Ridley x Bow

pfnsht · January 2018

Hi guys,

I've got a Ridley X-Bow which i use with mudguards as a winter bike. I know it was designed a cyclocross bike but the frames versatility for wide tyres and extra mounts attracted me to it.

The problem I am having with it is it's really twitchy on the front end when cornering at speed. I had a fall before x-mas as I passed over a slippy bit of road but the twitchy-ness just unsettles the bike generally.

Yesterday I rode with my friend and we swapped bikes after me being unable to keep up with him on the fast corners for fear of my bike washing out. He rides a Canyon Inflite in the same size as me and the difference was night and day. His front and and rear end felt tight through corners, as the the front tracked exactly where you want it to go and as though the front and rear wheel were connected.

After some googling (mine is a medium 54cm x-bow and the canyon is a medium) I can see our head and seat angles are the same at 72 Head and 73 Seat.

Canyon stack 575 vs xbow 560.
Canyon reach 383 vs xbow 379
Canyon bars 42cm vs xbow 40cm
Canyon stem 10cm vs xbow 11cm

I have picked my stem length based on dropping a plum line from the position of my hand on shifter so it lines up with the axle of the front wheel. It feels fine and a little bit less stretched out vs my Road bike.

On the Xbow I have also tried 25mm gator skin tyres and it's currently running 30mm strada biancas but to be honest it is the same. On the 30mm tyres I have 60psi at the front and 80 psi at the back. Lowering the PSI at the front did make it a bit more stable.

Not sure what else to do with it and I fear it is just designed to be darty through a tight cyclocross course but oddly so should the Canyon Inflite?

mercia_man · January 2018

I think the handling characteristics you describe are down to the combination of head tube angle and fork offset rather than anything to do with stack and reach and fit on the bike. This is a cyclo cross frame designed for racing and as such has quick and lively steering. Have a look at this review from road.cc where the tester said the handling was great for slow speed tight and techy stuff but over responsive on faster hard surface conditions. http://road.cc/content/review/171872-ri ... ow-10-disc

I know cross bikes sound appealing as an all-round road, commuting, touring, gravel bike but ones designed for actual racing can be twitchy. I remember meeting a group of British lads touring with camping gear in the Alps on Kona cross bikes and they had to abandon plans to ride the Col d'Izoard after being terrified by speed wobbles descending the Col de Vars.

pfnsht · January 2018

Thanks for the heads up on the review and that is exactly what I am experiencing! As I have no desire to take part in cross it looks like I have the wrong frameset.

I wanted something that would be a winter bike: takes wider tyres and mudguards and could cope with a gravel path/light trail.

Part 2 of this thread then.. recommendations for suitable framesets would be much appreciated. My other bike is a Bowman Palace R and it is lovely. I like the look of their pilgrims disc but it's a but much ££ for a winter hack. That said the "winter bike" is the one that gets most use as I use it for commuting + extra distance most days! Probably 8-10k a year so maybe i should spend a bit more.

mercia_man · January 2018

Sounds to me like a touring bike would be a good bet. Spa Cycles does a fantastic range of highly rated steel and titanium bikes and frames ranging in style from sporty audax, through classic tourer to on/off road adventure bikes, with disc and rim brake versions.

Spa's own brand built up bikes are great value. And do away with the hassle of setting up gears and brakes and getting mudguards to fit. If you want to build up your own from a frame, here is a link.

https://www.spacycles.co.uk/m2b0s143p0/ ... ies/Frames

Spa's steel touring frame and forks for £375 looks good for a rim brake build, their titanium frames are £900 and, for a disc build, Surly Disc Trucker frame and forks for £475 might be good for you.

I have to say you don't need a specific gravel bike to venture off road. I've taken my steel framed fast tourer with camping gear, mudguards and 28mm or 32mm tyres over mountain trails in Wales, Scotland and France with no problems.

pfnsht · January 2018

Cheers and they do like nice. I quite like the Straggler (disc).

Just inspecting my xbow and i have noticed the head-set is a little loose - rocking on the front brake is producing some movement in the fork/head tube. I wonder if that's what's causing me to loose confidence in the front end and creating the disconnected feeling front to back.

Can't get out today for a test but will do tomorrow once tightened up.

Cheers
Matt

N0bodyOfTheGoat · January 2018

As a nervous corner taker myself, especially downhill, are you perhaps guilty of not putting weight over the front wheel by not bending your elbows much approaching and going through turns?

cougie · January 2018

What did your pal make of your bike ? You might have lost a bit of confidence in the bike since the fall too ?

neeb · January 2018

pfnsht wrote:

Hi guys,
After some googling (mine is a medium 54cm x-bow and the canyon is a medium) I can see our head and seat angles are the same at 72 Head and 73 Seat.

Canyon stack 575 vs xbow 560.
Canyon reach 383 vs xbow 379
Canyon bars 42cm vs xbow 40cm
Canyon stem 10cm vs xbow 11cm

A vital piece of missing information here is the fork offset. The combination of that and the head tube angle determine the trail. Knowing one without the other is like knowing how many pills to take without knowing their strength, or visa versa.. Unfortunately I can't see this on the Ridley geometry chart either. Would be interesting to know..

It drives me mad how many manufacturers just won't tell you this information. Bianchi to this day refuse to tell me what the fork offsets are on the various frame sizes of the XR4 despite me having asked them 2 or 3 times over several years. The suspicion has to be that they use the same fork across the range giving weird trails on the smaller and/or larger sizes (although in the case of the X-Bow the head tube angle is pretty much constant across the sizes so the fork can be too). Bike reviews in magazines and on websites also hardly ever look at the geometry across the sizes and tell you how this is likely to modify the handling characteristics described in the review. Just shoddy journalism IMO!

But the loose headset certainly won't be helping - tell us if tightening that solves the issue!

pfnsht · January 2018

Cheers guys. Ready for my commute tomorrow to tell whether my tightened bearing sorts it.

My fork offset is 50mm but I can't find any info on the Canyon's.

My friend also thought the handling was twitchy on sweeping corners - he thought it was too responsive i.e. in mid turn it's happy to steer into the turn even more rather than track through it.

I hope it's the head set as I like the look of the bike - it's battleship grey with brown tape, saddle and cables.

neeb · January 2018

pfnsht wrote:

My fork offset is 50mm but I can't find any info on the Canyon's.

With a 72 degree headtube That should give a pretty normal fast road bike trail of around 58mm. That's practically the same as my road bikes that have 73 degree HTs and 45mm fork offsets. Should be lively and responsive but not overly twitchy.

<edit> it occurs to me that a loose headset might have the effect of increasing actual head tube angle and thus reducing trail, especially when braking.

pfnsht · January 2018

Thanks for all the advice guys. It seems like my headset issue was the cause but I need to ride it a bit more on different roads to be sure (only 40km today and my commute doesn't have many turns on it!). I suppose that makes sense - as I lean into a corner the fork moves making it feel disconnected and feeling as though it will wash out.

To fix the issue I needed to cut some of the excess steerer tube, a job I had been meaning to do for a while. Turns out my replacement deda stem was circa 1mm taller than the 4ZA branded one previously on there; there wasn't sufficient clearance to clamp it all together from tightening the headset. There was only a small bit of play in the fork but I could feel it when rocking the bike on the brakes.

Fingers crossed.

As a side note I must learn about the relationship between head angle and fork offset. I've been slowly building my knowledge of bike geometry.

voodooman · January 2018

This is probably no help whatsoever... but I have an x-bow (one from 2012) which I used for commuting / racing / sportives and the headset must have no slack. It was designed for cross so it's not the best for hammering downhill, though mine is the size of a field gate (I'm 6'6") and not that twitchy. Since I got a CAADX for the commute I use the xbow in the woods and for cross and that's definitely where it's most at home. The steering is definitely sharp for tight corners, but I'm a massive fan of it. Being my first proper bike since I were a lad n'all. It has taken a proper hammering for years and still going strong.

manglier · February 2018

http://yojimg.net/bike/web_tools/trailcalc.php
Using this will help you get your head around the relationship between rake, head angle and trail.
If you are still finding the xbow twitchy replacing the fork with a 45 or even 43 degree offset will slow down the steering response. Beware however that you don't run into toe overlap problems because you will be effectively shortening you wheelbase.

pfnsht · June 2019

Over 1 year on and i wanted to update this. The frame is great. A mixture of sorting the stem/excess steerer fork and regained confidence has sorted this out.

I still use it more than any other bike I have. The title of the thread makes it seem as tho there is an issue and it appears on Google searches so wanted to post something to confirm it was setup and user error. Edited the original title.

Ridley x Bow

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