LHT toe overlap.
 

I'm looking to get a 56cm LHT. I know it is the smallest frame size to offer the 700c tires (correct me if i'm wrong) but because it is the smallest 700c, would that cause any toe overlap issues? does the fork have enough rake to avoid any overlap issues?

I thought the reason that the smaller sizes (54cm and below) had 26" wheels was to avoid toe overlap. Why have toe overlap on the 56cm?

Toe overlap which is very common shouldn't be a major determining factor in choosing the correct bike size.

I have a size 56 LHT and wear size 12.5 shoes. With my shoes clipped in there is no toe overlap.

Unless toe overlap drives you crazy. I had a touring bike with toe overlap, and replaced it. It was a matter of safety. I nearly lost control of the bike too many times because my foot knocked the front wheel while starting up at low speeds. Not fun when riding fully loaded and needing to start up a steep hill.

The 56 has ~1cm less in wheelbase than the 54, I think it comes from the shorter head tube of the 56. The 54 has crazy space between front wheel and downtube:

http://www.surlybikes.com/longhaul.html

amen.

What's with so many people's obsession about this?

How often are y'all going slow enough that you're turning the wheel instead of leaning to turn?

Well when I was a child of 50 or 55 toe overlap wasen't much troubble, Did coat to cost on a bike that was terable in that dept. Now that i'm more gronup 61 I ''m thinking that a more frendly bike is a better idia. By the way i'ts already been said slowing down is not as dangerous as starting off. Then too there is a dayly 320 degree turn to exit the bike trail and get up to the street, I can't do that very quickly. By the way my 60 cm LHT, with planet bike fenders, 175 crank, look pedals, size 13 feet and no overlap.

At low speeds when trying to balance a bike and make tight turns... which is about every time I ride. This is primarily an issue in an urban or off-road environment.

Is this the right size frame for you? I'm asking because usually everthing is proportional, and if you're feet are big enough for toe overlap to be an issue, then you might be too tall for the frame also. Check out Rivendale for sizing.

FWIW, I'm 6'2" with 91cm pbh and am riding a 62cm LHT and have no issues with Toe overlap with size 12's.

ok well i guess my concern comes from the fact that i ride a fixed gear at the moment. and toe overlap riding fixed is a major issue. anyway, i've already been sized for the 56 LHT, but have yet to ride a built one.

Toe overlap essentially becomes a non-issue once you learn to deal with it. You will instinctively avoid overlapping when making very slow tight turns. While my 26" wheeled LHT and my mountain bikes have plenty of clearance, my fixies and road bikes all exhibit overlap to one degree or another.

I always found that once my foot hit the front wheel a few times on a given bike somehow it just stopped happening. I am not sure what I do different, but after a bit of time on the bike I never touch the wheel with my foot, but also never do anything consciously to avoid it. Something in my subconscious just avoids it. I guess that doesn't happen for everyone.

Maybe some time on the bike in question will resolve the issue, but then again maybe not. I can see where a fixed gear might complicate this. It has been a few years since I rode fixed and I couldn't tell you if there was toe overlap on my fixie or not (I think there probably was), but I don't recall it being a problem.

I wonder if that is the same experience others who ride bikes with toe overlap have had or if they consciously compensate in some way? Just curious.

I guess none of that is particularly relevent to the original poster's question though.

I've had the exact same experience. One of my former bikes had a horrible toe overlap problem, and the first time it happened, I was totally surprised. But it only happened about twice more; after that, as you say, I just sort of . . . stopped doing it, without really thinking about it.

I think another poster probably had the best answer for the OP -- since Surly deliberately chose to put 26" wheels on the smaller frames, and specifically for the toe overlap reason, they must have calculated that the larger sizes would be okay with the 700c wheels, for most people.

I'm leaning very much toward buying a pre-built LHT, and because of my size, I would have the 26" wheels. At first I was kind of put off by that, having only ever ridden 700c wheels (and having no overlap issues on my current bike -- guess my feet are small enough.) But now I'm thinking it might be kind of cool; if I got the urge, maybe I could do some off-road touring.

I'm 6-2 with size 14 feet, and ride a 60cm LHT (with old-fashioned toe clips) and have no problems with toe overlap.

Could it be a matter of degree? Perhaps riders can compensate for, say, a quarter of inch of toe overlap, but not an inch. I did not measure how much toe overlap I had, but in three years of riding the bike, I never acclimatized to it.

My Flyte cyclocross bike has toe overlap, (12'' shoes size) but only 1/4'' with 28c tires. Yes, I can deal with it, but... I hopped on my wife's Cannondale ST700 Silk Tour bike and it was nice to have no overlap at all with 700x38c tires. Maybe since I'm coming from a mountain bike background my riding style is different and it matters more.

Yeah, that's a good point. I never tried to check just how much overlap I had on that bike. But my compensation strategy was just making sure to coast, with pedals at 12 and 6, or the offending pedal all the way rearward, whenever I had to turn the handlebar sharply enough to have the overlap problem come up, so it wouldn't have mattered. Another but: I never actually had to do this very often; if the type of riding I was doing featured the need for a lot of sharp, low-speed turns, I'm sure I would have found it annoying enough to want to get a different bike.

To some extent probably...
OTOH I have ridden some bikes with quite a bit of toe overlap with no problem. I suspect that some riders just naturally adjust more easily to it than others (and maybe some riders don't adjust at all). Unfortunately since it just happens automatically I have no advice on how to do it. For me thinking about it would probably make things worse.

Whenever I'm going too slow to lean and have overlap issue, I just pedal in partial turns backwards and forwards to keep moving while not hitting.

I suppose if people find themselves in this situation regularly, it'd be annoying. Otherwise I think most riders would benefit from changing their technique... becomes second nature pretty quickly.