Adventure Bike?

[The History Man]

I have a cheap mapless etrex if you want one. Very reliable for locating oneself. now have a garmin 500 on the bike.

 

[Harryburgundy]

Re:

The Spooky looks great...guess I could go for low drop drops.

Don't know what your current ride is - I can't keep track - but if it's got discs then you might just want to get a rigid fork and some nice light cross/29er wheels and cross tyres and stick them in your existing frame. Transforms a slog into a bit less of a slog.

No ride at the moment...have a 97 S-Works in the powdercoaters at the moment. My initial plan was going to build it 26" tubeless rims, rigid fork, disc up front and semi-slick tubeless tyres. Mary bars or Jones Loop type, 1 x 9/10 speed with clutch rear mech.
But now I am think 26" needs to be 700 to get some better roll. Still do-able but I would need a Pauls rear V brake to adjust the height ( I think that would work)

My first thought is that you should put Mary bars, Almotions and and a rigid fork on the old mtb of your choice and save a grand. But if there's an actual difference between this and adventure bike that you can explain, I'm definitely interested.

Agree...that was my first plan but will it be fast enough?

Oh - and if you are buying a GPS, then for UK conditions you probably want to check receiver sensitivity carefully: some jam much more easily than others in tight valleys and with tree cover. The cheap mapless eTrex H is supposed to be especially good at resisting this.

Thanks for the advice

 

[widowmaker]

I have a cheap mapless etrex if you want one. Very reliable for locating oneself. now have a garmin 500 on the bike.

Don't mean to be cheeky but are you selling it ?

 

[Harryburgundy]

I have a cheap mapless etrex if you want one. Very reliable for locating oneself. now have a garmin 500 on the bike.

Thanks HM..I need to spend money on the bike first. These GPS things are all new to me. I think I will want to map my ride, have road view, obviously save rides to ghost etc plus all the usual data.

 

[coomber]

Surly straggler? Saltyman had one on here and I thought it was really smart.

http://activesport.co.uk/shop/article_5 ... ml?pse=coa

 

[The History Man]

I have a cheap mapless etrex if you want one. Very reliable for locating oneself. now have a garmin 500 on the bike.

Don't mean to be cheeky but are you selling it ?

used to use it for geocacheing with the kids. for sale if you want it.

 

[widowmaker]

I have a cheap mapless etrex if you want one. Very reliable for locating oneself. now have a garmin 500 on the bike.

Don't mean to be cheeky but are you selling it ?

used to use it for geocacheing with the kids. for sale if you want it.

Not for me, but for a cycling buddy. Drop me a pm with a price and run it past them.

 

[hamster]

An early 90's steel frame will allow racks and guards plus a range of tyres from 1" to 2.1" depending on what terrain you have in mind. Personally I'd go with learning to map read and OS maps over GPS. GPS units are great but don't help easily with route planning when you want to spread the whole sheet out in front of you.

 

[PurpleFrog]

Re: Re:

But now I am think 26" needs to be 700 to get some better roll.

All things being equal, that probably won't work.

29ers have better roll over roots and rocks because of the tyre approach angle, but that's MTB stuff and not where an adventure bike belongs - any tyre has enough rollover for gravel. On road and gravel, wheel diameter is a small theoretical advantage... which is so small that in practice you usually can't measure it. Say about 1-5% - usually on the low end of that on gravel.

Tyre width, pressure, compound, tread pattern and carcass construction otoh add up to a difference in rolling resistance of 25-50%. The trick is to look for a tyre that's wide but has a highly flexible carcass and then play with pressure, starting from the 15% deflection level - choosing a tyre with as little tread as you are willing to use. In the past people have had to shave the tread off Racing Ralphs to make fast wide slicks, but the new Almotion might be even faster and has advanced puncture protection that the RR lacks (order them from bike24.com in Germany or they are a fortune.)

Take a look at

http://bartthebikeman.wordpress.com/201 ... road-tyre/

(If you wait a week for my headset repairs then I can give you feedback on the Almotions.)

Otoh, the only downside of 29 is that it would make for bad handling with reasonably aero drops (because of increase gyroscopic inertia vs limited leverage) which you might not care about. There's a lot of stuff about this on Jan Heine's blog and the Bicycle Quarterly site.

The other thing you need to consider is whether you want your rigid fork to be regular or low trail - Thorn sell them in different trails if you want to play with this. Heine advocates low trail because it lets you carry stuff over the front wheel without a handling penalty, but going really low would mean the bike would be trickier on real single track. Again, Heine is the guy to google.

Probably the best advice is to buy a pair of Almotions - or used Ralphs to shave on ebay - and just try them before spending real money. Obviously, if they're too slick for the riding you want to do then you can consider something like a regular Ralph for the front.

I'd also suggest ordering Phorm g510 grips from Germany for the Marys - kingoffootball clued me into them and they seem to improve comfort on the Marys without the loss of control of Ergons.

 

[Harryburgundy]

Lot's of very useful stuff there PF, many thanks ;-)

I won't be buying tyres for a while so will be interested in your critique but I do have my mind set on tubeless...one puncture already this week albeit on skinny thin Kenda Kozmik Lites