I bought a trek 1.5 last year and started biking, thinking I would really form into road biking. It turns out that I love to ride but I don't think a road bike is the perfect solution for me. I also have a Trek 7200 multitrack bike that is going to be made into a winter bike this year so I am looking to get a good solid commuter bike that I can also use to do some touring starting next year. What I am not sure about is weather a cyclocross bike set up for daily commuting and occasional touring be right or a dedicated touring bike set up for commuting would work better. I have been leaning towards Surly for my next bike, either a Cross Check or a LHT, though not fully decided. I do not have a long daily commute, a little over 4 miles each way. So I guess I am asking would a Cross Check make a better touring bike than a LHT would make a commuter? Or would one of these fit both niches a little better than the other?

As someone who purchased a CC bike back in March (Fuji Cross Comp) began to get interested in touring. Now, my CC bike is great for commuting and day rides, but since I want to start touring, I could have bought a touring bike for commuting and been set. So, I recommend you got for the LHT. Both bikes are amazing though and I have even heard of people doing short tours on Cross Checks.

LHT would have the advantage when it comes to panniers and hell clearance as well as provisions for a front rack whereas the CC would give you better BB to ground clearance. Both would make excellent commuting bikes for your commute, but the LHT would be the better choice if you are even considering loaded touring.

It kind of depends on what you prefer. My friend has a CC that he uses mainly for commute. He's done a little bit of touring. It's good enough for shorter tours, however, if done right, I'm sure you could bike across a state on a CC and have enough room for all your gear. The LHT would just be more convenient.

Personally, if given the choice, I think I would go with the CC. I like something faster and don't ever plan on going on week long tours.

Whichever one you pick, I don't think you can go wrong.

+1

Speaking personally, I'm way more likely to go on a grand tour than ever enter a cyclocross event, so I'd go LHT. I enjoy speed, don't get me wrong, but the difference between cruising on a flat section of road or trail at 16 mph on an LHT vs. 16.5 mph (numbers theoretical guesses) on a CC for the same effort seems negligible to me...

Stuff that would push me towards a LHT: needing to routinely haul more than 70lbs of cargo, needing 26" wheels, needing a front rack without swapping parts

Stuff that would push me towards a CC: needing to ride technical offroad stuff (not hardpack dirt, but doing things like regularly bunny hopping logs), needing 700C wheels, needing the option of an internal gear hub

If I'm remembering right, the Crosscheck's chainstay length is about 42cm, same as my regular mountain bike. For my size bike, that winds up letting me haul around 40-45lbs of cargo before the front wheel starts to lift and things get scary squirrelly. The ride position on my size Crosscheck (either of the two smallest) ends up with a pretty aggressive seat tube angle, and a relatively high bottom bracket. Depending on your POV, that will end up feeling "twitchy" or "responsive". Since most BF members are male, taller than 5'6" and do not have short stumpy little legs, they can often cram a lot more cargo onto a short chainstay bike than I can... and they ride a bigger frame so they don't have such aggressive angles.

They both seem to be really good bikes. I don't own either one due to some physical limitations that make diamond frames unwise. (arthritis bad. bikes good. arthritis stopping me from riding, REALLY BAD) I would not make cargo weight the deciding factor if you don't actually haul that much on a regular basis.

I won't be hualing much weight at all, if any, 90% of the time but with such a short commute it doesn't look like the Cross Check's advantages would be enough to offset the random times when I will need to carry more weight. I will be keeping my road bike for training rides or when I just want to go really fast for a while so it seems to me, based largely on the opinions here, that the LHT would be a better fit for what I am needing now. Now to find a Surly dealer so I can try one out, living in the middle of BFE, that won't be easy.

I bought the cross check about 6 weeks ago. I looked at both the LHT and the CC, and decided I was not gong to load it down with gear, so I bought the CC. Great bike, a little on the heavy side but still a well thought out bike.

That being said, if you want to tour, buy the LHT. It comes with a triple, and 36 wheels, much better for loaded touring. If you want to tour with a credit card, or overnight tour, buy the CC.

IMO; it's easier to turn the LHT nto just a commuter, than to turn the CC to a tourer.

70 lbs of cargo? Why would you carry that much?

There's this weird perception out there that the LHT is slow and sluggish. C'mon people, it's a bike, not a truck! It's all about how you build it and how you ride. Assuming the same fit and similar builds on both bikes, how would the LHT possibly be any slower?

You don't need to carry tons of weight to justify the LHT. It's better suited to hauling a load, period. The chainstays are longer and it can take a front rack, which is pretty much the crucial feature, IMO. Even lightly-loaded touring is more pleasant with the load distributed across the front and rear.

That said, think about what you want. If you're mostly going to be commuting and will probably only take an occasional weekend trip, the LHT might be overkill, especially if you do want some zippier handling (though, again, it's a bike - it's still fun to ride) and don't need clearance for giant tires. I don't know that I would get the LHT if I had a chance to do it again... but it did serve me well on some trips and for playing around on dirt paths. The nice thing about it is its versatility - I've turned it into a city bike, and it turns out to be excellent with that set up. On the other hand, if you plan on taking a serious bike trip at some point, you simply can't do better than the LHT.

I think the Cross-Check is actually a bit too popular for a lot of riders' own good. It gets recommended for a lot of purposes that would be better served by a different frame in Surly's line-up. For example, the LHT is probably better for someone who wants to do commuting and extended (anything longer than a weekend) touring. Whereas someone who wants a fun commuting bike that can be taken on weekend trips and will do well on all kinds of road surfaces, the Surly Pacer is probably a better choice than the Cross-Check.

EDIT: I have taken a week+ touring trip before, and I didn't carry anything near 70 lbs. This was before my LHT, and even ~40 lbs of gear made that 80's steel frame flop and twist like a cooked noodle. It takes less weight than you think to benefit from a stiffer, stouter touring frame.

I have one of each in 54cm and for any real load the LHT is much better. Which is not to say I haven't toted large awkward loads on the CC every single day this week, I just spent each time thinking 'boy this would be easier on the LHT'

I love them both, they are set up pretty differently so they don't really overlap in function for me.

For what it's worth, the Pacer frame doesn't have rack braze-ons in either the front or the back. I'd love to use one as a commuting bike if I could just more easily put a rack on the back.

I just put a rack on my Pacer. I used the fender braze-ons and an axiom seat-clamp with rack mounts. It works well and although I won't put a lot of weight on the rack, it's just right for commuting and also for long rides where I want to have some extras along. If I were going to tour though, I would have the LHT. I really am happy with the Pacer.

Any bike can carry you 4mi to work; not all bikes can take you on a loaded tour. I would definitely use the LHT over the CC given your usage but be sure to try out other touring bikes (the usual suspects from the touring forum).

I commute daily on my LHT and it is a very comfortable and smooth ride. With appropriate tires it can be very fast (unless you are climbing up a mountain where weight comes into play).

For some reason, I had forgotten about that. There are ways of getting around this (including, IIRC, a Tubus rack that will carry all the weight you want), but it is a limitation, for sure. A Pacer might call for use of a saddlebag, British-style.

I wrote to Surly last week with some unsolicited advice to add some rear rack braze-ons to the Pacer and their response was that if you add all of this to the Pacer then you end up with a Cross Check. So, I guess this isn't in their plans for the near future.

70lbs is a lot of stuff. It's going to be pretty unusual for loaded tourists to hit that weight. Some of us car-free types do hit that on grocery runs... but if we're routinely hitting much over 50 for groceries, odds are we have a trailer or an Xtracycle. You should expect panniers to hold roughly 1lb for every liter of grocery volume, which means hauling 70lbs of groceries in panniers is a real production. The logistics can get kinda interesting.

I would not have cargo capacity be the deciding factor unless you've got a rack on the Pilot and are routinely running into weight issues with it. And I'm saying that as someone who gets all her groceries by bike, doesn't own a car and *has* swapped bikes partly due to cargo issues. (the whole arthritis thing and the incredibly short legs thing were probably bigger factors tho)

I'd say get the LHT, though still try out the CC. Since you already have a road bike when you do want to go fast(er) the LHT would make a fine commuter.

I commute on the LHT myself. I originally bought it for the purpose of commuting and doing a tour I never got around to. It is definitely a comfortable ride. I guess I could change some things around if I wanted to go faster, I just enjoy the laid back feel of it.

Also, don't limit yourself when looking at bikes. Ride as many as you can and determine what factors would be important to you. When I looked at touring bikes I test rode the Cannondale T2, Trek 520, Jamis Aurora, and Surly Long Haul Trucker. For most factors I was looking at the LHT ranked pretty high though was only the top in one or two of the categories.

I don't think it's a "weird perception". Many LHT owners say the same thing. It's a fairly heavy relaxed geometry bike that doesn't lend itself to agressive riding nor aerodynamics. It's not a truck, agreed, but it's grandpa's Buick Electra 225, in that it's a land barge and handles like one.

Yes it's a solid loaded tourer, but frankly I find it dull and boring, and soft and unresponsive. That's from the owner of a Cross bike that did look at the LHT very closely.

My LHT is a great bike. Ride both ...if you can find them and then decide.

The longer the wheelbase and the softer the header angle, the slower a bike will steer. Rider centre of gravity has an effect too. Your description of the LHT sounds just the way it should handle based on the numbers.

So, I am in the same boat as the OP right now.. I am going to build up a commuter that I might one day do some touring with. I will be starting from the frame, so how much are the ride/handling characteristics described by everyone results from the build kits and components used? I just checked the surly site and the geometries of the two frames dont seem to be very different at all... In most comparisons one measurement might be 1 degree or 1 cm longer, but that would be the most. Do those minor size differences make a big change in the ride, or is it more of the build setup that surly provides with the stock bikes?

I had the same decision earlier this year. My commuter for the past few years was a Bianchi San Jose which was perfect for the commute but useless for everything else. I needed one bike to be a backup road bike for club rides, a rain bike, a commuter, a brevet bike and maybe a touring bike.

I wanted to buy the complete bike instead of building up a frameset to save money. I'm not a compulsive upgrader; I'm counting on using most of the major components at least 5K and hopefully twice that.

My local shop has a good selection of LHTs and a few CCs. The owner pushed the LHT. His wife pushed the CC. Guess which one each of them ride?

I rode both, discussed the merits of each at the shop with the owners and customers, talked to some local rando guys, flagged down some tourers out on the road and read too many opinions on the net.

It was a tough decision but I ended up with a CC. They rode differently but the CC suits my current needs better.

I did make a few changes from stock. I changed the seatpost to a Salsa Shaft because I like the adjustment cam on the Shaft. I wanted to be able to dial in the Brooks Pro from the San Jose quickly. The Brooks only lasted one ride though before I put on a used Aliante Sport. I also changed the tires to Pasela TGs and put on my rusty Eggbeaters.

The only other thing that needs to be changed is the cassette, from an 11-25 to a 12-27. I'll do that when I do the first chain replacement.

All in all I'm happy with the CC. I probably would have been just as happy or close with the LHT. You really can't lose with either.

I don't know that I agree with them... but it's their product.

I'm not arguing with the contention that the LHT is a no-thrills ride, only that words like "slow" and "barge" way overstate things. My other bike is a full-on racing bike, and they are certainly a study in contrasts, but when you get right down to it, they both turn right when I want to turn right, and turn left when I want to turn left. Given that I haven't done a tour in years (and when I do, I will likely go for more of an ultralight style than the "kitchen sink" style I used in the past), I sometimes wish it were a bit more sprightly, but right now I just use it for getting around town. So who cares? Seriously, if I had known that I wouldn't be doing hardly any loaded touring on it I might have gone with something else, but it comes in handy for hauling a big load of laundry, or $50 of groceries, so I can't really complain.

As for weight, it is heavier than the Cross-Check, to the tune of about 3/10 of lb by Surly's own numbers. Aerodynamics is a matter of how you build it; I could get as aero on my LHT as on my road bike, but that would be pretty pointless. The seat tube angle is about the same between them, so I could have essentially the same position on both bikes if I wanted to. I'm just not sure why I would want to. As it is, I've got nice, swept-back city bars on it right now, so yeah, it's pretty slow.

The handling issue on the LHT, to the extent that it has one, is the loooOOOooong wheelbase - it turns in big, lazy circles. The steering responsiveness is, for me, a non-issue. If not for the bottom bracket height, the LHT would be a fun bike for blasting down trails. It's perfectly maneuverable in those terms. Just don't try and race a criterium with it!

I just ordered an LHT, having ridden a few touring bikes and cross bikes. I think I could be really happy with a CC, but for me, I realize I'm more interested in comfort over long distance than speed. Therefore, the smooth, stable ride of the LHT makes more sense than the (admittedly fun) more responsive ride of the CC. Coming from a Norco Yorkville hybrid, I found the more aggressive position on the Cross Check seemed like it would be fairly uncomfortable for me on my 37km-one-way commute, especially given that I don't ride it every day.

I'd say ride both if you can, and think about which feels right. Also think about which will work better for the majority of your riding. For me, the idea of doing more serious off road is great, but realistically I mostly ride to work and get groceries.