trek XO 1 cyclocross bike for pan am tour
 

I was thinking about buying a trek XO 1 cyclocross bike for my tour to the tip of south america. Is this a good choice? What would be a better choice(considering I will be spending about 800).

Thanks for your help

The CX style of bike is designed to be raced unladen. Some have sufficient braze-ons to add a rack and handle OK with a hostelling load. They make very good general purpose bikes.

For an expedition bike, you should get a bike designed as an expedition bike. This would have more stable geometry, longer chanstays to give heel clearance and put the weight inside the wheelbase. It would also have touring forks with rack mounting, 3 water bottle mountings, 2 threads at the rear dropouts, lower touring ratio gears, and gear changers with a friction backup mode. Touring wheels are much heavier duty than CX racing wheels, and have a min of 36 spokes and thicker wear-resistant rims.

Bruce Gorden makes about the best value one around, the BLT. I would recomend the version using 26" MTB wheels rather than 700c for your journey. His luggage racks are also excellent.


Touring bikes take a beating and you need a good reliable mount.

i probably should have mentioned that I intend to pull a bob trailer, and not use panniers. The only weight on the bike will be mine.

Thanks for pointing out the BLT, but it's more than twice what I am able to spend.

For pulling a trailer, the CX/tourer makes sense.

How are you going to attatch the trailer to the lightweight Al frame?

I would still recomend 36 spoke touring wheels, much more maintainable than Rolfs, and fit MTB gearing, min 25" gear.
Does this model have a steel or Al fork ?

the fork is aluminum I believe. I was just going to hook the trailer on to the rear wheel normally.