veganbikes

Rodeo Spork
Specialized Sequoia Fork
Niner RDO Gravel Fork
Fyxation Sparta All Road Fork
Jamis Coda and Renegade forks (at least the Coda Elite fork or the older Comp fork)
Ren Cycles GX1 Fork (that one will be coming with a custom designed TI rando rack)

Those are just ones that came to mind...while yet there aren't as many carbon forks as steel forks in the category there are quite a few out there and getting easier and easier to find.

Dark Arrow

I was just recently looking for a new bike as my 1991 Giant Expedition was up for yet another rebuild with just about everything worn out again. I'm 50 this year a little over weight bum knees and 2 heart attacks down,,Good excuse for a new bike the wife said. I'm not a weight weenie and well,, downhill racing with full suspension is just not going to start anytime soon. I needed a good commuter, shopper, exercise, and touring bicycle to replace my Expedition. I decided on touring geometry as this works well for general biking for me. The Expedition's steel frame keeps going even after multiple drive line replacements and 2 rear wheel replacements. All the touring specific frames I looked at were steel. I think of all the times over the years my Expedition has tipped over and or been roughly handled it has a few scratches in the paint (ok more than a few) but no serious dents. It has done a tonne of K's. Maybe I'm old fashioned but I wanted another steel frame, Brooks saddle, MTB driveline, drop bars, and the ability to load up with panniers. 90% of my riding is on the bitumen with a little on paths here and there. I can load up at the shops with groceries or commute to work with my stuff in the panniers no worries. To each their own and the best bike is the one you like the most. I sure like my new bike.. I've had it 2 days now and just hit 100K. I hope to see her turn over 100,000K before I give up the ride!

Cheers
Bear

GamblerGORD53

Good for you. That Vivente is a nice sensible bike, hope it lasts and fits better than the one on the website.
Look up Peter Newberry on CGOAB, an older OZ guy also. He used this bike in 2012/3 riding from Hanoi to Bangkok.
No troubles at all, even with the widespread road construction.
https://www.crazyguyonabike.com/doc/...id=293158&v=kp
Besides, it is one of the very best journals. Interesting, informative, videos and a raspy humor.
I rode the other way up from Saigon in 2014 on my custom bike. The roads should be almost finished soon.

DropBarFan

Thanks for the tip--they wouldn't quite work on my bike due to rim & rotor size but interesting. Look reminds me of old Harley forks a bit, also the old motor-pace bikes with the reversed fork.

Dark Arrow

I enjoyed the link

Cheers mate!

cdenniston

This is something I pondered lately and resulted in my new bike purchase. This year I am beginning bicycle touring. I have always had 2 bicycles; a road bike and a single-speed for commuting and errands. I decided it was time to purchase a light touring bike that I could also use for off-road/gravel. I went with the Salsa Vaya. However soon after I began thinking I could simply replace all of my bicycle with one do it all bike. Three bikes seemed unnecessary for the amount of riding I do and frankly wasn't working out in my shared 1 bedroom apartment. Selling all of my current bikes gave me a base fund for a bike I could purchase and then modify specifically for my needs. I settled on the All-City Space Horse which I found on sale at the LBS. It is heavier and slower than my road bike and my SS. It isn't quite as comfortable and relaxed as the Vaya. However, I am really enjoying the bike so far. Only time will tell if I am completely satisfied with my decision, but it feels nice to only have one bicycle. When I want to ride I grab my bike and go regardless of where I am going or how far I am riding. Simplicity feels good.

tarwheel 

A touring bike is fine for everyday use if you aren't too concerned about speed and want to be able to carry loads. However, for everyday use, I prefer a sport touring or cyclocross bike. For me, a sport touring bike is ideal and what I would have if I could own only one bike. My sport tourers (Gunnar Sport and Waterford RST-22) are my best riding bikes and fast enough for group rides. They both have clearance for larger tires and fenders, as well as mounts for racks and fenders. They are much more responsive and ride and handle nicer than my touring bikes.

noglider 

Right, it's about what you like more than about what's suitable. Any bike will work. Which one do you like best? I like something fairly sporty but not an outright road racer. I ride fairly hard, compared with the average person but not like those Cat 6 Commuters™. Well, sometimes I do, but not most of the time.

cyccommute 

As a bulk material, aluminum certainly isn't a cheaper material. Current price of steel is $300 per ton ($0.15/lb). Current price of aluminum is $1925 per ton ($0.96/lb). Making aluminum into tubes may be easier because aluminum is soft and can be extruded more easily than steel can so that brings down the cost a little but certainly not anywhere near a factor of 6. Aluminum is also a bit easier to weld and machine which also brings down costs.

As for robotics, I doubt that the few steel bikes being sold by large manufacturers are being handmade...even in China and Taiwan.

Aluminum bikes are probably cheaper because they use less material due to the density of the metal but that's not going to have that much of an impact because of the small amounts of materials used. For example, an LHT has a frame weight of of about 5 lbs. A Cannondale touring has a frame weight of about 3 lbs.

However, that difference in frame weight is the reason everyone and his brother moved away from steel, especially in the age of dual suspension and complicated frame designs. A frame like this one



would weight far more than 5 lbs if it were steel. For another example, look at this frame



It's an aluminum frame with lots of extra tubes. I've compared it to steel beach cruisers that aren't even multi-speed bikes and the steel bike is a tank. This one isn't that svelte at 31 lbs but it's way lighter than an old Schwinn cruiser that it's modeled after.

Aluminum is used in mountain bikes because it's lighter and it's strong enough for the application. It's certainly strong enough for touring bikes as proven by 30 years of Cannondale touring bikes.

noglider 

Thanks, @cyccommute. That all makes sense.

cyccommute 

Again, the move to carbon fiber in mountain bikes or road bikes is being driven by weight more than any other factor. Yes, mountain bikes benefit from suspension and wider tires but there were lots and lots and lots of steel mountain bike built up until the mid- to late-90s without suspension as well as lots of unsuspended aluminum mountain bikes. The aluminum ones really didn't ride any harsher than the steel ones. Most people would choose an aluminum mountain bike over a steel one based strictly on weight. I know that's what drove my choices.

Additionally, having learned how to ride mountain bikes without suspension, I don't depend on the bike to provide much more than minimal suspension anyway. My arms and legs provide far more suspension than even a dual suspension bike does. Perhaps that is why aluminum doesn't bother me that much. Even on a touring bike, I'm very much gorilla that rides like a ballerina (as coined by FBinNY). The way you ride is more important than what you ride.

This whole "steel is better than aluminum for touring bikes" thing is a crock. I've owned steel touring bikes and I've now own aluminum touring bikes. Hands down, the aluminum touring bikes I own now are superior to the 1980's steel touring bikes I've owned. I can climb and ride out of the saddle with a full load (40+ lb) like I'm sprinting up the Alpe d'Huez on the aluminum bike but I couldn't hardly ride the old steel one in a straight line on the flats out of the saddle. I certainly couldn't sway the bike back and forth under me like I would on an unloaded bike. The "stiffness" of the aluminum has its advantages.

Squeezebox

Is your everyday bicycle also Alum?

john_mct

can you please stop saying this...it simply isn't true. There are literally hundreds if not thousands of steel bikes on the market every year from everyone from tiny custom makers up to Specialized and the like. Niner, Soma, Surly, REI, Jamis, Rivendell, Vassago, Specialized, Kona, Advocate, Salsa, the list goes on and on...Each one coming out with steel bikes year after year, continuing to improve and revise frame design on steel bikes. In some cases increasing the amount of their line made out of steel.

I get that you like and defend aluminum frames, I get that aluminum is a viable option for lots of people and lots of bikes, I know that everyone could enjoy riding a quality bike made out of either material, or carbon or titanium for that matter. Just please stop saying that "EVERYONE has moved away from steel." Patently false

HTupolev

You realize this actually hurts your argument, right? That steel has strength:weight and stiffness:weight challenges when competing with aluminum is a claim that a pretty strong case can be made for.

Saying that steel is heavy because an old Schwinn is heavy makes it look like you've scraped through the bottom of the barrel and kept digging halfway to Australia.

Piratebike

Maybe I should have titled this a Steel Touring Bike for and every day bike.....I still thinks steel is the best fro a touring bike and for an every day bike.

cyccommute 

How about you quote me properly? I said steel mountain bikes. It's also mostly true about road bikes. About the only people who still make steel bikes are for the touring market and that's because everyone just knows that you can't tour on anything but steel. Most everyone who tells you that has never toured on aluminum and has no idea what they are talking about.

I have thousands of miles of touring experience on both steel and aluminum and know more about touring than your average person but I get told endlessly that there's "no why you can touring on aluminum" when I say that I have an aluminum touring bike...usually from someone who has much less experience than I have.

How does it hurt my argument? Aluminum has sufficient strength for the job at hand. Steel's claim to fame is that a steel frame isn't stiff. I would agree that it isn't but I don't look on that as being a plus.

My point on comparing my cruiser to an older steel Schwinn is that the frames both have complicated tube geometries but my aluminum framed bike with the same type of frame and a modern multispeed drivetrain is much, much lighter than a similar steel framed single speed bike. Aluminum is lighter than steel in just about any configuration you care too look at. It is also just about as strong while still being lighter. Hence the dearth of steel mountain bikes and steel high performance road bikes.

john_mct

Most of those manufacturers I listed are making steel mountain bikes

Snuts

I love it!
Touring is not a high performance event, in my opinion. I have both aluminum and steel. Today I am on my steel bike. Which are you on?

-Snuts-

HTupolev

Because entry-level vintage Schwinns being heavy has very little to do with them being steel and a lot to do with them being entry-level Schwinns. In the old days, Schwinn's Chicago factory was constructing (often via flash-welding ) frames from insanely thick straight-gauge 1010 pipe, covering everything in hilariously thick chrome and paint, and used lots of narrow steel for components (I.e. Ashtabula cranks), sometimes throwing all kinds of frills on. That their "lightweight" road bikes constructed in this manner weighed around forty pounds ultimately resulted in "Schwinn" becoming a synonym for "boat anchor" even back in the days when everything was vintage steel.

So using an old entry-level Schwinn as an example of vintage steel bike weight makes it look like you're really stretching.

Randybb

I have a 1985 Schwinn that weighs 21 lbs. Would be 20 lbs with tubulars. It was made by Panasonic in Japan though.

HTupolev

Like I said, entry-level Chicago models. That factory closed in 1982. Even in that older era, the higher-level Schwinns were mass-competitive.

When I said that "Schwinn" became synonymous with "boat anchor", that doesn't mean that all the bikes were boat anchors. But that was the perception, because much of what they flooded the market with in the bike boom and earlier was extremely heavy.

Tourist in MSN

My comment is generic to everyone in the argument, I think that we can all agree that different materials can be used to make fine bicycle frames. And there are situations where one material will be better than another. And there are personal preferences that will cause us to pick one material over another material where others might choose an alternative.

All of my touring has been on steel. A friend of mine crossed the country twice on his Aluminum Cannondale and will be crossing the country a third time this summer on his Cannondale. And another friend of mine used to tour on Aluminum and has switched to Titanium. I recently (past few weeks) built up a Titanium touring bike, but have not yet toured on it so I can't say how it will perform. But I suspect that I will tour on both steel and Titanium in the future, depending on which bike I think is best for the conditions for where I will be going.

I have never owned a Carbon frame bike and probably never will, but I recognize that there are a handful of ultralight bike packers that ride Carbon bikes without racks. But I recognize that these people have considered the differences in materials and made their choice based on what they feel is most appropriate for their touring style. And I respect their decision. Just like I respect the decision of people that prefer Aluminum or steel or Titanium.

cyccommute 

They may be making steel "adventure" bikes but not steel mountain bikes...at least not too many and not any that have complicated dual suspension frames.. The Specialized AWOL isn't a "mountain" bike. It's a road bike that can be used off-road...sort of. My T1 can, and has been used off-road...sort of.

Same with Niner, and Rivendell. The others offer some but they are hardly a hot bed of mountain biking. And, again, all of them are hardtails which is more or less a mountain bike backwater.

cyccommute 

You seem to be purposely missing my point. My point isn't about what "level" Schwinn but the cruiser frame which has more tubes and thus more weight than a similar aluminum type frame. There are a number of other "cruiser" type bikes...even modern ones...that have similar frames with much better materials. My aluminum cruiser still under weighs them by a lot. A mountain bike with a complicated frame and sub-frame made out of steel would be prohibitively heavy.

Even regular steel diamond hardtail frames were heavier than aluminum frames. That's why mountain bikes shifted towards aluminum and there are millions of aluminum frames out there standing up to much more punishment than putting on a touring load would put the bike under. Somehow they seem to stand up to the abuse.

HTupolev

Yes, I thought I was explicit in that I was criticizing your choice of example rather than your overall argument.

If the front end of the old Schwinn factory had been receiving bulk aluminum rather than steel, the cruisers popping out the other side still would have been vastly heavier than the one you have.

I didn't bring up "level" because I thought for some reason that you were talking about "level", I brought up "level" to be clear that I wasn't referring to all bicycles made by Schwinn in that era. I was hoping to avoid responses like Randybb's; evidently I communicated poorly.