My partner and I are looking at getting into cycling. Our plan is to commute to work which is a 15km round trip but then do some occasional rides for fun on the weekend. Our area is quite flat but with a few steep hills in the Barossa Valley. We are lucky to have well kept rail trails connecting the towns so that is what we will use mostly.

I really love steel frames and have found the Bombtrack Audax which looks like a neat bike. In South Australia there seems to be very little available in terms of relaxed steel bikes like this.

We took them for a test ride last week but felt that we were too stretched out. I'm 176cm with an inseam of 79cm and my partner is 159cm with an inseam of 73cm. I rode on the M 53cm and my partner rode the S 51cm. The bike seems to have quite a long top tube coupled with long stems of 120mm and 100mm respectively. I'm unsure if we need to go a size down each or if we can just change the stem lengths by a good 20-40mm. Is it a bad thing to swap stems to adjust the fit like this?

Would a bike like this suit what we want to do and does anyone have experience with Bombtrack?

This is (mostly) a USA forum and that is (mostly, based on Google) a German fixie brand... but Barossa Valley is in Australia? either way I doubt you're going to find much direct experience here. However it does appear to hit all the usual marks for a fast commuter.

No worries. Are these bikes Hipster bikes? Or is that something different?

Full 105 on that bike, not bad at all. Nothing wrong with changing the stem to make the bike fit as I think quite a few of us here have done that at some time. I always feel like 120mm is too long on the stem, and that the frame doesn't really fit you if you are that long into a stem. All of my bikes have 90-100m stems but that is because that is what works for me, my frame size and my body type.

Looks like a good bike to me. If 100mm were the correct stem length for every situation, they wouldn't be made in any other length.

Probably a name applied in a factory in China(ROC ) for a different Importer .

Bike = a frame and components picks.. good/ less is as much about who assembled and set up the bike in the shop
and service after the sale as it is the Frame and Parts pick made in writing up the contract with the factory.

Looks like a nice bike. Go back to the bike shop and ask them to put a 90mm stem on that medium and take it out for another test ride. If you are new to riding bikes (particularly road bikes) you will feel stretched out too much with that 120mm stem. As your fitness and flexibility improve, you can get a longer stem.

Maybe so, I can't find anything that says either way. But they do have someone doing some great visual design, and they are specifying nice tubes and paint. This particular model is 4130, not butted, but most of them are made of name brand tubing. And did you see the lime metallic color on their mixte? oooh

The text says "built from the same proven heat treated crmo tubes as the Arise", and the Arise is "4130 tubing and the front triangle is butted and heat-treated for a better strength to weight ratio", so perhaps it is double-butted and they skipped mentioning it twice? Worth emailing the company to know for sure.

Their US distributor lists them as being built in Taiwan.

Yet it is listed as a sub 22lb bike.

Yes it was very light, surprised me being steel, and that was with the mudguards on.

Every shop I've ever worked in had a bunch of long stems laying around, because manufacturers insist on spec'ing them, even though a large percentage of customers want/need/prefer a shorter one. So they get swapped out all the time.

Never heard of the brand, but it has all the right ingredients. My only question is, if you're just getting into cycling, how do you already know you love steel frames?

You have some great cycling there. Gurgle maps puts you just NE of Adelaide. I watch the Tour Down Under every January, not so much for the racing but for the scenery. Marvellous countryside there.

Audax bikes in general make great commuters. One of mine is the Ribble Winter/Audax. Aluminum, but still an audax bike. And true to its name, it loves long rides as well.

There's nothing in the geo specs about the fork or "trail". My comments here are based on audax bikes in general.

I'd drop down a size to keep the stem in the 100 to 120 range. Audax bikes tend to have "low" trail. (See Trail and Its Effects at Spectrum Cycles.) A short stem is likely to exacerbate its effects on handling and make the bike feel all wonky.

Keep in mind too that the short reach bars have an effect here as well. It's not just a matter of manufacturers preferring the look of long stems as suggested by one poster above. Overall reach is the sum of effective top tube length, stem length AND handlebar reach. Short reach bars with a short stem is doubly an issue.

I like the way my low trail audax bike feels in commuting, especially on rough roads and the cobbles. That it wants to keep tracking straight ahead is a real boon on bumpy roads in traffic. But it took some getting used to--especially the cornering--since my other two bikes are high trail and neutral respectively.

For the record, I use a 100mm stem with 85mm reach bars. This is about the same as 70mm reach bars with a 120mm stem.

While there's plenty of room for personal preference, the general idea here is to place your hands between the axle and the contact patch--directly above the space we measure as "trail". You have a few cm to play with so it's not a precision thing, but provided reach is in the rider's comfortable range, most road bike riders prefer that's where their hands end up. Since the trail is in a fixed place--between the axle and the contact patch--once you have your hands above that, the only other thing you can change is top tube length.

This is why it's preferred to get the right top tube length to start with, rather than mess around with stems. Yeah a shorter stem may fix things relative to your shoulders or keep you from overstretching your back, but at the same time it may pull your hands too far back behind the axle. This throws off handling and ride feel.

I love the look of steel and by what I have read it is also very durable and comfortable.

The very aggressive aluminium and carbon fibre bikes don't seem to do much for me for some reason. Although I have no doubt they are really great bikes to ride.

Yeah the Tour Down Under was fun to watch this year, the finish line was a few hundred metres from our house. Some of the roads they ride on will take us some time to build the courage to try like Menglers Hill, very steep and curly.

I'm hoping to try the smaller frame on Saturday and see how that goes. They will also change the stem for us to see how that goes too.

It's a nice build. Sounds about right for a DB frame 6 or 7 lb, racy groupset <7 lb, good conventional wheels <4 lb, plus tires and cockpit. And no pedals included! Surly Pacer, a substantially similar bike here in the States, is 23 lb.

This is at a shop near you; it's a cheaper bike, but I like that it has more conventional wheels; a preference of mine for commuting duty.
https://www.reidcycles.com.au/reid-4130-shimano.html

That's surprising, it's less than a third of the price. I will have to go in and have a look at them. Surely they must cut corners in comparison?

Well, it's their own house brand. I'm sure the frame is straight gauge tubing, made in China as opposed to Taiwan. It has a cheaper crank (but it still has 105 bearings), and budget wheels. If the price is really that much less and you still like it, you could use the extra money to buy another set of "good" wheels for the fun rides.

It's an interesting option. The Bombtrack is $2500 AUD (~$1900 USD) and the Reid only $800 (~$600 USD). I can think of a lot of ways to spend the extra money

Clearly one is targeting the style-minded customer and the other is targeting the budget-minded customer.

I took another glance; the other places where cost savings were made is that the Reid has a steel fork instead of carbon, and it has the previous generation 10-speed 105 instead of the newer 11 speed.

Just got an email back from Bombtrack which confirms it is double butted and also heat treated.

Something which I didn't mention is that the polished rear stays on the S bike have some hairline rust forming under the clear coat. Bombtrack have agreed to pay for the frame to be powder coated so we are going to get both bikes done (if we buy them). Not sure what colour to go for, it looks sharp in white already, otherwise a satin grey perhaps.