Bicycle Equipment

Bicycle equipment selection was obviously a prime consideration. When we were planning our RTW ride we looked at a number of different touring bikes. We looked at some of the traditional names such as Dawes and at some of the other more contemporary designs such as the Koga Miyata, which we have seen a number of riders using and which are very nice fully featured bikes.

We had also seen the Thorn Cycles Expedition bikes using the Rohloff 14 gear hubs. These are all hand built frames and were way beyond our price range. When I rang Thorn to enquire about other models Andy Blance their chief designer told me that they were about to come out with a new design, based on the Expedition using a frame made in Taiwan and only available in two colours and three standard frame sizes, but at a substantially lower price. This is the Thorn Raven, Nomad

A key factor in our selection was that we wanted the Rohloff , 14 gear hub, because of its promise of low maintenance and extreme reliability, (reputedly no one has ever managed to wear one out yet). After years of dealing with gear problems, bent derailleur hangers, and annual chain set replacement, etc, they sounded ideal for long distance touring, requiring only an annual oil change to keep them “singing along”. We had read various reports about people having these hubs retrospectively fitted to their bikes and having problems with spokes breaking. We wanted to make sure that we didn’t suffer these problems so one of our criteria was to select bikes that had been specifically designed around the Rohloff Hub. The Thorn met this criterion.

The frames are standard, but the final build is to order. You can select whatever components you want, although the sales people at St. John Street Cycles (Thorn’s sales outlet) were very helpful in making recommendations. Karen and I opted for identical builds except for frame size and saddle selection.

Our key selections were as follows:

Gears

As stated, we chose Rohloff 14 speed hub gears. The Rohloff has 14 equally spaced gear ratios, but the actual range covered can be selected to order. We were a bit concerned as to whether 14 gears would be sufficient, as we had previously had 27 gears on our mountain bikes – Or had we? We studied our mountain bike gears and the table below shows the gears that we were using. I.e. Three front rings and 9 rear rings.



However, as you can see there is a significant overlap. The colours above show those gear ratio selections that are either identical or very close to each other. We determined that our 27 gear selections actually only gave us effectively only 16 discrete gear selections. We then looked at how our range compared to the different Rohloff units and selected one that gave us near enough the same ratio at the lower end with some slight sacrifice at the top end as shown below:



This selection has proven to be very suitable. Only occasionally, when going along the flat with a following wind do we feel that we could do with another one or two top gears. The lower gear is ideal for taking a full load up a 15% incline. Much beyond that and you are into pushing up hill, (at least we are).

It is possible to fit two front rings and use a conventional gear selector, but frankly we feel this introduces the very thing that we have eliminated by getting rid of the derailleur and doesn’t really give that much advantage.

Over the first 3000km+ of use we have found the Rohloff unit with the gear ranges that we selected to be ideal for our needs.

When we were in West Yorkshire we met a guy from the Nederlands who was riding a new bike from the German company Santos. We were salivating at this bike. It is equipped with the Rohloff Speed hub, but Santos have also developed the use of Carbon Fibre belt drive system which we believe Rohloff are fully endorsing. The only issue is that as it cannot be split apart for fitting, so Santos developed a special break point in the rear frame. Unfortunately having shelled out thousands for our bikes we are not about to change to the new drive at all soon. One slight complaint. We talked about the low maintenance. In fact they are, but you do have to change the oil once every 1000km, which comes around surprisingly quickly when you are touring. You can only buy the oil from Rohloff as a kit and thus probably pay a lot more for it than you need to. Of course you have to use their oil as otherwise if there is a problem you have no recourse to complain. This is the only real negative that we have come across.

There is one other issue that relates to the installation of Rohloff hubs into the wheel rims which we will touch on in the section on wheels.

Wheels

To be honest, we didn’t know too much about what type of wheels to have fitted to the bikes and relied to a large extent on the recommendation of Thorn. They suggested two different wheel rim types. The first had a ceramic coating, which makes for a very hard wearing rim that does not cover your hands with black aluminium dust every time you touch them. However, they were expensive and so we went with the other suggestion, Mavic Extreme 721. These rims are apparently designed to take the hammer of mountain biking and the weight of cycle touring. Thorn recommended them at that time, so we had no reason to doubt that they would do the job.

The Rohloff hub requires 32 spokes so the rear rims were selected accordingly. The front rims were also chosen to use 32 holes, for the purposes of interchangeability, with Shimano Deore xt hubs. This interchangeability would later come in very useful.

The rims performed without problem. We changed our brake blocks once, but otherwise everything was fine, until we had covered some 3500km or so. As we were riding through Portugal, Steve’s rear brakes started to develop a slight “pulsing” feeling, as if the rim was buckled or had a high spot. It was only slight to start with and we couldn’t see what the problem was. Later, as we were cycling around Lisbon over a lot of cobbled streets, it got progressively worse until, on closer inspection it was obvious what the problem was. The side wall of the rim had a crack about 40mm long around its circumference. We spent a day in Lisbon having the rim from the front wheel fitted to the rear and bought a new front wheel. Once the old rim had been taken off we could see the full extent of the damage. The inside of the rim had also cracked badly across the valve hole. We could also see around some of the spoke holes other hairline cracks (see pictures).
We understand that Thorn no longer recommend these particular rims.

Tyres and Inner Tubes

By contrast, our tyres and tubes have performed, so far, flawlessly. The Marathon XRs are heavy, but they are 2.1” wide and are great on any surface from tarmac to loose dirt roads. After 3500km we have not suffered a single puncture despite riding along miles of thorn hedge cuttings, broken glass, sharp stones and cobbles, (post edit, we have just had one puncture from a piece of very sharp sea shell). The tyre tread is still in great condition and they look set for several more thousand kilometers. We wholeheartedly recommend them.

Brakes

Previously we had found our disc brakes on our mountain bikes to be really good and we were sorry to give them up.

We chose rim brakes for our touring bikes. The reasons given for choosing standard cable, rim brakes are firstly, if you need to replace a wheel, it is easy to buy a standard wheel in most places of the World, but not so easy to find one for disc brakes. Second, it is more difficult to repair or replace a damaged disc or hydraulic cable. Most bike shops keeps brake cables and rim brake shoes.

While we cannot say they are bad, (far from it, they have performed without problem), we would still prefer our disc brakes. As yet we don’t really have enough touring experience to say that V brakes are a better choice than disc brakes and we are still undecided as to whether hydraulic disc brakes are truly at any more at risk than the mechanically simpler rim brakes.

Our brakes are Shimano XTR M970 V Brakes. These are particularly good as the brake blocks can be replaced without replacing the whole brake shoe. While this doesn’t make the job significantly easier, it does mean that the spares you need to carry are thinner and lighter. Replacement blocks generally enable fitting to take account of the right amount of toe in thus avoiding the need to mess about with “shimming”.

Handlebars

We chose “comfort bars”. These are not straight, but are raised at each end, what some might call a “sit up and beg” position. This means that you are not leaning far forward, which can overstress your back on long tours. We have found this riding position to be very comfortable throughout a long day in the saddle.
We also fitted Ergon anatomic grips and bar ends to help relieve pressure on the ulna nerve. This set up gives you a lot of options for different hand positions, but was not as effective as we had hoped and we still suffer from numbness on a long ride.

Saddles

Steve chose a Brookes leather saddle. Previously he had use gel saddles and not been entirely comfortable with them. The nice thing about the leather saddle is that your shorts slide easily on the leather, where as with some gels saddles they can drag bit.

Karen chose a women’s specific gel saddle and has been happy with it.

Everyone says that saddles are entirely personal and it is worth trying out a number of different ones to get the one that is right for you. Who actually ever does? Nobody we know. Frankly you select one that you think feels OK and then you get used to it or you get another. The main thing is if it causes you real discomfort over time, then ditch it and get another.

Lights

On our previous bikes we had some good halogen lights with a heavy mains charger that we really didn’t want to carry on a World tour. We agonized for a long time over what type of lights to fit. In the end we took some advice from the guys at Thorn again and agreed with their obvious solution. Get to wherever your going before it gets dark, so all you really need is some cheap LED lights just in case. So that’s exactly what we did.

A problem arises when you have a loaded bike. With a front bar bag it eliminates places to mount a light on your handlebar. You can mount one on the forks, but we think this is too low down and it really needs to be on the handlebar. This is something for Ortlieb to think about. All they need is to add a clip on the front of their bar bag to enable a cheap LED light to be clipped in place. In the case of the back light we found that gear stowed on our carrier hung over the rear light rendering it invisible. Only solution we found to this was securing our gear so that it didn’t happen, but it was a bit of a pain.

Panniers

We looked at a number of reviews and from what we saw the Ortlieb roller top type seemed to be the best for durability, ease of fitting/removal and water resistance.

We chose their Classic Roller Plus for front and back with one of their Ultimate 5 Bar Bags and we are very happy with their performance. We pack all of our equipment into roll top, waterproof stuff sacks and then put them into the panniers. We have been through some real downpours and found that this combination of good quality roll top panniers and waterproof stuff sacks works the best, but it isn’t perfect. It is still prone to failure if you don’t roll over correctly or when you have to stop when it is raining to get stuff out of your bag.

Bike Stands

It is only when you have a fully loaded bike that you realise how difficult it is to prop it against something or to stop the front wheel swiveling around when you least want it to, usually causing you to castrate yourself on the cross bar or crush your leg against the front mech.

We found some prop stands to fit to the frame next to the bottom bracket, they weren’t very good as they didn’t fit properly and kept coming loose.

“Let’s ask Thorn. They’ll be able to recommend something”, but they wouldn’t . Not only did they refuse to recommend a stand, but said that using one would void their warranty, as with a fully loaded bike they can cause the frame to twist.

We hunted around on the internet and eventually found the “Click Stand”, made by a one man business in Canada. We ordered a couple and they are excellent. Each stand is made to fit your frame size and also comes with two ingenious elastic bands that you use to keep your brakes applied, stopping the bike from moving.

Take a look at them here: Click Stand Home Page

The foot is a small rubber button, which after 1000km use has disintegrated and on soft ground it sinks in. So a more robust foot would be useful. Other than that, though, there are definitely no complaints.

Pump

Our pump is a Toppeak Mountain Morph, which to be honest we have had little need to use, but when you do it is very effective when compared to many of the small pumps available.

It has a foot and a handle that turns through 90 degrees meaning that you can use it as a mini floor standing pump. With this we can get our tyre pressures up to their full 4 bar. I have never managed to achieve this with any of the other mini pumps that we have used in the past.

The other good thing about the Toppeak pumps is that you can actually buy spares for them which is lucky as we happened to lose the end of ours.

Bike Bottles and Carriers

We didn’t want to carry anything on our backs, so decided against back mounted hydration packs. Instead we use frame mounted, plastic bottle carriers. For water (and other substances, wine, milk, etc) we use Camel plastic bottles and SIG metal aluminium bottles. We have found the former to be better as they don’t impart a taste to wine and keep milk fresher.

We also use our bike carriers to carry the fuel bottles for our camp stove

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