A wonky seat tube angles kills a bike for me. Gotta be soooo careful with the curved and offset seat tubes these days.
Too slack and my arse is behind the cassette and the bike won't climb without the front wheel popping up and wandering 1/2 way to Alaska. Too steep and my knees hit the bloody shifters when I'm turning on uphill switchbacks and I feel like I'm riding a time trial bike.
I really wish manufacturers would list an effective seat tube angle at a typical seatpost extension instead of at stack height. At 6'5" tall it is extremely hard to find an XL or XXL demo bike so buying a bike based on a geo chart is risky business.
i got scoffed at once before for misinterpreting how a measurement was defined by the bike industry - one that made no sense in relation to how a person actually rides a bike. i agree it would be great to see some sort of industry standard measurement rules so people could make sense of things.
on topic, i've found reach [HTML_REMOVED] seat tube angle to be something that kills a bike for me. too far back and the front wanders, too far forward and your knees are hitting the bars.
i wonder if anybody builds mtb's from the rider out? maybe the advantage to getting a custom built bike.
We don't know what our limits are, so to start something with the idea of being limited actually ends up limiting us.
Ellen Langer