[Closed] Darkside - touring bike cum Winter bike

Yeah, a touring bike is just a winter bike with panniers/racks etc.

One and the same. Might I point madam towards the Van Nicholas website, where she will notice the Amazon. This very capable machine can be outfitted with a disc-compatible fork and will handle a degree of off-roadiness too.

This is exactly my town/touring/winter bike, discs, racks, mudguards, 28c tyres...and ti 😎

Thanks for the replies. 8)

Shall check that out druidh but definitely not wanting to go off-road. I would however definitely want disc brakes!

cynic-al - can you post a pic please or is it one of your unique creations? 😉

[url= http://www.konaworld.com/road.cfm?content=sutra ]KONA SUTRA[/url]
[img] [/img]

I've got the 2009 (green) version - superb bike. Bob a Brooks saddle on it and you're more than sorted.
Used it almost daily for the past 18 months, commuting, touring and the odd century ride. Love it.
It handled last years snow very well.

I beg to differ on a few points above - a tourer is not just a winter bike with panniers/racks etc. A dedicated touring bike will have a slightly lower bottom bracket for stability, a slightly more upright riding position, rear triangle will be built to accomodate a rack and pannier ( some road bikes rear end are that short that when you fit a pannier you catch your heels as you pedal), the gears will be more than likely be a triple chainset with a wider ratio cassette than most road bikes. It will also be be built for comfort, reliability and strength rather than speed.
Have a look at Kona Sutra, Salsa Fargo and Surly Long Haul Trucker - bit different to 'just a winter bike with panniers'.

and as for off-road - no I didn't buy mine for going off-road. But those cross tyres were cheap and , well you can guess the rest.

PX do a kaff w discs. This medium is on sale at £900
Excellent touring/winter frame. ALl the holes for guards and racks.
Have toured for many miles on it's SS cousin the pompino.

[img] [/img]

Salsa Veya ticks your boxes

Cotic Roadrat? Been meaning to sell my medium as a frame/fork or as a bike. pm if interested.

I have just replaced it with a Forme Plateau (Aly frame carbon fork) which does not do discs but is nearly 10% quicker for the same effort. Has mudguard and rack mounts.

Winter and Touring bikes are, if we're splitting hairs, not the same. But they can each do both jobs quite nicely.

Oh, and what's wrong with riding road bikes off road..? I make a point of it.

EDIT: addressing the question a little more, I'd ask yourself which is more important: touring or "winter training"? For me, it's the latter, so the tourinjg capabilities of my bike are limited.

If that's your angle, then have a look at the perennial Ribble Audax.

[img] [/img]

in some ways a touring bike is a great all round bike for cycling.

Ridgeback do a nice range than come with guards and racks etc

http://www.ridgeback.co.uk/bike/panorama

all they need is dynamo (hub) system

deals to be had on Dawes Galaxy as well
http://www.spacycles.co.uk/products.php?plid=m1b0s21p2419

Sell that lightweight road bike, cos unless you're racing it's pointless.

And get yerself something like a CX bike with rack mounts. More models are now coming with discs.

Here's a nice one:

[img] [/img]

And it's only eight hundred and fifty pounds.

http://www.evanscycles.com/products/pinnacle/arkose-two-cyclo-cross-bike-ec027483

More comfy geometry, better brakes, more versatile.

another +1 for the Kona Sutra

The Sutra is lovely (I've had one) but I reckon there are a lot of bikes giving it a run for its money these days. It's not the lightest of bicycles either.

I bought a kinesis tripster for touring/winter road riding/cx riding. Sadly it is too big for me so I am selling it/turning it into a commuter and buying a custom frame instead. 😳

You may have a problem finding something that fits depending on how tall you are/requirements - i wanted disks, mounts for mudguards and rack, plus clearance for cx/touring tyres as well as running 23s for winter rides, but couldn't find anything small enough that ticked all the boxes.

I considered and discounted the kona sutra on weight. Also considered the kaffenback (too big for me) and the salsa vaya (i wanted 700c wheels and the frame which would have fitted me came with 26")

How a bout an on-one pompetamine, it has discs, steel frame and winter-proof hub gears. 800/1200 for 8 or 11 gears.

[img] [/img]

http://www.on-one.co.uk/i/q/CBOOPOMPETVERSA/on_one_pompetamine_versa_

http://www.on-one.co.uk/i/q/CBOOPOMPETVERSA11/on_one_pompetamine_versa_11_speed_pro

I bought a Kona Dew Drop for the exact same purpose, not sure if they are still available but got mine for a bargaintastic price of £465.

Having the same thoughts.....C2W from Evans so looking at something from Genesis (Croix de Fer) or BMC (Alpenchallenge) but just spotted this from Jamis....Aurora Elite

[img] [/img]

Check out Spa Cycles own brand Audax and Tourers, both available in a fetching and good value Ti format.....

[img] [/img]

My boardman in touring guise

change the wheels to thicker rim and grippier tyres winter commuter

I have a Condor Heritage & love it. Bombproof, no disc brakes though.

That Jamis has bar end shifters......I ride on the hoods in town, why would they put the gear changing down there? Deal-breaker.

That Jamis has bar end shifters......I ride on the hoods in town, why would they put the gear changing down there? Deal-breaker.

Some touring bikes still use bar end shifters cos they don't interfere with handlebar-mounted bags. The cables and the lever movement on STI's often catch on barbags so a lot of touring riders don't like them.

(less of an issue now that all manufacturers route all their cables next to the bar but older Shimano stuff with the side cables was always a problem).

bet that Boardmans fun cornering on fast descents with the panniers so high 😯

Wow, lots of replies and suggestions, thanks!

OK, its main purpose would be for touring, maximum trip a week, so that means one pair of half-empty panniers. Priority would need to be comfort hence Ti would be brilliant but realistically steel would just have to do.

I guess for Winter duties it would just be a means of maintaining stamina.

Lots to think about but, one thing's for sure, the road bike is staying but the full suss would unfortunately have to go!

Genesis Croix de Fer for me, Ti would be much lighter granted but it would also be more than twice the price!

Mudguards are a bugger to fit though....

Some touring bikes still use bar end shifters cos they don't interfere with handlebar-mounted bags

They also have a friction shift option if you've dinged your mech hanger. Basicaly, they're more reliable, which is a good thing if you're on a [i]serious[/i] tour.

for gods sake don't buy a ribble i think theyre made out of scaffolding tube, my kineseis is suprisingly comfy

Kafenback hard to beat for value IMO.

I have a VN Yukon, got it SH for £435, added disc mounts front and rear (front broke 🙁 ) it's perfect - stiff enough to tour (Caserrol wasn't), agile enough to be fun unloaded, and lightish.

CaptainFlashheart - Member
a serious tour.

Something bugger all of us actually ever do, despite how cool saying that may make you think you are.

Just in the process of building a Kaffenback for just this purpose. There are a good few great looking frames out there for a similar purpose, but the Kaff was just such good value. It's looking good so far - just waiting for cranks to arrive.

In the above photos, take a look at the gap between tyre and seat tube. Then it is easy to spot the tourers.

Just buy an 853 [url= http://www.dawescycles.com/p-412-ultra-galaxy.aspx ]Dawes Ultra Galaxy[/url] and grow a beard during your travels.

EDIT: that beard might take a while 😳 . Glad you are back to biking. But still get a Galaxy. Tourers and road bikes are related, but they very definitely are not the same: Road -> Audax (Winter) -> Road

The chainstays on that Kaff look rather short. I hope you don't have large feet, or don't mind travelling with smaller panniers.

[url= http://farm7.staticflickr.com/6206/6060013784_db922d24dd_z.jp g" target="_blank">http://farm7.staticflickr.com/6206/6060013784_db922d24dd_z.jp g"/> [/img][/url]
[url= http://www.flickr.com/photos/simondbarnes/6060013784/ ]Harvest Time[/url] by [url= http://www.flickr.com/people/simondbarnes/ ]simondbarnes[/url], on Flickr

Sabbath September for me. More Audax than full tourer (Sabbath do the Silk Route for that) but perfectly up to a bit of touring as well as commuting, winter training etc.

If yum short

http://www.planet-x-bikes.co.uk/i/q/FRVAPIRH/van_nicholas_pioneer_rohloff_frame

that beard might take a while

Much lollage! 🙂

I have just bought one of these. Has rear rack mounts will take a 28mm tyre and full mudguards.

Weighs 18lbs with pedals

probably alright for 'light touring' (ie using just rear rack) and I'm using it as my one and only road bike for commuting, winter rides, training and out with the lads on Road rides.

Paul Hewitt did the fitting and built the bike and I must say it's great, so comfy. Thats probably a mixture of 28 tyres, Hewitt fitting and a nice frame/fork.

[url= http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7032/6621842895_79e189ae47_b.jp g" target="_blank">http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7032/6621842895_79e189ae47_b.jp g"/> [/img][/url]
[url= http://www.flickr.com/photos/17059060@N00/6621842895/ ]P1040343[/url] by [url= http://www.flickr.com/people/17059060@N00/ ]eastham_david[/url], on Flickr

I'm only short (5ft 4") not sure of your height CG but if you fancy a try you can always borrow it.

Oh well - since we're posting photos now...

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c_g: yey! Welcome to the winter roadie / touring club 🙂 I got the 'Adventure Cycle-Touring Handbook' for Christmas and am currently half-way across Russia (albeit whilst remaining tucked up under the duvet!)

Not wanting to get too personal, but the factor which I found most important was whether you are (ahem) female proportioned - ie relatively long legs and a proportionally shorter torso. I am (along with being a diminuative 5') and found that the biggest issue re touring bikes as it's pretty harder to get a women's specific one (which isn't some god-awful step-through frame). Above all, fit and comfort is far more important than anything else, as you're going to be sat on it for hours and hours, day in, day out. So try as many as you can, and even consider a custom built frame (which to be honest is something I'd consider in the future).

Let us know what you get!

even consider a custom built frame

TBH Sue if they hadn't got this XS Carbon Alpine, I was going to get that very thing in steel from Paul Hewitt. The 12 week waiting list was a big consideration, but he rekons he can get a very light, extemely comfy bike built exactly the way you want it.

It is well worth considering CG.

The price was about £950 for frame and forks built in columbus steel if I recall correctly.

Kinases Gran Fondo my choice of winter hack bike, tourer and turbo torture. Braze ons for panniers, handles like a dream and I bought it second hand.

Slow down, I can't keep up!

Thank you again for replies, especially vortex with his kind offer. 🙂

I'm really just pondering at this stage - too much time on my hands following bike accident - but it's always good to hear opinions of others with experience.

The real test will be when I get back on the road bike. 😯

Hi there,

If you are serious about cycle touring, then forget about using disc brakes. There are a number of good reasons why touring riders don't use disc brakes, and most of them are listed here:

[url] http://thelazyrandonneur.blogspot.com/2008/11/sheldon-brown-on-brakes-for-touring.html [/url]

The fact that the cycling industry marketing machine is currently trying to sell everybody disc-braked 'touring bikes' is largely down to the fact that they want you to part with your money, and new features however pointless, seem sell bikes.

What is most important in cycle touring is reliability, ease of maintenance, and compatability. Choose components that most small bike shops around the world are likely to stock, so that when you break something out on the road, you are likely to be able to find a replacement locally.

This mostly means going for rim brakes, and shimano compatible drivetrain components. Now i'm no great fan of the shimano monopoly, but when it comes to availability and compatability, they have it covered.

If you are looking for a commuting bike that you will do an occasional holiday tour on, then sure go for a shiney new disc-brake model, but for serious touring, stick to rim brakes.

Cheers!

Monstermarrow I'd have to disagree with you there, but anyway it is a bit irrelevant to this post as CG has said

for touring, maximum trip a week

I think you'll see more and more tourers sporting discs. I've read several blogs of people wearing through rims on tours and having to take time out to wait for a rim to be posted out to them. It's a lot easier to pack a spare rotor in your pannier than a rim.

CG - what size is your road bike? We spent ages trying to find DGOAB a disc braked tourer and thought the Tripster was [i]the one[/i] but it's just too long to get the fit right so a custom build is being drawn as we speak.

Don't discount Ally as a material either the Tripster is suprisingly comfortable while still being sharp and fast - I gave myself a shock when I looked down at the computer while sprinting (on the road) with 35mm 'cross tyres on and seeing just how fast I was moving it.

Don't discount Ally as a material either the Tripster is suprisingly comfortable while still being sharp and fast

This. I commented on my first ride on it how comfortable it was going over rough ground compared to my carbon roadie. Just a thought though...my custom winter road bike/cx/tourer is going to be steel which is a first for me!

genesis croix de fer and I found mudguards straight forward to fit, much like any other bike.

when you say touring do you mean riding round the UK/western Europe- or going on serious tours to developing countries

this dictates whether you need to worry about replaceable parts, brakes- discs v rim replacement, size of tyre, gearing etc.

bar end shifters are very easy to maintain yourself- and on friction mode will run with virtually any rear mech of the same speed as the cassette- e.g. I ran a campag rear mech, shimano cassette and shimano bar end shifter for a couple of years with no issue

also- dont worry about the comfort too much- anything is relatively comfy with 28mm or bigger tyres at the right pressure.

More replies. 8)

Just to be clear, it would only be for the UK and for a maximum of a week at a time. Just pootling, stopping off to look at old churches, investigate local history etc. so not huge daily mileage.

I'm an old girl hence comfort is important. My road bike is 52 cm and a seriously good fit. It's a mens, as are all my bikes. At 5'5" with short body and both long legs and arms, should be reasonably well-catered for.

Would need disc brakes, triple chainset and Ultegra. 🙄

What about one of these: http://www.somafab.com/archives/product/double-cross-dc

If you look at 29ers, there's nothing to stop you fitting dropbars, mudguards, and racks, and there's tons of room for any size tyre. I use 2.35" Big Apples for a comfortable ride.

[url= http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2560/5706510702_0f5eda040f_z.jp g" target="_blank">http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2560/5706510702_0f5eda040f_z.jp g"/> [/img][/url]

I think you'll see more and more tourers sporting discs. I've read several blogs of people wearing through rims on tours and having to take time out to wait for a rim to be posted out to them. It's a lot easier to pack a spare rotor in your pannier than a rim.

Any touring rim will last 15,000 miles or more, provided you don't grind your brake blocks down to the metal. The wear strip on the rim tells you if you are approaching replacement time. Is 15,000 miles sufficient notice? A couple of bloggers are not representative of the world, and if they went out touring on worn rims then perhaps they really should have stayed at home. (Unless their tour was more than 15,000 miles long, which would be exceptional, and certainly not the norm). Seriously though, out on the road, away from the internet, no experienced touring riders use disc brakes.

A long decent through the alps, carrying 20kg of luggage, will toast any 'touring disc-brake' pads in a single DAY.

There are also knock-on effects of sticking disc brakes onto 'touring bikes'. To work [u]effectively[/u] a disc brake requires a much stiffer, beefier front fork, that negates the comfort and compliance that a nice cro-mo should fork gives to a touring ride. Just look at that awful fork Kona put on that Sutra earlier pictured in this thread, it just looks like their old Project 2 cyclocross fork to me...

I agree that rim brakes are better for proper touring with heavy loads over long distances. You do need to choose rims very carefully, though. I used F519s on an MTB tourer I used to ride from London to Ethiopia a few years ago. The rim popped from excessive brake wear in the middle of the Sudanese desert. Not the best place for it to go. So proper touring rims with a wear indicator for me next time.

I've just posted this pic elsewhere on this forum so why not here as well? It's a Specialized Tricross disc, I've fitted mudguards and am enjoying riding it as a winter trainer. It will make a very nice tourer as it's comfortable and only 8 minutes slower than my carbon roadie over 2 hours and 1750 ft of climbing. The position is excellent and it has overturned my prejudice against aluminium as a frame material - actually the stiffness of the rear triangle makes it an efficient climber.

[img] [/img]

Baldysquirt:

...London to Ethiopia...

BLIMEY! 😯

I used to work in Port Sudan, and there's not a lot out there! How the hell did you get hold of a new rim?? (Oh, and wherever you got it from, did they stock AvidBB7 pads as well??) 😉

globalti:
That's a lovely looking bike, first time I've seen the new 2012 Tricross.

CG, ygm (on facebook) 🙂

Do you get a lot of canty brake pads in Ethiopia? - genuine question.

My 29er is on the fist set of pads I put in and that was before a mere 1000km mostly offroad km in Spain last year. They've managed summer and winter over here since and won't need replaced in a hurry. I also travel pretyy light when I tour so chucking enough spare pads in to last between westernised countries doesn't seem like too much of an issue to me. If you are more of a four pannier and the kitchen sink type tourer you may have less spare room... I also didn't have any comfort or overheating issues in the Sierra Nevada (on road) this year. I won't count the descent from Pico Veletta as the sleet may have had a hand ion temperature regulation there 🙄

Anyway this is a discussion for elsehwere as I don't want CGs thread (where she repeatedly says she will be touring for no more than a week and in the UK) to be derailed by a discussion on the merits of long distance touring with discs.

monstermarrow, luckily the guy who guides the Sudanese leg of the tour d'afrique gave me his rear wheel - we were actually only a couple of hundred kms away from Khartoum on our way to the Ethiopian border. Cost more in postage for a new wheel for him than the wheel did to buy!

mustard, I don't think spares would be easy to come by anywhere in that part of the world. Certainly, everywhere we looked bike bits were completely incompatible with modern technology. We just carried a full set of spare pads each (plus cables, chain links and a few other bits and bobs).

back on topic, I still don't think that the Kaff can be beaten for value.

Baldysquirt that was the point I was getting at. I don't think it matters much if you are on rim or disc brakes as if you need spares that you aren't carrying they are most likley going to need to be posted out to you anyway.

I'm going to order a Kaff to replace my Tripster when I can get over the trauma of a 2month old frame having to be binned 😥

CG if you want you can borrow my Kaff for a few weeks to see how you get on with it

BTW you will have a email tonight with some pics of the pup

SD

Ooh - am liking the look of the new tricross!

DGOAB - who's doing your custom build? Would love to see pic's / details when it's done.

+1 for a 29er. We met Nina on the Trans Am. She rode a 29er Cube from NYC to Yorktown VA to San Francisco on it. A little more than a week long pootle.

Its worth keeping an eye out on the CTC classifieds, there are often some nice small custom steel touring frames/bikes on there. Discs are a faff with racks. The Roberts I tour on was an ebay frame only buy. Steel touring frames are super comfy.

[img] http://www.crazyguyonabike.com/pics/crazyguyonabike/docs/00/00/89/12/small/Nina?v=1 [/img]

Nearly forgot Crystal and her 650b Rivendell - maybe a niche too far?
[img] http://www.crazyguyonabike.com/pics/crazyguyonabike/docs/00/00/89/12/small/Crystal?v=0 [/img]

Sue, Shand Cycles are doing it for me. Will be posting up details/process/photos on my blog when I get a chance (link in profile). 🙂

As I said, just buy a Dawes Galaxy#. Ultra Galaxy in 853 is light and is the cumulation of 70 years of touring know-how. Tourers are the right tool for what you want. Everything else will be some form of compromise.

#other tourers are available, but for that all important church wall photo, nothing else will do 😉