So I've been drawing up my frame and had some questions. Through looking at different pictures of old bikes, specifically Indians, I have noticed there seem to be some with shorter wheel bases. There are the street bikes with all of the bells and whistles that have quite a bit of room between the rear tire and the seat tube and there are the stripped down racers that look like there is only a couple inches. The Indian below is one the shorter looking bikes and has the looks I am going for on my build. Can anyone confirm if there are shorter B.T.R.'s or are these just visual illusions from different pictures. If there are shorter bikes, does anyone know the wheel base on them?
Here is a Cyclone that I based my drawing off of, I changed the bottom tube and scaled it to fit 27" tires.
I know that scaling it down will make the wheelbase shorter but it seems like it shouldn't have changed as much as it did. I also changed the head tube angle to give it more trail which pushed the front tire out more. What I'd like to know is even with the trail I have will the short wheel base make the bike squirrely at speed? I can probably add an inch or two in the rear triangle but that still only puts it at 52" where as I've read on here 55"-58" is best. I don't want to lose the look of the compact Indian above so without going to larger tires I don't see another way to make up the wheel base. On a side note, if anyone has more info on the Indian I'd greatly appreciate it if you shared because it looks like it has modern tires and rims which I think are the same size as I'll be running yet still looks proportionate to the frame.
