Front Wheel Hitting Foot

[Dave W]

Hi all, I have a Boardman Team CX (the latest one) and despite being a generally excellent commuting bike has the intensely annoying trait of the front wheel hitting my foot when it's in the forward position and turning sharply.

The question is why on earth would a bike be made that does this and is it CX specific or do proper road bikes do it too? It's not a problem until I detour off road and need to manoeuvre at low speed where it makes me want to kill kittens. I could put my feet in the 12 6 position but do a lot of MTBing and just don't find the position stable at all.

 

[KneesUp]

It's like that because the wheels are very close to the frame, which makes it responsive. It's called toe-overlap.

Less 'sporty' bikes don't do this.

 

[midliferider]

You may find this helpful

http://lovelybike.blogspot.co.uk/2011/01/whos-afraid-of-toe-overlap.html

 

[gbb]

You'll get used to it. Everyone does, after a while, it wont even register.

 

[fossyant]

Some have overlap, some don't. You only notice it doing slow speed manoeuvres. My Ribble has an overlap, but my best bike doesn't. It's made worse as I have fitted race blade longs to my Ribble, but it's not an issue generally, just when wobbling off the driveway.

 

[gbb]

It's like that because the wheels are very close to the frame, which makes it responsive. It's called toe-overlap.

Less 'sporty' bikes don't do this.

Quite right. The opposite of this geometry are the old stretched out Raleigh racers, I have one and its bloody awful in traffic. The gap between the wheel and frame is large, your feet dont get anywhere near the wheel...but the downside is they are unresponsive to steering input, like steering a battleship. Ride one, then the other, then you realise.
on my modern roadbikes, I can switch in and out of traffic, steering inputs are instant...on my old racer, its supremely comfortable on the straight...but horrendous trying to turn quickly.

 

[Fab Foodie]

You'll get used to it. Everyone does, after a while, it wont even register.

This ^^^^^
Even on a fixed

 

[Smurfy]

If you don't like toe-overlap, you need to be very picky when choosing a new bike. My fixed-wheel bike has no toe-overlap, even with the cleats all the way back, but I looked at a lot of bikes before buying.

 

[Dave W]

Thanks for the replies all, just seemed a strange thing to design a bike with what I saw as a bit of a flaw. It's not a problem per se, it's just annoying because none of my other bikes have ever had this trait. It's compounded by the mudguards but the trade off is worth it.

 

[the_mikey]

I have toe-overlap on all of my road bikes, occasionally you notice it, usually when slowly wobbling around, the rest of the time it will never cause a problem.

 

[Shut Up Legs]

Just ditch the toes. Eventually you'll get used to pedaling without them .

I have a bit of that overlap on my tourer/commuter bike, which has mudguards clipped on a lot of the time, so I try not to do any really tight turns.

 

[Nigeyy]

Many bikes have toe overlap -and from the responses you/ve probably figured out it's no big deal to many people. Usually it occurs in smaller frame sizes and its because the manufacturer wants to preserve the frame geometry.

Unfortunately for me, it's a make or break issue for a bike; I'd never buy a new bike knowingly with toe overlap (though I have a slight overlap with my old Raleigh Super Course, but this was only after I'd fitted mud guards -sometimes that added mudguard just creates that toe overlap!). Anyway, I think you are always far better off without it. I did have a nice old Japanese steel frame with noticeable toe overlap, and it was one of the big factors in getting rid of it.

 

[Mr Haematocrit]

As someone who runs small frames, I get loads of toe overlap, never seen it as a problem or flaw.

 

[Cuchilo]

An old boy at the allotment told me in his days of racing they had to make sure their foot was out of the way when turning . He's hundreds of years old so its not a new thing .

 

[BigGee]

I only realised I had toe overlap when I caught my foot badly on doing a sharp turn, stopped the bike dead in its tracks and put myself over the handle bars, badly breaking my arm!

It all happend extremely quickly and I only really worked out what happend when I took the bike into the LBS and aksed them to give it a look over trying to work out what had caused the problem. They worked it out straight away from my description of what had happend and demonstrated it to me. I did ride that bike again but never felt comfortable on it and was happy to move it on and buy one that does not have toe overlap.

It was probably a bit of a freak accident but certainly one to be aware of.