chefisaac

I was curious what you all think makes a great touring bike. I am not talking about bike fit, but rather other things to look for.

I will be hopefully purchasing a touring bike this year. I am brand loyal to Giant however it doesnt look like they have a touring bike. I thought about Long Haul Truckers but do not know much about them.

Any advice would be great.

goalieMN

Stable at high-speed under load.

Stable at low-speed under load.

Stable unloaded.

Not flexy or noodly feeling frame.

Tough wheelset.

Good brakes.

Geared low enough that you can climb a wall and still have a bail-out gear "just in case."

chefisaac

can i ask what touring bike you have?

azesty

I would add:

Braze ons for bolting on racks, both front and rear.
Parts that can be serviced in whatever parts of the world you are likely to visit.
Comfortable seat, though you can always take off the seat it comes with, and replace it with a brooks

B. Carfree

In no particular order:

- Adequately long chain stays to carry the bags you want without heel-strike.
- Able to accept the wheel/tire/fender combinations you want to roll on.
- Durable components. It's helpful if you can easily fix/jerry-rig on the road.

goalieMN

I have a Long Haul Trucker.

SparkyGA

Qualities of a great touring bike: Steel.

azesty

Braze ons for bolting on bottle cages.

SparkyGA

Bikes with 3 sets of braze ons.... having only 1 or 2 drives me nuts (re: my bikes)

MichaelW

Everything mentioned so far is good.

Features for easy maintenance with minimal toolage eg threadless (Chris King) headset, Phil Woods hub.
Features for graceful degradation. Everything breaks down eventually but a good touring bike can limp home:
Downtube shifter bosses so you can revert to DT friction levers if STI breaks.
Horizontal or sliding vertical dropouts so you can revert to singlespeed.

Brazeons
Bottle eyelets: Under the downtube for an extra water bottle or fuel.
Cable routing: to integrate with bags, avoid sharp kinks, cable rub and permit comfortable shouldering of the bike for portage.
Spoke storage on chainstay
Dynamo cable routing
Frame Pump peg on seatstay to free up seat-tube for waterbottle.

LHT is a decent tourer built to a budget. For the ultimate tourer see: Thorn, Beckman, ToutTerrain

It is easy to make a fully features tourer that is heavy; making a lightweight one is a real art. My Bob Jackson is lighter than a hybrid and rides well unladen.

chefisaac

michael: Thanks for the info. I looked at Beckman... nice bikes. I emailed him some questions.

Do you have a picture of your Bob Jackson bike?

chefisaac

Thank you all for the info.

Another question: How do you know if you should go with straight bars or drop bars? I know it might/is a personal preference and all but just wanted to hear your thoughts.

Thulsadoom

If you want brifters or bar-end shifters you'd probably want drop bars. If you want trigger shifters you'd probably want flat bars (with bar ends).

Roustabout

Bar-end shifters and stability.

iforgotmename

I have drops and bar ends on my LHT. The nice thing about drops is that they also have a straight portion .

Are you close to Neil's size? He has(had) an LHT perfect test ride opportunity if he still has it.

bobdell

Albatross bars allow bar ends while giving a northroad bar feel.

RJM

Well, for road touring I love my Rivendell Sam Hillborne but I think their Atlantis frameset has features that make it a better touring bike.

My Sam has:

Rack mounts front and rear.
Steel frame and fork
Comfortable in an all day kind of way.
Drop bars with friction bar end shifters
Long chainstays for stability and ability to hold a rear load.
Did I mention stability?
Fender mounts
Quill stem for ease of height adjustments
V brakes
36 hole Phil hub/velocity dyad wheels
Ability to use a wide tire (40 with fenders)
Triple gearing up front and a long cage rear derailer in rear.
Not sluggish when pedaling. My old Jamis Aurora felt sluggish in comparison (along with other issues)
No toe overlap with the front wheel

The Atlantis adds an extra water bottle mount and uses 26" wheels instead of the 650b my Sam does. Makes it easier to find tires if need be.

staehpj1

Tough to say without knowing more about how you tour and what you like. The best bike for one individual can vary pretty widely compared to another.

Many of the "great" touring bikes are too truck-like for my tastes even when I packed fairly heavy. As I packed lighter and lighter I liked sportier and sportier qualities in my bike.

Since my payload has shrunk to an ultralight load, I now have grown to like a light, very stiff, very simple bike with racy geometry. For me that means that I have been very happy with an old (1990) Cannondale race bike down tube shifters and all. For my latest tour I enjoyed it much more than I would have my "touring bike".

I am not particularly advocating my approach, it certainly isn't for everyone, but I am advocating riding the bike that you enjoy if it supports your touring style adequately.

wahoonc

The bike that fits and you will ride...

I tour on a multitude of bikes ranging from my folding Raleigh Twenty to my converted Giant Iguana. As far as I am concerned any bike can be used if it suits YOUR purpose and YOU are happy with it.

Aaron

Niles H.

What is your price range?

If you are looking for the 'ultimate' (in the usual sense) touring bike with absolute top of the line frame and componentry, you'll pay through the nose for it.

But you can enjoy touring just fine on an old moutain bike -- and people do. Or on a wide variey of other bikes.

You can even enjoy it more.

The ultimate bike is the one you enjoy the most or make the most out of.

Attitudes and a sense of freedom can make a tour sing.

The bike is not the sole or even the primary determinant.

There was a thread called 'Why Does an Old Beater Feel So Much Freer?' on another bikeforums.net forum. Some of the responses are worth a look.

Learning enough of bike mechanics (enough to feel comfortable with the most common issues) is great for self-contained touring, especially in remote areas.

I agree that Phil Wood, Chris King, Rohloff, et al make very high quality components; but for many people the real advantages are slight or even literally non-existent, and simply not worth the extra money.

You can see people decked out in the most expensive gear, who are having a pretty mediocre time, and others in mid-range or lower or older gear who are having the time of their lives.

It also depends on how long you'll be out, how many miles you'll be going, what countries, roads, trails, roughness, smoothness, weight carried, etc.

One of the most important things is how much you enjoy the ride quality.

There are rare bikes that feel like an extension of the human body, as if they are part of you, or an extension of yourself. If you find one of these, you'll be ahead of the game. Most people have never experienced this. Until you do, it remains description. But it can be something very real and very striking.

These bikes can make riding a real joy. With this quality, a bike, to me, qualifies as great.

-- coupled with good (or great) attitudes, good (or...) health, good (or...) exercise, and a full-on love of life, and of what you are doing in the moment.

MichaelW

My Bob Jackson is their std World Tour model with additional brazeon for a rear bottle dynamo (front facing, driveside chainstay).
I got the cable routing wrong and it is painful to shoulder for any length of time.
These days, a trekking style butterfly bar solves a lot of problems of compatibility between road shifters and MTB components.

LeeG

It's not so much things to look for as much as being clear about your load and intended use. If you,re 150lbs and don't expect to carry more than 20lbs a bike built to carry 250lb rider and 50lbs. of stuff may not be great.

A great touring bike is like any other great bike, does it work for the intended purpose? It's really not something you can tell from a catalog and if you can't tell it really doesn't matter.

fietsbob

Bruce Gordon's touring bikes are a hard rig to surpass,
because of his hand-made racks, that are included.
I am still using the BG racks I bought 27 years ago.

Tubus is a close second.. CoMotion offers some great bikes, in Oregon,
but they buy Tubus racks to have some to install.

I like my new Bike Friday Pocket Llama.. Travel-Touring bike,
It is made to come apart and fold into a suitcase,
so to bypass extra handling fees in airfare to go somewhere to ride,
other than a loop from your front door.

MassiveD

"But you can enjoy touring just fine on an old moutain bike -- and people do. Or on a wide variey of other bikes."

Absolutely right, in part because the demands on a touring bike are pretty low, look at what Heinz Stucke has been riding for the last million miles, or whatever. And also because there is no single type of touring, leaving room for all kinds of bikes to fill the role. However, if one is looking at a classic load carrying touring bike, you can't have that with an MTB. Bike geometry and specific characteristics of the bike mater. If bikes aren't designed for touring, they can certainly be used for that, but there are going to be some differences. These days, long distance hikers are probably more likely to wear running shoes than hiking boots. That doesn't make running shoes hiking boots, but people don't always follow the categories.

You can have a look at the sakkitt bikes, and the Bruce Gordon bikes (possibly in reverse order). Arvon makes some cool bikes. Probably the best pics on the internet are actually in this forum since his website is not the best.

https://www.sandsmachine.com/a_arv_001.htm

https://web.archive.org/web/200511010...ke-Development

Arvon's other weird obsession:

https://breakingchainstakinglanes.fil.../p6190999a.jpg

Some cool folders:

https://desperadocycles.com/Custom_Fr..._Bicycles.html

https://www.43bikes.com/herse-demountable.html

https://www.bicycletouringpro.com/pho...-review-31.jpg

https://www.rodbikes.com/catalog/6-pack/6-pack-main.html

fietsbob

Just Know Internationally 559 /26" tires and 406 20" tires are the most common to find.

622/700c 32 and wider much less so, particularly in '3rd world' countries ..