bobwysiwyg

Currently riding a hybrid. I tend to assume a somewhat aggressive riding posture and have been intrigued by a road bike frame. However, I don't care for 25mms tires, I'm a 6'4" Clyde with a 34" inseam and occasionally ride unpaved roads.

Consequently, I've been eyeballing a Surly Cross Check, possibly a 62mm frame. Any thoughts or feedback would be appreciated.

Barrettscv 

10 years ago the Cross Check was a popular alternative to a lightweight road bike or an ordinary Hybrid. Today dozens of better alternatives exist.

The bike was distinctive for fitting 700x40 tires, having fender and rack attachment points and a durable steel frame. However, the head-tube is too short and the frame doesn't provide response performance. It's a better commuter than anything else.

bobwysiwyg

Thanks for the feedback, much appreciated. Can you suggest some alternatives for me to consider in roughly the same price range?

Barrettscv 

The Raleigh Tamland 1 is a big improvement for $1140 direct from Raleigh.

It has a high quality Reynolds 631 Steel frame with a carbon fork. The frame and fork feature through axles, a critical feature on a bike with disc brakes. You get an advanced 2x11 Shimano 105 drivetrain. Tubeless ready rims and room for 700x40 tires. The wheels are strong enough for us Clydes. The 62cm size is a good fit for most people 6 foot 4 inches.

https://corp.raleighusa.com/tamland-25

Anyone can get the corporate discount

-Visit https://corp.raleighusa.com

-Enter Corporate Code - RALEIGH4U

mstateglfr 

The Tamland and Raleigh's adventure bikes are really cool looking.
...but that corp discount code expired at the end if november.

mstateglfr 

In XL size. https://www.rei.com/product/890598/t...FYaGaQod6JoFqQ


I could list off a bunch of options, but they would be steel frame sets or aluminum franed bikes.
Figure you want steel since thats what the cross check is.

Barrettscv 

PM resent

Loose Chain

Yeah, lol, whatever:



The head tube is necessarily short because at it's heart it is a traditional steel cyclecross bike. That means a level top tube, a high bottom bracket and therefore when you squeeze the main triangle tubes together you get a short head tube. This lends itself to an aggressive riding position with the bar tops well below the saddle or a stack of spacers. It is what it is, the real thing.

The op might enjoy a LHT or one of the sloped tube wannabes so as to provide a more upright position, for which it is true, the CC is not ideal.

J

athrowawaynic

I think the new code is CYCLE4PERK

12strings

Yep, for the cross-check, the bar-end shifters crossed it off the list for me. It was really fun to test-ride though.

Then I test-rode a Specialized diverge...it wasn't as much fun as the cross-check (smaller, smoother tires), but the shifting of the new tiagra was way better.

1Mule

Love my Cross check, I've got a stable of 6 bikes and I ride my CC more than the others combined.

DJH8098

The cross check is a great do it all bike, I've had mine for two years and love it for everything from commuting to an occasional cyclocross race. The only thing close in my opinion would be the surly straggler, basically same bike with a few geometry changes, the next closest thing would be a Trek 520 the price difference is about $200 but that's about the same from CC to straggler. Personally I'd go CC and stay away from the disc if you are just looking to put miles in.

Squeeze

I have admired Cross Checks and their utilitarian, do-everything style for years now. I'd like one to replace both my road bike and my rigid, drop-bar '90s MTB, but I keep asking myself what a CC will do that my MTB won't. So far, I don't have an answer to that question, but that's okay, since that's saving me the cost of a Cross Check.

Loose Chain

Keep pace in the peloton, leap 100 miles of road and gravel, punch into a Kansas wind tucked into the drops, confidently rip through corners on a mountain descent, tote gear for a campout? What kind of MTB do you have that can do that. None of mine can.

And I love bar ends, I actually buy them and install them on bicycles on purpose.

Joeyseven

Yes the Raleigh sale has some great deals.Some of the clearance bikes and a lot of sizes have gone OOS.
I'm about 6' 2 1/2" and bought A 60cm 2016 Tamland 2 with ultegra 2x11.

Have not put to many miles on the bike yet.I like the slopping top tube for my long torso body.
Might have bought from Performance if the Raleigh sale did not happen.
Really lots of great bikes available even for us Clydes.

HTupolev

As Squeeze said, a drop-bar conversion of a vintage rigid MTB. Such builds often end up with characteristics not too dissimilar from a Cross Check, although they typically feature 26er wheels and huge clearances.

Here's my '83 Stumpjumper, as an example:



Outside of some very heavy choices in the build dragging down the acceleration and climbing a little, it performs like a half-decent road bike, at least when it's equipped with fast road tires like the Rat Trap Passes it's wearing in the above photo.

Darth Lefty 

Why do you have to stick us with it?

Loose Chain

Nice bike, I have one just like it but mine is a Rockhopper.

I am not a believer in fat slick tires being as fast as 25mm Contis on Mavic Opens or even the 32mm Pilots the SCC is wearing now. I do like your bike, but compared to the SCC, it simply could not pace in a peloton (of course at 62 I do not ride the fast group) and the long wheelbase, not dance with it either.

And, if cyclecrossing, how do you get that small triangle over your shoulder?

J

Hiro11

It really depends. The Cross Check is a great frame but as mentioned above it does have a short headtube and high bottom bracket, features well suited to cross but likely not ideal for commuting or utility usage. It's also not an ideal recreation frame as it's a bit racy. Personally, I'm not a fan of racy unless I'm racing or training for racing. YMMV.

The LHT has the lower BB, the longer headtube and nice long chainstays which will make it much more stable and smooth handling. The LHT is more of a touring bike, obviously, but that might be a good thing.

Both have room for fat tires, threaded BBs, standard seatposts, standard steerers, every braze on you can think of, high quality 4130 tubing and external cabling. I like disc brakes but cantis are undeniably easier to work on and foolproof. These are all huge positives to me. Surly makes practical stuff that will last forever.

HTupolev

I wasn't entirely convinced until I put the current ones on. For a while, the bike was running ThickSlick Deluxe tires, and on flat pavement it was consistently about 5% slower than my road bikes; on a route I frequently involving a pair of 20-mile segments with a cafe stop in the middle, I was clocking 19-20mph versus 20-21mph. The current tires made the discrepancy vanish.

I don't actually race on the road, but I do ride in a group that regularly leaves me nicely conked out for the rest of the saturday. The only performance issues I've noticed have been related to total weight, of which the tire width is a small factor, if comparing the overall build to my Emonda ALR (the Stumpjumper totals about 6kg heavier). On the flats, I'm basically able to ride the same and with the same people, only noticing that the power burst to hop onto the back after a pull needs to be slightly bigger. Rolling hills, obviously I've had to shorten my pulls to keep up. I don't see why a more weight-conscious wide-tire build would be at a very significant disadvantage, as long as the wide tires in question were a high-performance model.

What about it?

In theory it's probably increasing effective body-to-body paceline spacing compared to the Emonda, although I imagine that the effect of a couple inches isn't huge.

People sometimes bring up long wheelbase up as a cornering issue, but at least in the context of road riding this doesn't really make any sense; turn radii are huge compared with the length of a bike, and even long bikes need very little steering column rotation. It simply isn't a limiting factor.
The actual big limiting factor in road cornering is contact patch stability/grip. And, as demonstrated vividly by motorcyclists using armored pants so that they won't obliterate their knees when they scrape the ground, wide tires help quite a lot with this. The Stumpjumper is actually significantly more confident than my skinny-tired bikes in hard cornering.

I'll have to figure that out when I decide to try cyclocross.

Likely would have given it a shot this season, but I've been injured. First hurt my hip in an overuse injury in September, and a week ago, just as I was starting to get my cycling fitness back, I fell on a staircase and tweaked my back. So... maybe next year, if I can get back up to speed.

If you're referring to Michelin Pilot Sport, I'm doubtful. Those are beefy urban tires that don't even weigh less than my 53s. They might win out in edge cases, like if you mount them to ultra-wide aero rims and run them in a 30mph+ time trial, or if you're riding through semi-rigid day-old snow slush which cause wide tires to waste a lot of energy throwing ice around. But they're probably far behind in terms of rolling resistance.

Loose Chain

Okay, you win. The old Stumpjumper is better than a SCC.

I did and do race, road and crit, loved cyclecross, I am sorry, but an old mtb with drop bars is nothing like a CC.

And I do like old mtbs. And such a bike might be good for the OP.

J

HTupolev

???

I apologize if my post was read as blowing you off.

I'm not trying to "win", and I'm also not arguing that old Stumpjumpers are "better" than SCCs. As far as that comparison goes, the only thing I addressed skeptically was your suggestion about Pilots outperforming Rat Trap Pass ELs. Actually, I intended for my post to make it pretty clear that my particular Stumpjumper isn't a great road performer in general, since the super heavy build gives it some easily-observable disadvantaged cases.

bobwysiwyg

Still thinking about a SCC, keep coming back to it. I like trying to maintain my own bikes when I can. I favor the older design of the bar end shifters over the very complex more current integrated shifters. I do, however, like indexed shifters. So, what exactly are the SCC? They state, "Shifters Microshift BS-M10 10-speed shifter, friction/index adjustable." Are these, or are these not indexed?

tyrion

The rear shifter is both. By "default" it's indexed but you can switch it into friction mode for emergencies. The front shifter is friction only ("infinite trim"), I think.

HTupolev

Front is friction. Rear can be switched between friction and indexed.

It's a pretty common bar-end shifter configuration. If you like indexing it's indexed, if you like friction it's friction, and if something happens that makes it hard to index but it still sort of works (i.e. your derailleur hanger gets a whacky bend) you can switch to friction and use it that way until it gets properly repaired.

I've never used this particular Microshift shifter, but I have a pair of 8-speed Shimano shifters that are the same way and it's pretty nice; both modes work well, and you can switch between them very easily by twisting a little control on the side of the shifter housing. Totally unobtrusive.