Surly Troll and LHT discontinued. Their forks presumably too

[Holiocornolio]

I will preface this by stating that for the riding I do discs and thru axles don't make sense. They solve problems that generally didn't really exist. (For me) Thru axles are like the Bluetooth of the bike world. You never realised that you needed your headphones to be wireless until someone took away the jack socket on your phone. Hell, you never even realised that the Walkman jauntily clipped to the waistband of your hotpants was an encumbrance until your smartphone took over that role. And who carried a camera around with them 24/7? Sorry - I may have strayed off topic. My point is that the world is full of innovations that we didn't need until we were offered them. Discs and thru axles being a case in point.

 

[mattr]

Re: Re:

Hmm, so when I fly with a bike I have to remove the discs to avoid damage. I don't fancy chucking a disc-braked bike on top of a bus in some out of the way place either.
Absolutely fine for touring France or Germany, not sure about further afield.

Now, that is indeed fine for 90% of customers - but not everyone. Even touring in the US, there is an awful lot of nothingness between places.

something like an alivio disc, or bottom of the range Avid will probably be stiffer and more damage resistant than those soft aluminium rims you are relying on for your current braking surface.

 

[hamster]

Yes but shifting to discs doesn't eliminate the fragile rim problem. After all a disc rim can be bent too. 1mm warp on a rim is no problem - on a brake disc it is.

It's fine, you tour with discs, I won't. It doesn't make either one of us more right or wrong. Personally I still run 7-speed hubs as they have less dish and bar-end shifters for simplicity. Many people would consider that an unacceptable compromise.

 

[Titiritero]

Re:

What is clear from Surly's side is that the LHT and the Troll were not selling, at least not enough to keep making them.

The Troll I understand. Media has told anyone looking for a new bike that 26" is old and stupid. And the ones that know better already have a bike.

For the LHT, same logic but with disks. What I think would have been a good move was to keep the LHT "a la Troll", that is, with the rim and disk brake options together. So replicating the debate in this thread, any tourer would be happy (cycle tourers, me included, are very opinionated people that go to a lot of trouble in order to have the "perfect" bike). This would also differenciate the LHT from the many other tourers now offered by the competitors, all nowadays pretty much the same thing, with only differences in colour or price.

Going back to the main topic, the Troll and LHT forks were good although expensive options for rim brake steel 26" forks for any retro project. Now it's time to look elsewhere. For those in Europe, Intec (a German bike brand with a focus on touring) makes a 26" fork for about 50 EUR with disk/rim brake mounts, and eyelets for low rider racks. Their distribution is pretty poor though, you will have to dig into German online shops to find them.

 

[Prodigal Son]

Re: Re:

They tried to tell me it came from feedback from touring folk.

Which really means, no one is buying them, so why the hell stock/manufacture them.

no serious traveler is going to take discs into anywhere other than a first world county as compatibility, supply of spares and ease of damage would be a major issue. It all went quiet.

Mechanical discs are pretty much bomb proof these days, probably more damage tolerant and durable than rim brakes, and more powerful. Spares is basically a couple of sets of pads, cables you can get anywhere. Discs you can hammer flat (and they tend to be more damage tolerant than rims anyway.)

I was going to say that: discs make a touring bike more bombproof and stop a 50lb loaded bike faster. I love my rim brake bikes but if there is an aplication for discs it has to be touring.