---- Andrew R Stewart <onetenth@earthlink.net> wrote:
> One thing that I learned with making a bunch of 24" (actually
> 547 and 520mm) front wheeled road bikes is that the smaller wheel having
> less mass will handle quicker then the head angle will make it seem like on
> paper. I carried this over to the 650C bikes and thought that a 72* head
> angle was, therefore, like a 73* one with a 700C wheel. Hope this helps.
> Andy.
Andy, good point re the wheel inertia, although there is not too much difference
between 650C and 700C, only about 20% if the tire and rim sections are the same.
The compensation should be made in trail, not head angle, though. This is a
high-speed stability issue, and it's the trail that is most important. I
estimate that it would only require ~2% trail increase to recover the loss in
stability due to 650C vs. 700C. Head angle plays more significantly in low
speed handling, where the wheel inertia is much less important.
MPM
