I’ve been touring on a Bianchi Eros, circa 1994. It’s a good lugged steel bike, but not really intended for loaded touring. It’s more of a light-duty touring frame. It has no front rack braze-ons, no provision for a third water bottle, no fender eyelets. The side-pull brakes don’t have enough clearance for tires wider than about 25s. It’s also getting a little old. It’s spaced for 7-speed and takes a threaded headset.

I’ve been thinking for some time about building up a true touring bike, but I haven’t wanted to lay out the bucks for a Bruce Gordon, a Heron or a Riv. I would love to have a bike like that, but I just can’t justify the expense for the amount of touring I do.

The Surly Long Haul Trucker came along and looked like a deal. It would be fun, I thought, to build up a bike from frame and fork. Still the price was enough to make me hesitate. Then I saw the Nashbar Touring Frame in their catalog. A steel-forked aluminum knock-off of the LHT, it was introduced at $250.00. It had all the braze-ons I required, 135 mm rear drop out spacing, cantilever brake mounts and a threadless stem.

I had three reservations. 1. It’s aluminum. 2. It’s Nashbar. 3. For $250.00 how good could it be?

Recently the price was dropped to about $175.00. With a 20% coupon code, I could have the frame delivered for $137.77. The first two reservations hold, but at that price, how bad could it be? Or how good would it have to be? I ordered one in my size (58).

It arrived today.

The packaging was adequate. The frame arrived intact.

I was happy to see that it is a really pretty shade of dark green with just a little metal flake. The paint was scraped off of the fork a little bit, but not enough to return it. (My Eros shows similar damage, but that was from having a front rack mounted.) The dropouts are forged.

There is a replaceable derailleur hanger. This is a good thing on an aluminum frame.

The welds are butt-ugly. Check out this bottom bracket cluster.

The frame has no headtube badge and no decals. These decals were included in the package, but I don’t believe I’ll be using them.

All-in-all, I’d say it was worth what I paid. I’ll be taking my time building it up, but I will try to keep you informed on my progress.

:)

Thanks for the info. I had been looking at that frame as well. I'll be watching for updates.

I see that the fork only has one set of eyelets. Does it have rack mounts?

Just the one set of eyelets on the fork. A long bolt will mount rack and fenders. There is plenty of clearance for fenders and a mid-fork braze on for mounting a low-rider rack.

I need to break out the camera and take more pictures of the LHT... :) It sure is purty. Just waiting on all the parts to show up. :)

UPDATE

I started work on the frame today. I hauled it down to my LBS. The proprietor is a good friend and lets me use his tools. We had discussed the frame before I bought it. He was interested to see it. He agrees, the welds are ugly. Ugh-Lee!

I hadn't noticed before, but there is a chain peg on the driveside seat stay.

We decided that the head tube did not require facing. I installed an Aheadset. It went in nicely and seated well. The fork crown race seat didn't need to be milled.

I did tap the bottom bracket shell. I wanted to tap it more than it needed tapped. In fact, the tap screwed into the right side of the bottom bracket with one finger. The left side was a little rougher,but it would have taken a bottom bracket just fine without the tapping.

So far, so good...except for those ugly welds.

Oh yeah, for those who might want to know....the Aheadset was an STS model with steel cups. Inexpensive but sturdy.

The bottom bracket was Shimano 105, 118 mm spindle, octalink. I have a 105 crankset that I plan to use. I want to build it all up with 105 and LX, though I will be raiding the parts bin for whatever I can use....and old set of Exage cantilever brakes for instance.

http://www.wolfenet.org/gallery/surly <- build is coming along. :)

The build continues slowly.

It took a lot of noodle power to decide on brakes. Initially I thought I'd use an old set of cantilever brakes that I have in the parts bin. The problems of adding cable stops front and rear, while not insurmountable, changed my mind in favor of V-brakes.

Today I hung some Tektro 829 AL linear pull brakes on the frame. They aren't the highest zoot brakes, but I've used Tektro stuff before and it works just fine. I have a pair of Dia Compe 287V levers on order to mate to these.

I bought a seat post collar for the frame in the recommended 31.8 mm size. It was a bear to install. I began to think that either the collar or the seat tube were the wrong size. As it turned out, the seat tube was slightly out of round at the top. This probably happened when they cut the relief notch in the tube. I squeezed the collar onto to the tube by spreading it open with a big screwdriver. Unfortunately, I took a chip out of it. While it is only a cosmetic problem, I've ordered a fresh collar to replace it.

A buddy of mine, who owns a small metal parts manufacturing business, and who knows more about these things than anyone I know, took a look at the frame the other day. He said, without my asking, "Those welds look good."

I said, "I don't know. Look at the bottom bracket. I think those are some butt-ugly Chinese robot welds."

He looked them over closely. "No," he said. "They look fine."

I maintain that the welds are big and goopy looking, and the beads are uneven. He insists that, though I may find them ugly, they are plenty strong and functional.

I ordered the Nashbar Alum. MTB frame for my wife and they accidently sent the touring frame. I agree, the welds are ugly. But function wise and for the price, you probably can't beat it. Same with the MTB frame (it's her first MTb), although the welds look a bit better.

I think a Brooks saddle would help the harshness of the Alu frame. Can you imagine how many Nashbar would have sold if the frame was a Reynolds 525??

Anyway. What saddle and handle bar tape your going to use?? If I were you, I'd choose a dark green handlebar tape and a Brooks saddle in Racing Green!! I really don't know what else goes with green but I suppose a burgendy saddle and tape would go well.

I haven't decided yet on tape and saddle, but I have options. If I want to use what I have on-hand, it will be celeste cork tape and a celeste Flite saddle. If I go with all-new stuff, it will probably be a honey brown Brooks B-17 and "natural" cork tape. I've never had a Brooks saddle, and am tempted by them. Maybe Santa will bring me one?

For colors, I've always thought that yellow and green were a good combo.

And, oh yeah, it wasn't just the cable stops that vexed me in deciding on brakes, it was also adding barrel adjusters to a road lever/canti brake combo. There were possibilities available, but I decided on V-brakes with the v-specific road levers and barrel adjusters on the brake noodles.

Not meant in any negative way at all RegularGuy but...

Isn't this a bit like the old adage... polishing a turd? Why not put the time & money into one of thousands of great, reliable steel framesets that litter the Net and real world...
I can understand budgets and the like but for nearly the same amount of money-a bit more/a bit less if you're lucky-you could be doing this build on a steel Miyata, Motobecane, Trek, Dawes, Jackson, etc frameset with time-tested geometry and more importantly, quality tubing and quality welds.

No offense taken. Of course I don't expect a lot out of the frame, especially not for what I paid. I'm just having a good time building a bike. We'll see how it rides when I get it built up. The welds, though ugly, are plenty sturdy.

I looked for a while for a decent frame. The Surly LHT was tempting, but was still $250-300 more than the Nashbar. I didn't want to go used, since the older bikes out there are generally spaced for a 130 mm rear hub, and set up for a threaded headset. I was genuinely curious to see what kind of frame 137 U.S. dollars would buy. The biggest problem I've found with it was the ovalized seat tube.

As I said, once I build it up, if I don't like it, I should be able to sell it and get my money out of it.

Got any photos of your current progress? Sounds like it will be nice, I don't see why the negatives just because it is low price and has no big name doesn't mean it is crap IMO.

Progress photos? Sure!

Here's the bike as it currently looks. The front wheel is the one that I will use in the final build. Yeah, I know it's mounted backwards. The rear wheel is an old 7 speeder that I hung on the bike temporarily. I will soon be ordering a 9 speed hub laced to a 36 hole rim.

The headset is held in place with a rubber band until I get the steer tube cut. That's my next big task.

I installed the crankset (105 triple) today. The seatpost collar is the one that got chipped and will be replaced.

The second photo is the rear brake. I know the pads are all skee-hawed. I'm not going to bother adjusting the pads until I get the new wheel. The front brake is all set up and ready for levers and cables.

The way I have this frame figured, Nashbar saw that Surly was doing okay with the Long Haul Trucker. and wanted to jump on the bandwagon with a green touring frame. They already had a contract with some Chinese bicycle factory. So they borrowed the Surly's specs pretty closely and ordered up a bunch of frames.

The factory apparently does aluminum fabrication. All of Nashbar's frames are aluminum. I suspect that the same factory makes frames for a lot of other brand names as well.

I'm not going to kid myself that this is a great frame, but at the price there's nothing wrong with it. Now, if I hung Dura-Ace components on it, I would truly be polishing a turd. I'm basically trying to build a cheap, functional tourer.

Others have asked about my impressions of the frame, so, I've been posting them here. I'll try to keep updating the thread as I make progress on the build.

Thanks for providing the info on your bike.

I looked at the specs on Nashbar's website, and the top tube for the 58cm was listed as 59.5cm. Is this correct? I was thinking of getting one in that size, but the length of the top tube might be too long for me. Perhaps I could make it work with a small stem. Also, if you have a tape measurer, I would appreciate it if you would tell us what the stand over height is because Nashbar didn't list it.