Originally Posted by
The Golden Boy
I'd guess they're about a wash.
The T700 was Bridgestone's top of the line touring bike, I'm not sure exactly where the Cresta was between the Continental, International and the Cresta, they all look really nice.
Yeah, I'd say about a wash too. They're both good high end bikes and you could hardly go wrong either way. The Nishiki is apparently sold so it's kind of moot.
The "triple butted tubing" thing seems to have been more of a mid 80s marketing thing than actually a real strength/weight innovation. Fuji made some quad butted tubing.
If'n I were to look for things that make a good touring bike...
Front and rear eyelets on the dropouts/fork ends. I'm not sold on double braze ons being "better."
Bottle braze ons- two is good, three is better.
Cantilever brakes- prior to 1983 or so, most touring bikes had sidepull brakes- and then cantilevers became more common.
I would imagine a mid fork eyelet would be nice for adding lowrider racks in the front.
RE: Triple butted - Yeah it was just marketing. If double butted is good, triple butted is better, right? I guess it might save 4 or 5 grams over a mere double butted frame...
That's right. Cantilever brakes were pretty rare before 83. It's shocking to today's disk brake using trekking enthusiast, but touring bikes with sidepulls were commonplace. Even so, I recall centerpulls were a bit more common for high end tourers.
You can always use P clips to mount lowriders. As you might imagine, all of them were installed this way originally, until the idea had caught on.