Originally Posted by
janine1
To me the Mareekesh doesn't look like a bike I'd hit the trails with,it's touted as an exploration,adventure bike and to me would work well on gravel but it has a road bike geometry. The Trek 920 has more of a mountain bike geometry and 29 inch wheels. The trails I would be riding such as Cocino (sp) would be more mountain bike than gravel.
To me the 920 isn't expensive. I wouldn't expect to get a touring bike that I could put tons of miles on to get any cheaper. My first choice was a Rivendell Atlantis that's Alittle more pricey. I would expect not to get great wheels on a bike in the 2k range. My carbon bike was 2k in 2008 and its stock wheels are nothing special.
Ive put 10k miles/yr on it since 2008 still going good and never had a spoke come out yet! Only 2 flats! If I needed a new wheel touring I would deal with it. If your gonna play the what if game the chain could break, derailleur break, I could have a heart attack etc,wreck by a car.
i don't know about some comments but not really looking to argue just info about the 920. Bike shops don't carry very small sizes to I have to order sight unseen. I may get that Trek Precision fit to get some idea but it prolly is too much reach for me ( the 920). The top tube effective is 21 inches and I need 19. I hate being stretched just to put the brakes on.
i love drop bars and ride gravel on my 19 tires that doesn't bother me but being a small female most unisex bikes don't fit me so not a lot of options. The safari bike is just ugly to me and I want drop bars.
Sorry to burst your bubble but the marrakesh is the expedition bike in this category, not the 920. It has more MTBish geometry than the 920, which is almost a pure road bike geometry wise. The marrakesh has slacker angles , less bb drop and takes 2" tires. And it's a 29er as well, which is nice. So you're flat out wrong there.
Road wheels and touring wheels are two completely different beasts. Most touring bikes come with good wheels for the intended purpose, namely enough spokes and a rugged rim. They aren't excellent but are still very good usually. And to get an excellent touring wheelset you rarely need to go over $500. With road wheels you're looking for different attributes such as lightweight etc. So a 'nothing special' road wheelset is just heavy usually. But the 920 wheelset is just wrong for the intended purpose.
If we indeed play the what if game, wheel failures are difficult on tour. They are the thing I dread the most on tour. Wheels are no hard to fix per se, but they are difficult to fix well on tour. And if a spoke does go, it implicates that the whole wheel has been compromized and other spokes will follow. Spoke swaps usually require pretty specialized tools as well. If you try to limp to an lbs (on an expedition tour no less...............) you'll compromize the wheel even further. A broken chain however takes 5 mins and quick link to fix. A bike will work without a derailleur or with a botch chain tensioner fix. But that is a reason why I'd prefer rohloff in an expeditioner.
I mean yrah, if the wheels were built by a master builder with really good components (still wouldn't break the bank as this is touring we're talking about) it might be ok with 28 spokes. But the 920 wheels aren't. They're factory, not to mention bontrager.
If the 920 was a frameset it would be really attractive. But in its current form at least the rear wheel will need to go, preferably both. Maybe next year's model will be better.