Tubing Selection for Polo Frame

Discussions Equipment
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Hi all,

I am in the process of building a few steel polo frames and I want to pick your brains on tubing selection. I’m specifically looking for how large can you go on the diameter of the main tubes of a polo bike before you run into “beer canning” issues? Obviously the loads on a polo frame (crashing) are much different than those on a road frame which is making me skeptical of the existing internet articles on tubing selection. MTB is closer, but I figured I’d check here.

Is a 35mm OD .7/.5/.7 down tube a recipe for a crumpled frame for polo? What about if I went with a bigger diameter and kept the wall thicknesses the same? Am I placing too much emphasis on stiffness in general? Should I just stop worrying about all this and use .9/.6/.9 for everything? For what it’s worth, I’m planning on gusseting the headtube intersections.

Thanks in advance for the steel wisdom.

2 Likes
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if you want something bombproof forget about mtb tubing and go bmx or fixed freestyle standards , your frame might weight 500grm /1kg more but will be more solid. 0.5 mm of wall thickness is gona poc and snap obviously

id say xs and s size frame handle abuse better than M L XL frames

that say i went for this for tt and dt , but its discontinued NOS

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