Touring - My new Thorn Raven Nomad S+S

Since I am working at Thorn Cycles at the moment, I naturally got myself a new tourer. This thing is an Expedition-quality Rohloff and S+S equipped superbike! Will be good for my eventual return journey! Here's some pics of my bike in Thorn's white room. Sorry about the blurriness in some of the pics, I didn't know how to use their fancy camera properly...

Enjoy!

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A bit blurry...

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I am still using my well worn in old Brooks B66...

Whoa, that bike is totally maxed out! (in a good way!) :beer:

Really cool :) You've got my total envy (In a good way) Now I have to figure out what I need to do to get my bike up to the standard... BTW, what's your oppinion on the rohloff? have you taken it for a spin yet?

Very nice! When will you be resuming your journey?

Noice! It's a very similar setup to my dream bike. I'll give you 20 bones for it. ;)

Can't wait to see pics of this beast somewhere in the world.

Well, I'll be resuming my actual r-t-w journey sometime mid next year. I keep telling people it's an eventual round the world trip in the fact that I probably won't be home until it's finished. There will probably be interspersed periods of working (like now) during the journey.

My trip is VERY low budget, which is strange considering the bike I now have!!

Hey Gonz, yeah the Rohloff is awesome, I went for a jaunt to Glastonbury on the weekend, fully loaded up, and camped on top of Glastonbury Tor! I carried that 40+ kg bike to the top too! :) The rohloff was perfect, and I used the stationary gear change possibility to my advantage a few times also!

Holy Cow! That baby is seriously industrial! No doubt about it, that's a bike for a world tour. Good looking beast, too! Does it have a name yet?

Not yet, that's a big step, the naming process. It'll come to me in good time I'm sure...

Haha, listen to me! You would think it was a kid or something!

Wow, beefy. That is a serious looking piece of equipment.

So you prefer the flat bars with barends over drops? Are you going to add fenders?

Beautiful

Great bike of course. The one thing that burns me about them is that the racks are so out of level on many/all of the pictures I have seen. Is it just they haven't been adjusted? Makes the bike look as though baggage is and afterthought.

Thorn bikes are designed to be used with their own racks (which in an unbiased opinion, are the strongest out there). They work with other racks, eg tubus, but sometimes dont match up level. To be fair in my photos, I could mount it straighter, I just haven't got around to it.

The bikes also use oversized brazeons (6mm) which dont fit most racks, but are quite a lot stronger than the usual 5mm. I remedied this with the tubus rack by using a 5mm with a nut on the end. simple! :)

that extra mm of space may end up weakening the connection a little

Thorn bikes are designed to be used with their own racks (which in an unbiased opinion, are the strongest out there). They work with other racks, eg tubus, but sometimes dont match up level. To be fair in my photos, I could mount it straighter, I just haven't got around to it.

The bikes also use oversized brazeons (6mm) which dont fit most racks, but are quite a lot stronger than the usual 5mm. I remedied this with the tubus rack by using a 5mm with a nut on the end. simple! :)

I've only seen the Thorn rear rack in pictures and I own a Tubus Cargo. Is the Thorn rack triangulated when you look at it from behind to control side to side movement like the Cargo is? It doesn't look like it is - how would you compare it to the Tubus Cargo?

I have a tubus logo that I could put on it, but in my opinion the Thorn rack feels more solid. Robin tells me that Thorn have never had someone report one of their racks failing! Dunno about the side to side sway, bit if the solidness is anything to go by, I don't think it would be a prob.

With the 5mm bolts, the way I figure it is if the bolt shears off or breaks, I just have to replace the bolt and nut (don't have to drill out the bit stuck in the baraze on thread. How heavy is it to carry an extra handful of 5mm bolts and nuts? (I do anyway).

Drool! That is a fine lookin' piece of work. :beer: I hope we don't read about you in the paper getting busted for having 'relations' with it. ;)

cool bike mate!!!...it deserve some serious ride....which I m sure we will ..............

Hey Frankie! Any updates?

not really....being very busy on my own work....need to finish them asap, then I can really start planning...what about you? any news about your plan?.....but as you said we got ages to go through every detail of the plan....:)