SPA CYCLES STEEL TOURING FRAMES

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geocycle
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Re: SPA CYCLES STEEL TOURING FRAMES

Post by geocycle »

The elan is a gorgeous bike. I test rode one before buying the audax. The elan just felt like a plush, smooth, sensible ride, rather like a drive in something like a Mercedes. It actually felt quite a lot like the Thorn I already own, smooth and solid. It can be built to different specs of course so it is hard to generalise from one test ride. So, my choice of the audax was not that it was a better bike but to get something a bit different. For me the audax is a great, fun, Sunday ride and feels very different, faster even, than the daily commute. However, the wider tyres and the widespread adoption of disc brakes strengthens the case for the elan in terms of future proofing.
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531colin
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Re: SPA CYCLES STEEL TOURING FRAMES

Post by 531colin »

Bear with me on this, I'm not sure that I'm exactly following you.....

But, weird as it seems at first, a 57cm bike with a sloping top tube is a size or two bigger than a 57cm bike with a horizontal top tube.
The top tube slopes up, so the handlebars are higher than with a horizontal top tube, so its a bigger bike and the reach is longer. ...and you have more seatpost sticking out of the frame than you would with a horizontal top tube.

Specialised are even more odd.....the "size" of their frames is the length the seat tube would be if the top tube was horizontal....so there isnt anything on the frame which actually measures the "size" of the bike.....but its closer to the "size" with a horizontal top tube.
wjhall
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Re: SPA CYCLES STEEL TOURING FRAMES

Post by wjhall »

.... wrote: Bear with me on this, I'm not sure that I'm exactly following you.....
Guessing that it is me you are not exactly following, I can only reply that I am beginning to feel that I am not exactly following me either...

I think my choice of comparison was based on the feeling that for a touring bike the physical seat tube, hence rear triangle, was a better choice of comparison, or putting it another way, an old fashioned feeling that a lot of seat tube sticking out is unnatural. This was reinforced by trying the saddle height based size selection method on the Spa website, which points to two sizes 54 and 57, with the pictures below. I think that you have previously said that 54 cm is the design size for someone 5' 10", which I also am. Unfortunately, still being in the process of adjusting to the modern world, the amount of protruding seat tube on the 54 cm looks unnatural. It could also be argued that the longer head tube on the 57 is an improvement on the old tourer, providing a more upright position, with less stem protrusion.

5435tourer.jpg
5735tourer.jpg

It was also based on an attempt to sketch the geometries, shown below, and nearly correct.

frame geom output11-plot.jpg
I have found this discussion very useful in clarifying things, thank you
Last edited by wjhall on 8 Apr 2022, 7:54pm, edited 4 times in total.
Bmblbzzz
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Re: SPA CYCLES STEEL TOURING FRAMES

Post by Bmblbzzz »

531colin wrote: 7 Apr 2022, 5:58pm Bear with me on this, I'm not sure that I'm exactly following you.....

But, weird as it seems at first, a 57cm bike with a sloping top tube is a size or two bigger than a 57cm bike with a horizontal top tube.
The top tube slopes up, so the handlebars are higher than with a horizontal top tube, so its a bigger bike and the reach is longer. ...and you have more seatpost sticking out of the frame than you would with a horizontal top tube.

Specialised are even more odd.....the "size" of their frames is the length the seat tube would be if the top tube was horizontal....so there isnt anything on the frame which actually measures the "size" of the bike.....but its closer to the "size" with a horizontal top tube.
That's interesting. I would have thought of the sloping top tube as, primarily, sloping down towards the seat tube and being lower at that junction rather than higher at the head tube. Thus the longer exposed seat post and lower standover. And unless you slam your stem, the bars can still be adjusted up and down. So it's interesting to get the view from an actual designer!
UpWrong
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Re: SPA CYCLES STEEL TOURING FRAMES

Post by UpWrong »

I can't see the frame geometies for the Spa bikes anymore. Am I being stupid? Interested to look at the Elan's sizing.
slowster
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Re: SPA CYCLES STEEL TOURING FRAMES

Post by slowster »

UpWrong wrote: 8 Apr 2022, 2:22pm I can't see the frame geometies for the Spa bikes anymore. Am I being stupid? Interested to look at the Elan's sizing.
The provision of the geometry charts is very haphazard on Spa's website. The chart for the Elan is not shown on the webpages of either the steel or titanium framesets, but you can find it on the webpages for some (not all) of the build options for complete bikes, e.g.:

https://www.spacycles.co.uk/m1b0s223p49 ... ar-9-Speed
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531colin
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Re: SPA CYCLES STEEL TOURING FRAMES

Post by 531colin »

slowster wrote: 8 Apr 2022, 3:24pm ...........
The provision of the geometry charts is very haphazard on Spa's website. ......
I think you are being kind?
I am in awe of St John St. website. ....but then, Spa's pricing structure doesn't really allow for any time to fettle the website......
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531colin
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Re: SPA CYCLES STEEL TOURING FRAMES

Post by 531colin »

Bmblbzzz wrote: 8 Apr 2022, 8:42am ..........
That's interesting. I would have thought of the sloping top tube as, primarily, sloping down towards the seat tube and being lower at that junction rather than higher at the head tube. Thus the longer exposed seat post and lower standover. And unless you slam your stem, the bars can still be adjusted up and down. So it's interesting to get the view from an actual designer!
All I would say is its the seat tube you measure!..... :wink:

This whole discussion has taken me back more than 10 years to when we launched the Spa Tourer, which was our first.
Spa's demographic has always included mature cyclists, and when we launched the Tourer I spent a lot of time talking to people who had been riding horizontal top tube bikes for most of a lifetime. (as, indeed, I had!) There was a lot of bewilderment over this new-fangled idea of sloping the top tube, although as can be seen from the photos, the slope on the tourer top tube is quite slight by to-days standard.....I was trying not to alienate some of the longstanding customers!
I did toy with the idea of sizing like Specialised do, where the "size" is the length the seat tube would be.....if the top tube ran horizontally from the top of the head tube to the seat cluster. Then we could have sized the frames, in inches, in the sizes we were all used to at that time. The only thing that stopped me doing that is that we would then have had a cupboard full of frames with no transfers on and no tube on any of the frames actually measuring the "size" of the frame.....Some people are organised enough to overcome stuff like that, and some aren't!
.....and, of course, if I had sized in inches, by now there is a good slice of the population who have no idea what an inch looks like!

......designing the bikes is the easy bit....... :wink:
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531colin
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Re: SPA CYCLES STEEL TOURING FRAMES

Post by 531colin »

I'm delighted to get so many good reports of the Elan.
I think what I enjoy most about it is the balance between stiffness against your push on the pedals and smoothness against road irregularities. Some of that is deliberate, and some of it comes from making a virtue out of a necessity.
On all the Spa bikes, I vary the top and down tube(s) diameter(s) with the frame size.....I think this may be unusual? Certainly, last time I looked at the Long Haul Trucker they had the same diameter tubes for the very smallest as for the very biggest, so the smallest frame is very much stiffer than the biggest when it wants to be the other way round.
A couple of the tubes are ovalised aiming for lateral stiffness....of course in a bike frame you want vertical compliance (for bumps) and lateral stiffness (for pedalling)....an impossible request, as the thing is triangulated vertically, not laterally!
The carbon fork has a tapered steerer....bigger at the bottom where the stress is greatest; so you are forced to have a big head tube. This actually works for you, because in the big sizes (in Ti) you need a really big downtube, and with a standard-diameter head tube you need to ovalise the downtube the wrong way to get it to fit. Also on a carbon steerer you can't have a huge stack of spacers, so to get the bars high enough I had a tall head tube; the head tube extends a bit above the top tube, but if you take that to the extreme it looks awful, so the front of the top tube ends up higher than it otherwise might. So to get decent standover, I dropped the back of the top tube well down the seat tube, so there is a bit of a "mast" of seat tube above the seat cluster; and this gains a bit more flex in the seatpost/seat tube than if the tubes all join at the very top of the seat tube....also it gets the top tube closer to the bottom bracket, although whether or not that stiffens the bracket significantly I don't know! (Its almost a dropped top tube)
Titanium is an interesting material. Its about one third less dense than steel, but also less stiff in about the same ratio. Where you win is that Ti tubes are made in one eighth of an inch increments, just as steel tubes are, so there is a more gentle gradation available in Ti than steel. Also, seatstay and chainstay diameters are about the same in both materials; apart from anything else there is no room for a fatter chainstay between the chainwheel and the back tyre.....so titanium stays are more compliant than steel.
au8st
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Re: SPA CYCLES STEEL TOURING FRAMES

Post by au8st »

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Last edited by au8st on 8 May 2022, 9:27am, edited 1 time in total.
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531colin
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Re: SPA CYCLES STEEL TOURING FRAMES

Post by 531colin »

You are going to have to make a decision....Wayfarer and Elan barely overlap.

Image008 by 531colin, on Flickr

I make no apology for reproducing that again on here....you don't get weather like that every day in the lakes!
Have a look here https://www.flickr.com/photos/52358536@ ... 1589837172 at some of my off-road trips. If you want to do tracks like those I did in the Lakes in 2012 (ouch) on an original rim braked Spa Roughstuff bike

Image057 by 531colin, on Flickr

............then you will want a Wayfarer, its the logical successor to the Roughstuff. Its a stable, forgiving, "point-it-at-something-and-it-just-goes-over" kind of bike.

Elan will cope with easy tracks on a nice day, but I haven't tried it loaded!
Jdsk
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Re: SPA CYCLES STEEL TOURING FRAMES

Post by Jdsk »

It's fascinating to hear the stories about design and development, Colin. Please keep them coming.

Did you make prototypes once you had a design in mind? And how many?

Thanks

Jonathan
Jamesh
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Re: SPA CYCLES STEEL TOURING FRAMES

Post by Jamesh »

Jdsk wrote: 9 Apr 2022, 10:28am It's fascinating to hear the stories about design and development, Colin. Please keep them coming.

Did you make prototypes once you had a design in mind? And how many?

Thanks

Jonathan
Indeed would be interesting!

Esp as they are produced in far east.
au8st
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Re: SPA CYCLES STEEL TOURING FRAMES

Post by au8st »

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Last edited by au8st on 8 May 2022, 9:26am, edited 2 times in total.
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531colin
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Re: SPA CYCLES STEEL TOURING FRAMES

Post by 531colin »

Jdsk wrote: 9 Apr 2022, 10:28am It's fascinating to hear the stories about design and development, Colin. Please keep them coming.

Did you make prototypes once you had a design in mind? And how many?

Thanks

Jonathan
You know what? I'm not really sure! It was a complicated time.......

ImageBalanced position by 531colin, on Flickr

I uploaded that photo early 2016, but somewhat obviously I didn't take it, I'm in it! And I can't remember how the photo came to me.....
But that is one of the first set of prototypes of the Elan (you do every size)....I used it for the photoshoot because it was clean!
Its got a 2 rings from 3 ultra compact double which the guys did for me so I could put a few miles on it.
There were some problems....I made the chainstays wide so a big tyre would fit; but then they were too wide for a "road double" chainset, where the crank ends hit the stays.....you can see where I have dented the tubing in for clearance! Later chainstays have a double bend, "Hipstays" Tom Ritchie or somebody called them. The dropouts didn't work well for big tyres as I remember, the wheel came too far forward so the chainstay bridge/mudguard stopped the wheel before it came free of the dropout. We were feeling our way a bit with a (then) new fabricator of Titanium frames, who turned out to be good. John had bought Sabbath bikes, and their designer (whose name I can't remember, embarrassingly) spent some time with us; I learned a lot from him, including to use full carbon forks for the production bikes, thats an Ali. steerer in the photo with all the spacers.. In the end, the whole thing worked out very well. We used the Sabbath dropouts, and I think we got it all right in the second batch of prototypes. A guy came over from the frame fabricators, and we took him for afternoon tea at Betty's.....they know, you know, even in Taiwan! I have an abiding memory of him with a smartphone in each hand, operating them both simultaneously, while carrying on a conversation in English of course which can't be his first language. bloody terrifying.
Its always the "little things" which catch you out....wide chainstays fouling road double cranks, dropout slots which come too far forward so the tyre hits the chainstay bridge before the axle clears the dropout.
The big stuff you normally have thought about before you commit to prototyping. (in no particular order....tube sizes, steering geometry, seat tube angle, bar reach and height, standover, tyre and toe clearance )
Previously I have fallen foul of daft stuff like carrier mounts at the wrong height, wildly different tyre clearance front to rear.....but (so far) I haven't had one that steered like a milking stool.
The Taiwanese fabricators are generally pretty good; give them a drawing, and the frames come back precisely to the drawing. Stuff you can't draw is much more difficult; photographs sometimes work, the written word is generally entirely hopeless.
Even the drawings, I tend to get one of their own drawings from their own factory and amend the dimensions for a new bike or size; it works better than giving them something they are less familiar with.
But then you can get a batch of drawings and 2 drawings will have the same thing but (for example) measured from different ends. That would bug me if I was setting up the framebuilding jig.
Last edited by 531colin on 10 Apr 2022, 10:38pm, edited 1 time in total.
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