Road Bike Bottom Bracket Height
Initial geometry points revolve around the bottom bracket height wheel size and suspension requirements.
Road bike bottom bracket height. On the spec sheet for my fuso frames pdf file i listed both bottom bracket height 10 5 8 inches and 2 drop. The bottom bracket height above the ground may not have changed but its height relative to the wheel axles will have dropped. A 54cm specialized tarmac road bike has a 268mm bottom bracket height while a medium sized specialized hardtail expert mountain bike with front suspension only has a 309mm bottom bracket height and a medium specialized epic expert carbon with both front and rear suspension has a bottom bracket height of 332mm. Contrast this with a typical drop of 55 65cm for popular production cross bikes.
It is the measurement from the center of the bottom bracket to any level surface that the bicycle is sitting. The standard on a road bike used to be 70mm. In fact chris porter of mojo suspension comments in this article on how he feels that 29er wheels place the bottom bracket so far below the wheel axles that it makes it difficult to get enough weight over rather than behind the front wheel when braking. Cyclocross bikes earned a higher bottom bracket back in the days when racers competed with clips and toe straps.
Locating the optimum saddle height is pretty much the foundation of bike fit the distance between the bottom bracket and top of your seat plays a role in comfort as well as power output and. There is nothing magical about the bottom bracket height relative to the axle height a bike does not hang from the axles rather it balances upon the tires. The bottom bracket height of a frame is often specified as bb drop because that metric is fixed while the the actual height of the bottom bracket above the ground varies with the tire size.