Diane Callaway's "Goldilocks" 26" wheel 1X9
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Diane's husband Bob was one of my first customers, and a great one at that. You can see and read about Bob's One der Dog in my gallery section. But, this is not about Bob's bike it's about Diane's and it's a beauty. This is actually my first bike for a female. Diane rides a lot with Bob and races in the WORS (Wisconsin Off-road Series) throughout the season. For Diane I built a 26" wheel Bone-a-Fido that is built up as a 1X9. Diane thinks she might someday try out single speed riding so I used Paragon sliding drop-outs on her frame.
Diane expressed having trouble with her other bike (no I won't say what it is) not having good low speed handling. I did my homework and determined that it had a pretty high "trail" (trail is one of the main numbers used in determining the handling of the front end of the bike). "Trail" is affected by three things 1) overall wheel diameter, 2)fork rake, and 3)head tube angle. When I'm designing a bike in which I will be building the frame and fork, I can play around with the rake and head tube angle and achieve the desired trail pretty easy. In this case Diane went with a suspension fork so, the only thing I could play around with was the head tube angle. My design ended up with a 73 degree head tube angle which gave the bike a trail of 62mm with the fork she has chosen. A lot of mountain bikes end up with a trail between 50mm and 70mm, so I ended up in the middle. As close as I could calculate on her other bike the "trail" was around 85mm. This is not un-rideable but is more suited for higher speeds.