show us your cross bikes

orbeas · Sep 6, 2011

Cross bikes

I have a new blog site for X bikes, which will have lots of differant bikes on which is the wondeful thing about X-bikes
Everyone has there owners little touches

http://crossbikes4u.blogspot.com/

will be some pics later in the week, including the only disc-braked X bike to win an open X race ???

orbeas · Sep 6, 2011

Cross Bikes

North Wales cyclo X races

Revolution bikes Winter X League starts October 9th

full details

http://nwcycloxgroup.ning.com/

all ages of all abilities on any kind of bike welcome

Johnsqual · Sep 14, 2011

Hey,

So after a longish search I finally found a steel frame cross bike, affodable, and in my size!

Van Hout was a bike shop in Heist op Den Berg. Cigno was their own brand of bikes (nothing to do with the shockingly expensive fake vintage bikes from Italy). Sadly the shop closed recently because of illness.

The components are a mix of shimano stuff, nothing particularly thrilling, but it's mainly the frame I like.

I've not been able to work out exactly what the rear derailleur is. Can anyone enlighten me?

Cheers,

Johnny

Johnsqual · Sep 14, 2011

BTW, someone asked what the differences between cyclocross and road bikes is. Here's an attempt at a summary.

-Cable routing: along the top tube, both to prevent the cables getting clarted up with mud and to make it easier for 'portage' (carrying) sections

-Brakes: cantilevers instead of pivots. But cross bikes use brifters/ergos which for some reason means v-brakes won't work. Recently, attempts have been made to use disc brakes but the cyclocross authorities don't like it.

-Weight: cross bikes are usually kept as light as possible, again to help with portage.

-Tyres: obviously more of a profile than road bikes but thinner than MTB tyres.

Anything I've missed?

I like the aesthetics of old steel cross frames - they stand apart more clearly from mountain bikes and look more elegant to me.

In an article in the Dutch magazine 'Grinta' they did a comparison of cross and MTB bikes and found cross bikes came out better in most types
of off road terrain. For example on tight woodland trails the narrow profile of the cross bars is an advantage (although this was in the Netherlands/Belgium so they didn't really go into the mountains).

David B · Sep 14, 2011

Johnsqual":3sjn1x1x said:
BTW, someone asked what the differences between cyclocross and road bikes is. Here's an attempt at a summary.

-Cable routing: along the top tube, both to prevent the cables getting clarted up with mud and to make it easier for 'portage' (carrying) sections

-Brakes: cantilevers instead of pivots. But cross bikes use brifters/ergos which for some reason means v-brakes won't work. Recently, attempts have been made to use disc brakes but the cyclocross authorities don't like it.

-Weight: cross bikes are usually kept as light as possible, again to help with portage.

-Tyres: obviously more of a profile than road bikes but thinner than MTB tyres.

Anything I've missed?

I like the aesthetics of old steel cross frames - they stand apart more clearly from mountain bikes and look more elegant to me.

In an article in the Dutch magazine 'Grinta' they did a comparison of cross and MTB bikes and found cross bikes came out better in most types
of off road terrain. For example on tight woodland trails the narrow profile of the cross bars is an advantage (although this was in the Netherlands/Belgium so they didn't really go into the mountains).

A proper CX bike - as against a hybrid or re-jigged tourer pretending to be a CX bike - won't have any mudguard fittings on the dropouts/chainstay bridges either. Bottle mounts on the other hand aren't unknown.
Cables - some modern frames use a conventional (down tube) front mech cable route, avoiding the need to put a tension adjusting stop on the top tube and a pulley on the seat tube to ensure ordinary bottom-pull derailleurs still work.

David

Johnsqual · Sep 14, 2011

Indeed David, I forgot about the whole thing with the pulley behind the
seat tube. I had a nightmare trying to change from an old deore FD
to a Veloce one, first working out how you were supposed to get it
to work, then finding one of the little pulley wheels.

David B · Sep 14, 2011

Johnsqual":3jizdtll said:
Indeed David, I forgot about the whole thing with the pulley behind the
seat tube. I had a nightmare trying to change from an old deore FD
to a Veloce one, first working out how you were supposed to get it
to work, then finding one of the little pulley wheels.

DMR do a clamp-on pulley widget called a Mechverter which is useful, doesn't look as neat as the factory-fitted pulleys that, say, some Alans have.

Not obvious in the pic, but my Fort has a tension adjuster on the head tube and the usual cable route under the BB shell. No reliability issues really as it isn't often used in a race situation (things are usually too much of a hard slog for me to even think about shifting from the 36T ring up to the 46T one....).

David

Retro1702 · Sep 14, 2011

Johnsqual":36kdbx1c said:
-Brakes: cantilevers instead of pivots. But cross bikes use brifters/ergos which for some reason means v-brakes won't work. Recently, attempts have been made to use disc brakes but the cyclocross authorities don't like it.

The UCI passed a ruling last summer to say disc-brakes could now be used in competition, this came too late for 2011 & even some 2012 model bikes but this development is starting to filter through.

Search any of the recent Eurobike show coverage and you will find pretty much all the major manufacturers having at least a top-range bike fitted with discs. One of the German companies, Stevens goes as far to say that they predict with the R&D for light & reliable disc braking systems on drop bar bikes/frames this may well actually be the direction for road bikes too within a decade.

jm · Sep 14, 2011

Trek XO Chorus mix.Is it true you can bunny hop those planks.

David B · Sep 14, 2011

GlasgowSUFC":hn3hgq4v said:
Johnsqual":hn3hgq4v said:

-Brakes: cantilevers instead of pivots. But cross bikes use brifters/ergos which for some reason means v-brakes won't work. Recently, attempts have been made to use disc brakes but the cyclocross authorities don't like it.

Click to expand...

The UCI passed a ruling last summer to say disc-brakes could now be used in competition, this came too late for 2011 & even some 2012 model bikes but this development is starting to filter through.

Search any of the recent Eurobike show coverage and you will find pretty much all the major manufacturers having at least a top-range bike fitted with discs. One of the German companies, Stevens goes as far to say that they predict with the R&D for light & reliable disc braking systems on drop bar bikes/frames this may well actually be the direction for road bikes too within a decade.[/b]

Hope - as visitors to the Hope Facebook page might well know already - is looking at introducing a mechanical-to-hydro adaptor allowing road brake/gear lever systems like Ergopower to be used with their hydraulic disc brakes. Dunno what availability of cable-only systems is like now, used to be the case that only Hayes did a cable disc model suitable for drop-bar levers.

David

show us your cross bikes

orbeas

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Johnsqual

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