I want to just admire the lovely mishmash of old and modern I had on my commuter, a lovely Singular Peregrine with Alfine 8 and BB7’s. Super practical and never missed a beat. Until yesterday.

The Peregrine is now dead. Using Argos as a benchmark for a high quality repair and repaint, I’m looking at £400 to fix her up. Top tube, down tube and multi-colour repaint… yeah.

I don’t really want to think about how badly yesterday’s ride home could have ended.

So anyway, I need a new frame and possibly forks. I like the shape and ride of my tourer/monstercross Peregrine so I’m looking for something with a similar feel.

I’ve seen the Soma Wolverine, which looks lovely. Sliding dropouts are good, not that the EBB ever gave me trouble. The split stays throw open the possibility of putting a belt drive on in future.

What else is worth a look?

Shart! What happened? Any impact, or just riding along?

I’ll go and have a close look at mine now!

That was JRA. I was creaking badly on Monday so I went and tightened everything up a touch. Cranks, wheel, the rack was actually a bit loose. Tuesday morning was fine but mostly downhill. Tuesday evening it was creaking again and it all felt a bit wobbly…

The cracks clearly have been there a while (the initiation site looks rusty) but the majority of the crack is clean so had expanded quite rapidly….

(FWIW the bike is stored under cover at work and at home)

That’s a bit worrying, the front end of my bike has started creaking, will have to give it a good looking over..

Ps I love the look of the Soma- have been very tempted to get one in the past!

Have you thought about a Salsa? There’s a lot of love for them on this forum. Maybe the Vaya?

Is that what I suspect it is? It looks to me as if the change in thickness of the (presumably) butted tube occurs just at the tip of the lug, and this has exacerbated the potential for the lug to act as a stress riser, and consequently it has cracked at the tip and around the rest of the tube where the thickness changes.

If so, I would have thought that either the tube should have been cut so that the change in tube thickness occurred 10mm or more further away from the lug, and/or a tube should have been used with a change in thickness sufficiently gradual that the impact of the lug tip as a stress riser was not significantly more than if it were on a plain gauge tube.

What size Peregrine is it? I might be selling my frame and forks soon, only problem is I’m going to struggle to take it apart as i bust my collar bone on Sunday 😳
Also appreciate you may want something different with that happening to yours.

Good shout on the Salsa. The Vaya looks ok

But the Marrakesh has adjustable dropouts

slowste – yep, the crack has started at the tip of the lug and is what is putting me off repairing it – it’ll only fail again in the same place (eventually). There’s no external butting and I haven’t determined what butting is going on inside the tube.

Lovely bike but I sold mine when the downtube got ‘kinked’ from the over zealous fitting of a front mech at my LBS. I was assured it was fine but lost confidence in it after that and the toe-overlap was always annoying. Would never sell the Gryphon though…….

I know it’s not as pretty and more utility but I’ll throw in the Straggler. Surly Cross Check has done everything as well as the Peregrine did for me except fully-loaded touring.

The Wolverine looks the business though!

Brings back memories of happily cycling home from a pub lunch on my Saracen Pylon8 in summer 2014, arriving home and out of nowhere discovering a crack that was at least 66% around the seat tube, just below the top tube junction. She never went out on the road again, I should have sold the Alfine 8 setup ages ago, still sitting in the garage minus the Recon Race (which may have been the contributing factor as to why it cracked).

I’d be looking at the Tripster or the Kona Sutra Ltd as a replacement for mine. Kona if you forced me to choose now.

Or maybe the Kite. You’d have to go 650B for you bike tyre fun, but there’s more and more choice round tyres there, and I’ve ended up with a road wheelset and an off road wheelset for the Peregrine anyway.

I’d already discounted the Surly straggler as it’s only got basic dropouts, so the Tripster and Sutra end up in that pile too 🙂

Picky? Maybe. 😆

Still miss mine

Was a hefty beast, but sooo comfy on swoopy downhills like Hartside

Have you got in touch with Sam at Singular? Obviously well out of warranty, but he might be interested to hear of the failure.

Yep, I dropped a few photos Sam’s way to show him how it went. Figured as a designer/engineer he ought to be interested!

Agreed that Marrakesh looks great. CTB is doing the 2016 framesets at a good price too (£450)

http://www.charliethebikemonger.com/salsa-marrakesh-2016-drop-bar-frameset-10353-p.asp

But the Marrakesh has adjustable dropouts

Lovely bike but only accepts a Salsa rear rack as it bolts to the top of the swinger dropout bolt. They do swinger dropout with mudguard eyes you might be able to bolt a rack too but might be a faff with mudguards too. Great dropout design if you can get past that though.

Here’s mine last weekend. As per ocb, not the lightest, hnce no cx shouldering!

Lovely bike but only accepts a Salsa rear rack as it bolts to the top of the swinger dropout bolt.

Hmm, that would annoy me a bit! 🙂

I’ll admit – I hadn’t looked at CTBM’s shop yet as he swindled me out of some stickers a few years ago #stickergate

Actually, I was just seeking opinions before I went looking to actually buy. £450 for the F&F is very attractive, but that colour is equally repulsive.

The custom rack doesn’t put me off, but I haven’t checked the price of that yet….

I’d already discounted the Surly straggler as it’s only got basic dropouts, so the Tripster and Sutra end up in that pile too

Got a Cross Check and a Tripster. Prefer the drop outs on the Cross Check, much more versatile.

Both not the best under load but the Trispter is better off-road and fun to ride.

How do they both compare to the Peregrine, birdage?

Toe overlap and hamfisted mechanics aside.

Fairlight Faran?

I’m getting more and more inclined to opt for a Fairlight Strael quite soon as a winter bike, so have been spending quite a bit of time perusing their website!

I really enjoyed taking the Peregrine on long trips with full panniers. Bit heavy, annoyingly flaky paint but rode really nice. Good off-road too but didn’t enjoy it in the mud.

Find the Surly a bit springy under load but it has been through so many incarnations singlespeed, commuter, winter race bike, mud plugger and is so damn useful that it doesn’t make sense to sell it. Does everything pretty well.

Tripster is very different. It’s a great bridleway, off/on-road bike and pretty. Nice tourer as well assuming it’s loaded right. Obviously it has a lot of competition now and it’s definitely not a road bike.

Blimey! Perhaps I should give my Peregrine a few taps on the tubes later (although he felt perfectly happy out in the lanes over the weekend).

(Waves at all the other Peregrines on the forum).

I’ve got a 2015 Vaya, and it’s not enormously different to ride [than the Peregrine], the Vaya is a bit stiffer overall, but you’d kinda expect that given the bigger tubes and more direct fork.

If you are thinking Vaya, check the rear dropouts for the rear rack, I’ve got a half remembered idea about what racks you can / can’t use.

The Wolverine does look tempting, but options on the list could include the Rawland Ulv, or a Pelago Stavanger (if you can’t get them as a frameset (or at all)).

I wonder if the Marrakesh might perhaps not be a little too stiff unless it’s loaded?

Cheers birdage, interesting! Hopefully I won;t be in the market for a while, but you never know!

Just looking at the Marakech, and the requirement for some sort of tensioning from dropout or EBB, good handling loaded or unloaded, why not a Swift?

I really, really like the look of that Fairlight. I’ve just been reading about them on Road CC, it’s interesting that they fabricate within Europe and speaking as tall person I love the fact they do a ‘tall’ and ‘regular’ sizing. Finally!!! 🙂

http://road.cc/content/tech-news/210759-new-british-brand-fairlight-cycles-launches-two-steel-disc-equipped-road

Have you looked at Bombtrack?

Arise or Beyond might work.

I’d struggle to get past the Soma Wolverine myself. 🙂

The Radavist is a great source of drool-induicng pictures of this sort of bike incidentally.

Thanks for the input everyone. BD – the Bombtrack Arise looks superb and styled like a simplification of a lugged frame 🙂

The Fairlight Faran looks like a lovely package as well but I’d need to run a tensioner. Boo.

There are so many nice bikes out there these days! 🙂

A bit leftfield perhaps

Peregrine owner here too – so adaptable, solid ..