland with its performance.
However, the Cleland is not designed with speed in mind. The primary design factors are efficiency and reliability. All I can say is that, for me, it handles singletrack much better than a conventional mountain bike, if it didn't, I'd have abandoned the whole project years ago. Who knows how a Cleland would perform in a race, no-one's tried it yet. Perhaps you should get a ride on my one sometime to assess the possibilities, or not...
My AventuraTT weighs about 40lb; because I will not compromise on the design principles of reliability and efficiency, weight considerations have to be put to one side. Weight is not inherent in the design; getting weight down requires a significant budget, and I presently live on pension credits.
I must apologise for wandering way off topic, Cleland's are so good at rambling...
