AmbergrisCaye.com Home Forums Talk Belize Chat Area Bicycle Brand Question

New. We always buy two bikes at a time, don't know if he is giving a special price because of that or not.

Our friend just got a forever brand one and it is great very high handlebars so you are riding upright.

IMO that's a horrible way to ride! Very hard to put much effort into pedalling.

Another mistake I see older adults making a lot is not having their seat high enough. Their legs barely extend past the bent position at the bottom of the pedal stroke. That's too hard on your knees and legs.

Simple rule for seat height:

Sit on the saddle with the crank in a straight up and down position With your leg straight, the heel of your foot should touch the spindle of the pedal at the bottom...if your knee bends, the seat is too low.

For seat Front to Back position, with the crank at 90 degrees, your knee should be directly over the pedal spindle.

Stem length and bar height is less critical on a cruiser bike than on a road or TT machine

Each person should be able to find an optimal riding position which then defines their "personal triangle", which is the relationship between seat, hand grips and range of pedal positions. Once established it doesn't change, and the riding stance can be changed by rotating the whole triangle up or down without changing its internal dimensions.

Sorry Peter but I disagree: not that many folks will be that interested in a discussion of riding position, but for track, triathlon or time trial positions the seat will be further forward and the body profile flatter, which accounts for the steeper seat and head tube angles of Track/TT/Tri frames to keep the knees aligned over the forward crank position

For a cruiser style bike the key is seat height/front-rear position and the bars are much less important as aero dynamics are much less important than knee and hip stress and numb palms, which affect over 25% of all cyclists are less of a factor with a more upright position that strains the lower back less.

The only constants in the triangle will be that the angles add up to 180, and the seat to bottom bracket length will be very similar

I don't establish my bike setup from the triangle but from feel, but when I've finished it's remarkable how similar the triangles are.

Back home I have a time trial bike, an audax (now there's a British concept - most Americans wouldn't have a clue what that was), and a few mountain bikes (different ones for touring and for serious cross country, but no downhill machine). All these bikes have ended up with close to the same triangle. The harder I'll be riding a bike the more the seat is forward and high, and the handlebars far forward and low. The full suspension mountain bike I used to race on cross-countrys has the saddle about 4" higher than the bars, with a 6" stem extension. For touring I have saddle and bars at around the same height.

I first started racing in 1966, long before any computerized Fit kits.

The set up I described earlier, along with front of Saddle to tip of stem = arm length + 3 finger widths was the way to measure a frame.

I reached 6'0" at 15 and 160 lbs but as I progressed to 280lbs plus @ 55 and back to 245 last summer, my seat position stayed the same, while my stem got shorter and my bar extension angle, especially on Triathlon bikes was raised, so I did not knee myself in the gut!

I did my 4th Hotter Than Hell 100 this year, 23 years after my first one: my seat position was the same....my triangle wasn't!

I wasn't taking paunch into account!