Rowan

Thanks for the explanation. I knew it was company policy, and they had sound reasons for it.

The model frame we are looking is the Club Tour. We aren't expecting to do much in the way of heavy duty off-road touring, and we expect them to be fairly versatile for everyday use as well as touring.

I agree that V brakes work fine. So do ordinary cantis as fitted to my Fuji Touring. What is important is keeping up the adjustment on any brakes as the pads wear.

BigBlueToe

My contention in my original post (for which I have done no scientific studies - just repeating "common wisdom") was that cantilever brakes are stronger stoppers than calipers. Don't get me started on side pull calipers versus the center pulls I had in the 70s.

My second contention, based on experience, was that V-brakes are stronger stoppers than cantilevers.

95% of the time any brakes I've used have been fine. (I don't include discs in my remarks, because I've never used them.) However, when doing a long descent, like coming down from the top of a mountain pass, my hands start to ache quite painfully from squeezing the brake levers so long. This is where I've noticed the superiority of my V-brakes. My hands ache substantially less.

I'm considering switching to V-brakes on my LHT before this summer's tour. (I need to have some project, right?) I understand that you have to use special levers for V-brakes. I think it would be a worthy experiment.

I'd like to try discs too, but I guess I'll have to get a new frame for that. That's going to be a problem. I can't see getting tired of my LHT for many, many years. (My last tourer maded it 15 years before I replaced it, and it wasn't nearly as nice as my LHT.) Hmm. Maybe one of these years I'll want to try the Great Divide Trail, and will need more of an expedition tourer for that.

Magnus Thor

Rowan, I can heartily recommend the Thorn bikes. We have three in our household - I ride a Raven Tour every day and have a Audax 853 for weekend runs and my wife rides a Thorn Sherpa every day.

As for the Club Tour, well Scott Napier used one to set the world record for the Pan American Highway, so it must be sturty enough.

https://www.worldrecordsacademy.org/t...cord_90395.htm

As for braking and rim wear; SJS offer Rigida rims with CSS coating. I have been using those for the last three years here in Iceland, riding year round through salt and snow and sand. Probably around 25000 km and no sign of wear and they work well in the wet too.


Magnus Thor
Iceland

BengeBoy 

Bill Davidson, Seattle, has a built a fair number of titanium touring bikes. I would trust a Davidson not to fall apart.

He has experience in "plain" touring bikes, S&S couplers, disc brakes, Rohloff hubs. Davidson is based at Elliott Bay Bicycles, my LBS, so I get to see their custom jobs on their way out to customers. Big variety in bikes and builds, just give them a shout if you are interested in a titanium touring bike. Reasonable prices and lead times.

AsanaCycles

the note in regards to hand/forearm fatigue has long since left my memory due to the use of disc brakes.
I have a buddy who keeps insisting that his early 90's Kona is still state of the art, while I admire his will to stick to something in his head, sometimes I feel bad for him especially when the subtle differences in 20 years of bicycle "progression" comes to the forefront.

cantis are stronger than calipers
(MTB vs Road)
and
V's are stronger yet yet...
discs are pretty much it, when it comes to braking performance... how much you need is a different story, and of course there are a lot of disc brake kits out there.

discs on the road, are fantastic.
i.e. Surly Big Dummy with any kind of a load, I like to use 203mm rotors (which are the largest "common" size) which really turns the bike into a very consistent platform, from hauling to well... hauling my girlfriend around town, simply because she likes me to sherpa her around.

when I had my Hunter 29er built up, I never had any other brake in mind.
when a person stops to consider what kind of forces are applied to a bicycle...
its not that whopping brute force we can put into the pedals, that is the greatest...
but rather... the brake.

that brake lever induces a whole lot more force into a bicycle than anything else... short of crashing into something.
again... its the stopping, that is the greatest force which is put into a bicycle.

vik 

The touring part of your time in France is for sure....PBP could be over after 1 or 2 days if something goes off the rails. I'd go with a touring bike and make it work for PBP.

xizangstan

Those are some really nice bikes. I will see what I can do. I'll probably need to get on a plane and go down to Florida and visit them, to get their help and measurements to get a price quote.

Titanium sure is nice stuff to build a durable bike out of, isn't it? That's what I love about my GT Xizang. I bought her new over 15 years ago and she's still beautiful and solid as a rock. I love a metal that's strong, a little springy, super durable, and will never rust or corrode. Buy it once and never worry about it again (other than to worry about scumbag bike thieves).

AsanaCycles

personally I know 3 people who are riding their Merlins which are probably early 90's

Rowan

Thanks for your wisdom, vik. We are certainly taking on board what you say.

Now we have to decide whether to tandem it, go with singles, or just go the whole hog, buy the three frames, build them up, ride them, and make a final decision then!

vik 

If you have the cash the only way to know is to try bikes back to back for a reasonable time period. Unless you guys have tandem experience it will probably take several weeks to get the bike setup and work on your team skills until you'll be at a point of comfort where a reasonable comparison to single bikes would be possible.

Given that you guys have lots of experience with single bikes I think you won't be satisfied with a tandem as your only option, but maybe two touring singles and a rando tandem would be a nice combo?

That way you can always press your singles into rando service should you want to and with a trailer you'd be able to tour on the tandem as well.

BTW - I'm in the slow process of considering a tandem for my GF and I. Deciding if I just buy the one I want to tour on and give it a year...worst case sell it if it doesn't work out. Or buy a used low cost tandem as an experiment, but I'm worried that may not give a true reflection of how we'd like a nice machine.

Cyclebum

If you started from scratch like I did 5 years ago, you'd have no realistic idea of what you needed to tour on comfortably. With the knowledge gained, were I to start anew, I'd get myself a dedicated steel touring frame and build it out. No way I could ride a stock bicycle across country comfortably. Wrong bars, wrong stem, wrong gearing, wrong saddle, wrong tires, etc. Nearly all the components on a frame become very personal with experience. I'm sure age plays a big role also.

I've twiked my old Diamondback aluminum road frame, at considerable cost, to the point that it is a very comfortable ride. A set of aero bars will be next. Now, if I could just find a saddle that would fit my rear, I'd be a happy camper.

Machka 

We have borrowed a tandem to try it out and see if we like it. We have had it since the middle of August and have done a bit over 1000 km on including a 200K brevet last weekend (see Tandem forum). So we have determined that we like riding a tandem ... and so ... now what.

I do like your idea of two single touring bicycles and a rando tandem.

Carbonfiberboy 

As you know, we did a little touring on our Speedster with only rear panniers. A nice thing about the tandem is that we only needed one of a lot of things: panniers, rack, pump, bike spares and tools, etc. Plus only needing one tent, bag, stove, pot set, etc., etc. Two can travel almost as light as one. Going upwind on our loaded tandem was no biggie. Hardly noticed the difference on the flat. I'd think about a rando tandem that'll tour and keep your present road bikes. We still use our singles sometimes. Could rando on any of them if Stoker would get a little weirder . . .

I see CoMo now has a Rohloff Speedster with discs, two Gates belts, steel fork, coupler option. Hmmm.

it was fun to discover that our racing limo is also a cool touring bike.

Rowan

This is as true as it gets.

There aren't many things left on my old Fuji that are original. Wheels were a major issue, saddle another. The stem's gone although the bars are the same.

It's a bit like grandma's axe...

I certainly doubt if I will ever buy a complete bike from a shop ever again. After four or so bike builds from scratch in the past four years, I have a fair idea of what I want and where to get it at good prices.

Essentially, though, that decision-making has come from experience.

safariofthemind

This seems like where most folks end up. Once you know what works, why buy a compromise built for an "average" rider? You spec it, then you can use a mixture of used and new parts where it counts.

vik 

I guess it depends on your needs. Although I prefer my fully custom LHT. In a pinch I could buy a stock LHT and just swap in my saddle and tires of choice. The rest of the build is fine and I'd replace as they wore out. I think even with internet scrounging it would be cheaper than building from a frame. If you are not happy with stuff like wheels & drivetrain/shifters then there wouldn't be any savings.

Machka 

But building a bicycle isn't necessarily all about doing it cheaper than buying an off-the-shelf bicycle ... isn't it more about doing the build ... the thrill of the hunt (so to speak) to find all the parts, and the joy of building it yourself?

AsanaCycles

+1 on that.
if it ain't riding bikes, working on bikes, lurking on the internet... BIKES...
build, rebuild, tear down, try this, try that... repeat

tcs

A dedicated touring bike + a second set of lighter wheels with tighter gearing is a very versatile combination.

vik 

It can be both. Just depends on the situation really. I enjoyed building my fully custom LHT, but if I had to replace it tomorrow I'd buy a stock one because the cost savings vs. the benefit of going custom isn't that great. When I built my LHT there was no complete bike available. OTOH I know that I have lots of other unique bike projects I can do that have to be custom to get my need to research and tinker taken care off.

The reason I suggested looking a stock LHT was that you will probably want to customize your rando tandem and if you are getting 3 bikes [really 4 based on cost] it makes sense to save some $$ on the touring bikes since there are some decent stock models available and splurge on the rando tandem were customization will probably pay better dividends.

If you can afford to customize all 3 go for it! I would never tell anyone to restrain themselves on bike builds if it's within their budget...

BigBlueToe

This certainly sums it up for me. I could have spent much less on a complete LHT and gotten a bike of similar quality. Building mine from a frame was costly - especially since it was intended to be a bike I would tour on for many years - I didn't want to settle. I looked for parts on Ebay, but mostly went with brand new, and while I didn't go for top-end components, I did make sure they were all very high-quality.

I would contend that the extra expense was worth it when you factor in all that I learned, how intimately I know every part on the bike, the tools I acquired (hey, tools are an investment, right?), and the fun and satisfaction that I enjoyed.

kaliayev

So with you on this. It defiantly makes the winters go by easier. Converting the Trek 520 back from commuter to touring as I am typing this.

Rowan

How about retrieving a bike from the local rubbish dump for the frame and fork and building it up from there?

I can feel a new thread coming on about a build using a Shogun Alpine GT that I picked up for nothing today... Machka and I could have matching touring bikes yet if I do a parallel rebuild of my old Shogun 400 fixie as a geared touring bike. Spread rear stays, bullhorn bars, bar-end shifters....

Oh, and yes, the Shogun Alpine has braze-ons and eyelets on fork and rear triangle for racks (note plural) and mudguards/fenders. The front fork is actually better equipped than the 400.

Stay tuned folks!!

ullearn

I think this post by Russ on The Path Less Pedaled sums it up the best and keeps in mind what matters - https://pathlesspedaled.com/2010/11/y...oing-it-wrong/

"seen where gear self-consciousness has kept people off the bike, and that is just plain wrong"