Ya gotta fit your bike right ! .. right ? .. otherwise there exists a world of painful riding ! …
and we’re all made different shapes, lengths and sizes (except possibly certain identical twins ..) .. so how do we make YOU fit YOUR bike (or more accurately your bike fit you …)
we only sell bikes of particular frame sizes …. so how do we get it right ?
Well … We’ve got some tricks up our sleeves .. and we’ve never yet had to cut someones arms and\or legs to length … so maybe they work ?? ..
The main objective is to adjust the bikes frame size, stem, seatpost and contact points (saddle and bars) .. to fit you ..
Here’s what we’re looking for ….
Road bikes … 2 methods possible .. Dave’s Rule or Accufit …. Dave’s Rule is ‘heels and hubs’ … that is .. ‘heels on pedals legs straight at bottom of pedal stroke’ and ’can’t see front hub when hands are on brake hoods i.e. hub obscured by handlebars … we start with the correct basic frame size to achieve this … then there are a couple of tweaks with saddle for\aft\up\down position and knee position relative to pedal .. and handlebar height ..
Accufit for Road Bikes .. just in case ’Dave’s Rule’ doesn’t do the trick .. we can cross-check the result using ‘Accufit’ .. a commercial program designed to assist with bike sizing .. I’ve found it to be very good .. especially if starting from scratch with someone who never had a road bike .. or someone who has had trouble getting a good fit on a road bike.
Mountain Bikes … the science of fitting mountain bikes isn’t as well developed as for road bikes .. this is because there is a lot more variability in the terrain you are likely to go over .. which usually results in MTB riders having slightly lower saddle heights on their MTB than their road bike. The basic principals apply though .. you need you saddle a certain distance above your cranks (determined by ‘heel method’ is a good start .. and you ‘need’ your knee pivot to be not in front of your pedal axle .. and you need ‘space’ between the saddle and the bars to fit your body and arms with enough room to manoeveur in tight turns ..