Syscrush

Hey all.

For about a year now, I've been rockin' this bike as my commuter, grocery getter, and runabout:


Will update soon with more notes.

Gresp15C

Looks like a sweet ride. I'm a fan of upright bars. What type are they?

bikemig 

Sweet; I have a 1x1 frame I've been meaning to build up for a while. Maybe this will get me motivated,

Gresp15C

Just a quick question, since I've never bought a frame before: If you buy a frame like that, does it come from the factory ready-to-build, i.e., with the BB and top tubes squared off, etc.?

Syscrush

Hey all, thanks for the interest. Here's some more info about the bike.

First and most importantly, the bike is named Pinky Tuscadero - Pinky for short.


The bars are Soma Clarence bars, and I'm happy with them. They look pretty good and are a nice and comfy, relaxed bar.

It has an Alfine 8 hub. Rims are Velocity Blunt 26" drilled 32h and laced 3x. Rubber is Schwalbe tubes and 26x2.0 Kojak slicks. The bike was basically spec'd around this wheel/tire combo. I'm very pleased with the comfort, reliability, and the looks.

I'm about 10 years late to the 26er party, so by the time I was shopping for a frame it was very difficult to find what I wanted. A Bianchi PUSS would have been perfect, but I had no luck getting my mitts on one. The Surly 1x1 ended up being my choice because of the rear-facing horizontal dropouts, disc mounts, sloping top tube (to ease getting off & on with a baby seat on the back), and Pepto Pink color. But when I went to order it, I found out that they no longer offered them in pink - black only.

So I bought a black one and had it stripped & re-coated pink. I think that the frame looks a bit rough, and I hate the looks of a suspension-corrected fork, but the bike does have an "if you can dish it out, I can take it" kind of vibe and that grows on me a bit more every time I ride it.

It's set up with trigger shifter and Shimano hydro disc brakes. I started out ambivalent about disc brakes on a bike, but having ridden the hydro setup for about a year now, I have become a fan. I still have a hard time believing stuff about shorter stopping distances, but I do think it has more/better bite with less lever effort. In short, it feels more like the brakes on my motorcycle which I have come to really appreciate. Also, I like the look of an unmachined rim like the Blunt. Like my fixie and my road bike, I have it set up with the front brake actuated by my right hand.

I forget the exact gearing, but it's low, as you can see from the shot of the driveline. I went about as low as I could without exceeding the recommendation from Shimano. The gear range is good - it's pretty wide with modest steps between gears - I never find myself wishing for another gear on this bike - generally if the current gear is just a bit too hard to sustain, I go down one and enjoy the scenery. There's no pressure to perform when I'm out with Pinky!

The A8 hub is serving me well. It's smooth and easy to use - but it is necessary to back off a bit when shifting - especially shifting up. I really like IGH bikes, but I keep hearing claims about how one specific hub or another can be shifted under full power, and that doesn't match my relatively limited experience. The plastic trigger shifter is decent and holding up OK (better than the twist-grip shifter that came with the Sturmey Archer 5-speed on my road bike).


The most recent and significant mod to this bike was its main raison d'etre, although it's not shown in these pics. I recently added a Blackburn rack & Co-Pilot baby seat for my son to ride in. My wife and I are hoping/intending to atone for last year's pathetic mileage by getting out as much as possible for weekend rides with the little guy. We've been going out as weather permits, which has been very little so far. The good news is that he seems to like being in the seat, so I'm hopeful that we can get into a habit of 50k rides - I don't think I'd want to do much more than that on this bike. At some point, the more upright ergos and cushier saddle change from comfort assets to liabilities. The one case where I'm keen to do a longer ride is taking part in the Ride for Heart on this bike with my little guy riding along - I like the 50k course, and riding to and from the event adds just under 20k. I am really hoping to be able to get into shape for that ride, but we'll see.

Syscrush

I think that Dan (the builder) is the one to answer this. I think that he said that in his experience it varies by manufacturer. Surly is one of the good ones, but he still hits them with the facer just to be sure.

Dan Burkhart 

I always face BB shells and head tubes before assembly, particularly when building with external BBs, or multi piece cup and cone.
I've built quite a few Surly frames, and they are generally pretty good, but this one was a bit out of square, so you can't just assume a particular manufacturer's frame never needs to be prepped.

Syscrush

Here's my little guy in the Copilot seat that the bike's been fitted with.

So far it's really just been short little rides to and from daycare, one weekend outing of 10 km. He's started to act like he's comfortable with the helmet on, and he's chatty and happy riding along in the back seat. I'm hoping that he'll be able to enjoy longer rides.

Darth Lefty 

Nice! We have a similar seat but my kiddo just sacks out.

Syscrush

When we went for a longer, but ill-timed ride, he passed out and it caused me a lot of stress. The only thing keeping his torso up at that point is the harness, and his head is bobbing up and down on his neck. He has excellent neck strength and head control (has had since he was about a month old and he's a year now), but when he was asleep and his head was banging against my lower back, it was hard to not worry about the harness, helmet straps, or his bulky cold-weather clothing bunching up under his chin and obstructing his airway or bloodflow.

The plan going forward is to only take him for a longer ride immediately after he wakes up from a nap, but if those with experience have any other advice I'm happy to hear it.

fietsbob

I need Panniers on my bike to put the groceries Into.

Although Bike trailer will have room for toys, the kid, pillows and the groceries to feed the family.

DiegoFrogs

I have no experience with transporting kids on a bike (knocks repeatedly on wood!), but I see a lot of it here in this region. I was just talking about this today with a colleague whose baby at something like 1-1/2 years just started riding in a bike seat, and he reports that she absolutely loves it.

I've often seen kids almost falling out of the seats because they've been lulled to sleep by the hum of the cobblestones, but I've grown to be less worried for their sake. Perhaps a mirror on the handlebar end would help Dad keep casual contact with the passenger?

Darth Lefty 

We started with a trailer and had the same trouble with his head lolling while napping. Switched to a Thule front seat that didn't work out (see my screed in the rec & family subforum), now also have a Copilot... the curvy, marginally fancier model. It reclines a little. He's nearly two now, which also helps. But he's fallen asleep with his helmet sticking me in the small of the back once or twice.

Chariot makes some headrests that attach to the shoulder straps, intended for the trailer but they might be adaptible. In hindsight, we should have tried it.
https://www.thule.com/en-us/us/produc...ter-_-20101001

If we have another kid, I have lessons-learned to implement!

Syscrush

Thanks for that pointer, Lefty.

I think that what I'd really like is something like the HANS device that's used in motorsport:

Dan Burkhart 

Nice. Did you get the Blackburn rack that mates with the seat? Would be interested to see how it mounted up.

Darth Lefty 

The rack comes with the seat. I'll take a photo of mine when I get home. There's a sort of latch in the front and back, molded into the plastic. The back has a rubber piece that locks it in. The front also has a strap that goes loosely around the seat post just in case.

Syscrush

I think he wants to see how it fits to the frame and clears the disc brake caliper and the Alfine hardware.

Dan, I'll post something today or tomorrow. Blackburn makes a disc-specific rack, but the shop doing the install found that the standard one fit fine.

Dan Burkhart 

I am aware of that. I used to sell them in my shop. They were, and are very popular. I still have one in anticipation of more grandkids coming along.

Dan Burkhart 

That's it exactly. Interested to see it.

noglider 

Congratulations on your son!

For what it's worth, I towed my kids, sometimes two at a time, in a trailer. We had fun.

Darth Lefty 

OK, never mind then.

There's a version that comes with the disk rack. That's not the one I have but they are out there, I spotted one at the local Performance. I think it had the fancier version of the seat, though.

Syscrush

Thanks!

I'm getting a trailer for use with Fredo, my faster bike. Pinky here is used for commuting and as a runabout, which includes morning drop off at daycare. I opted for the seat in large part because I'm not into the idea of dropping him off using a trailer and then riding to work with an unloaded trailer in the morning, trying to find parking for it, and then riding it unloaded back to daycare at the end of the day.

Today we did a 25km round trip. I'm sorry to say that that's the longest ride I've done on this bike so far, but I'm glad to say that with some casual/inconspicuous cycling gear that looks like streetwear, I was more comfortable doing that 25 than I am doing 10 in jeans or dress pants.

I'm starting to think that hitting my stretch goal of 70 km round trip with Beau in the back might be doable.

Syscrush

Dan, here are some pics of the rear rack mount and clearance around the disc & caliper. NOTE that this is the standard Blackburn rack, not the (slightly more expensive) one sold for disc-specific applications. Looks like plenty of clearance to me.


The prescribed way of fitting a Surly front rack to the 1x1 fork is to use adapters that they sell. They look big and ugly enough that I'm tempted to drill the fork and do some rivnuts - but the thought of unsightly adapters is a bit less stressful than the thought of my fork snapping into pieces, so I don't see myself putting the fork in the drillpress.

Syscrush

On a lark, I've started using Runtastic to measure & track my rides on this bike - it has no computer of its own. I suspected that I was maxing out in the low 40kph range coming down Broadview and the GPS record confirms that: top speed of 41.2 kph. I very much doubt I'll ever do 50 on this bike.

PatrickGSR94

I wonder how the strength (and weight rating) of that type of rack mount, at the very end of the dropout, compares to something like this where the rack mount is more like a boss on the side of the seat stay tube.