Build My Own or Add Braze ons

[anronmor]

Hi All,
I'm trying to find a mountain bike big + tough enough for me to tour south america on.
I'm 2m tall, weight 100 kgs and will be self sustaining camping with 30 kgs of gear. Tall order for any bike.
I've got two questions for you guys:

I've found a suitable bike:
http://www.surlybikes.com/karatemonkey.html

Only it's not got the braze ons on the seat stays to mount a pannier from.
There are way sof mounting the panniers without the braze ons but I'm not sure they're up to the job of carrying all my panniers and tent:

http://rollingresistance.wordpress.com/2007/08/30/outfitting-a-surly-karate-monkey-with-a-nice-rack/

I'm wondering if it will be possible for me to add braze on's myself after I buy the frame as its a steel frame?

Lastly I'm half tempted to start building frames myself. I can stick weld, have a decent garage setup and woudn't mind buying a tig/gas setup, only I reckon my initial attempts at bike making might fall apart in the wilderness. Has anyone tried to build something similar?
I wonder how much experience you'd need before you build something you'd bet on in the wilds of south america?

[mostlybent]

I sent my front forks to get two V-brake lugs added for my electric bike project and it cost me $60, including the new brake bits. Everthing was perfect.

If I had the shop I would have tried to do it myself because i have brazing & welding experience also.
But not until i tried brazing on a scrap bike frame first.
However the alignment, metal fatigue plus other issues that may appear, it is wiser to have an experienced builder do the work for you.

[Six jours]

I've been semi-intending to buy a surly Steamroller and add a few braze-ons myself (top tube cable guides, downtube bottle cage mounts, etc.) so obviously think it's a fine plan. Adding braze-ons is also a very simple thing to do and requires no more than a Bernz-O-Matic type torch, a coil of silver brazing wire, and flux. Done properly, the tube strength will not be affected at all.

[Peterpan1]

"Adding braze-ons is also a very simple thing to do and requires no more than a Bernz-O-Matic type torch, a coil of silver brazing wire, and flux. Done properly, the tube strength will not be affected at all. "

I'm sure that is 99% true. The problem when working with propane torches is that it takes a lot longer to get the tubes to heat, and it seemed pretty much impossible, even with MAPP gas to get the solder to flow unless the BOs were glowing red hot. What I noticed is that with propane it was pretty ugly, with Mapp gas it needed a lot of heat but the solder would flow and seemed to do a good job. By extrapolation I am hoping the new oxy propane rig I just got will allow me to work even cooler. It's an odd business but the hotter the flame, the cooler the result. Anyway, since the tubes are probably anealed to start with it probably doesn't do anything to them to go over critical temperature. Any bike that has a fair amount of welding on it like a Surly, should be fine for red heat.

[anronmor]

cheers for the advice guys
Looks like I be breaking out the gas torch and doing some experiments on old frames I've got knocking about

[chrisx]

surley makes a bike called "long hall trucker" no welding needed.

[Michel Gagnon]

Why not go for the LHT?
But if you insist on the KarateMonkey, you don't need to add any braze ons. There are eyelets near the dropouts, where they are really needed. The top ones are only to keep the rack horizontal and P-clamps will do the same. That's the way it was done until about 15-20 years ago.