Niles H.

Bettina Selby has written books about her self-contained tours in many parts of the world. Some of her books:

https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_gw...elby&x=14&y=17

In Riding the Desert Trail: By Bicycle Up the Nile, she talks about the bike she designed for that journey. She was an experienced touring cyclist at the time. She chose a mountain bike for various reasons. However, most of the mountain bikes at that time had long chainstays. She saw the advantages of shorter chainstays, and she had a bike custom made with short stays.

Heinz Stücke had a custom bike made with 26" wheels and flat bars, for his extreme long-distance touring -- it was essentially an early (early 1960s) mountain bike.

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The chainstay argument often points out the heel strike issue. One experienced touring cyclist I know has size 12 (US) feet, and tours on a mountain bike with short chainstays. He simply moved his panniers back an inch or so. It was not a problem.

The bottom bracket height argument claims better handling with the lower bottom bracket. John Schubert has tested many bikes. He noticed no real difference with a higher bottom bracket, except better clearance in some situations. The ride and stability were not impaired.

Some of these things can be made to sound much more important in theory than they actually turn out to be in the real world.

I suspect that certain features were and are hyped by sales and marketing people. Getting customers to believe they need these features can sell bikes.

I've watched one touring bike manufacturer do this. His sales tactics involve convincing people that their current bike won't do, and that they need the features on his bikes.

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Standover height is another issue that is often a non-issue. The sloping top tubes on many non-dedicated touring bikes often compensate or more than compensate for the slightly higher bottom brackets. And standover height is quite adequate, in practice, on most well-sized non-dedicated touring bikes.

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There are probably other points to consider here, but are dedicated touring bikes really significantly better in some respects? -- not in theory alone, but in actual, real-world touring?

Peaks

Well, like most things, having the right equipment usually makes the task much more enjoyable. But, I'm certain that most of us still have a great experience even if we may not have exactly the right equipment.

Plenty of people tour on bikes other than dedicated touring bikes.

cyccommute 

Moving the load back to accommodate heel strike issues may not be a problem on some bikes but it can be on others. I've toured on both short and long stay bikes and much prefer the handling characteristics of the long stay bikes. It's not just the stay length but the wheelbase and geometry that come into play. Bikes with short stays have quicker handling than longer stayed bikes. Cantilever a heavy load off the back of the bike and the tail starts to wag the dog. It's not that much of an issue on the flats at low speed but put the same bike on a high speed downhill and you have a handful. I'd rather not have twitchy bike flying down hill at 40 or 50 mph. It's not a lot of fun.

Even with short stays, a mountain bike's geometry is different from a road bike. Mountain bikes don't have too steep a head and seat angle because you don't want twitch handling while in rough terrain while riding down hills either.

A low bottom bracket doesn't hurt in a purely on-road touring bike. Clearance is seldom an issue with on-road touring so why make a bike with a higher bottom bracket? Cross bikes need the clearance but touring bikes don't.

I've toured on good touring bikes, okay touring bikes and one really, really bad sport touring bike. The T800 I have now is the best touring bike I've ever used. Steady underload, stiff enough to do standing climbs and sure handling enough to do 50 mph downhills. I have a cross bike that can hardly handle an commuting load without acting goofy. Real world: I'll take the T800 anyday.

Hype and touring bikes aren't two words I'd use in any sentence. Hype implies that the manufacturers are trying to market the bikes. How many shops have you seen a dedicated touring bike in? Most shops will try and force a cross bike on you if you say you want to tour. That's hype.

Standover height is important if it's important. Try telling a 5' tall woman that standover isn't important. And considering that standover height is just one measurement for the fit of a bike and that those measurements tend to be taken as a whole so that the bike fits then, yes, standover height is important. I certainly wouldn't want to use a bike that is either too large or too small.

Real world? With two recently notable exceptions, touring bikes have more to them then just chainstay length and standover height. The frames are heavier to take loads without turning into wet noodles. The frames should have braze-ons for every conceivable rack, water bottle, fender mount, gun rack, kitchen sink, etc. that you can put on a bike. Most bikes...including current mountain bikes...have no mounts other then for water bottles.

Yes, you could pull a trailer but I doubt that you'd want to pull a trailer with a $6000 carbon fiber super bike. It'd probably fall apart in the first 300 miles. A real touring bike...purchased today...is going to still be carrying a load in 2027...as are the ones purchased in 1983.

Niles H.

I've ridden a heavily loaded, older (early 90s) mountain bike that is probably steadier than most ('dedicated') touring bikes, even at high speeds. It has short stays but also has very comfortable and benign handling. It has all the braze-ons I need, including a third set of water bottle braze-ons. The bottom bracket height does not hurt the handling, and it has helped in some situations -- both for cornering and for clearing obstacles, and for on-road/off-road tours.

It seems a lot more versatile than most dedicated touring bikes I've seen, and has no real disadvantages for touring.

Niles H.

I hope you will forgive me for having my own experiences and views here, which disagree sharply with yours.

I've done this (moved the panniers back) and encountered *none* of the problems you mention.

This cantilever argument is one I've heard before, and it is typical of these points that sound good in theory, but in many cases just *do not matter* in practice.

Rowan

Would you set out on a four-whee-drive safari in the family sedan? I know there are some people who would be determined to do so, if only to prove the more experienced and knowledgeable people wrong. Why... something like that happens on this sub-forum from time to time.

I bet that if you have been riding mid-quality bikes for most of the recent times, and you either get on to a cheapie department store bike OR a $7,000 CF road-racing special, you WILL notice the difference. We had someone a while ago riding a crap bike and thought their new bike of less than $500 in value was the ant's pants!

To my mind, it comes down to experience and what you are happy with. The human body is great at compensating for deficiencies, and the mind is even better at overlooking the shortcomings of a person's pride-and-joy. In other words, our emotions get in the way of our objectivity. I mean, how many people STILL post that they like the colour of a bike before they look at the specs!

A friend of mine had a touring frame custom made by a very reputable Australian frame-builder... but after many thousands of kilometres of touring and with an objective look at it, he could fault it in a number of places. His partner toured on a cheapo bike for a while, then stepped up to a Giant Elwood (which shows how cheapo the original bike was), then to a Thorn. Her touring world opened up like she couldn't believe... and she understood why.

I am a firm believer that you have to RIDE as much as you can to determine what YOU want in a bicycle. It may be that you need more than one bike to do the things you want to do. Case in point:

I commute over a route that has two kilometres of extremely rough gravel to a farm. In the first three months, I used my touring bike that destroyed a relatively light rear wheel. I could have forked out for a heavier wheelset and wider tyres, but it was easier and much cheaper to acquire some old-style steel-framed mountain bikes from the local rubbish dump for less than $10 each and use them. The first I gave away when I had intended to move to another country; the second is coming up to nine months of use without letting me down (and that includes the original tyre that already had a split in it). The second bike has been abused like I have no other bike, yet is still going strong; it's about to get a major rebuild as a reward

My touring bike then broke a rear dropout just prior to a 400 randonnee earlier this year, and I acquired another rubbish dump frame, an old Cro-Mo lugged Shogun, that I made into a fixed-gear touring and rando bike to take to Europe in August. I like it very much. It doesn't have brazeons on the forks, and I put new ones on the seat tube for a drink bottle cage. It is simple and effective, and unlike the Fuji Touring, I can ride it without having to concentrate to make sure it doesn't wander off line. The point is, I have done enough tour and commute riding to know (a) that I can put together a bike like that; (b) that it was going to be comfortable and (c) because it was steel, that it was going to be reliable despite its age.

About eight years ago, I adapted a mountain bike with front suspension as a touring bike, but its shortcoming were numerous and probably too many to list here. It was originally set-up as a commuting and tour-guiding bike, and it performed those functions well. However, those were in the days when I hadn't tried drop handlebars and STI brifters, or cowhorn bars, or narrow-tyres 700C rims, either. And it was only after I got on to a design-specific touring bike that I realised just how poorly the MTB performed.

That touring bike, incidentally, was the Fuji Touring, and after some 60,000km of riding it, I can say that touring bikes are among the few all-round bikes that can do things like commute, tour and utility cycle very well.

I have plans to do a north-south continental crossing of Australia that involves wildly different conditions. I am not sure right now what sort of bike I would have built for that ride, but likely something with a Rohloff rear hub, and something along the Thorn line -- certainly light Cro-Mo frameset, and maybe 26" rims but with the ability to fit the narrowest of tyres as well as wider MTB-style ones. And maybe I will just go lift something else off the tip.

Right now, I am building up another dump bike, this time an alloy frame MTB, so I can go day and overnight touring in the ranges around my part of the world. Again, it's a bike specific for the job I intend it to do... but it won't be on the packing list for the continental crossing, and I won't use it for commuting or on-road touring.

Longer chainstays do help in the sense of bike handling, and particularly tracking; it's not just the convenience of pannier placement (which if pushed too far back can really play havoc with the ability to stand and pedal uphill). Slacker angles on the head and seat-tubes have an influence on how comfortable the bike is, as well as handling and tracking. The specification of tubing can have a major influence in frame flex and how sprightly a bike feels. Even the weight simply of the bike itself can have an influence on how much you pay in luggage penalties with (particularly North American) airlines these days. Putting all those factors together in a very simplified way, Machka's Marinoni Cyclo does all that quite well.

The traditional touring bike had its origins in England. And the English are well-known for their stiff upper lips and the "right way" of doing things even if they aren't comfortable. The French are far more practical and forthcoming in their assessments, and that is why the French-style of touring bike seems so popular in Europe, and for me seems so attractive for sealed-road touring. I don't put much store in what Germans say or do, because they are worse than the English by insisting they are absolutely right and live through the pain of it all

Touring is a relatively new fad/craze/fashion in the US (and a lesser extent Australia), so everyone has an opinion on what is right and what is wrong. Throw in a huge dollop of marketing rubbish... and you have total confusion. I just find it odd that "those in the know" seem to keep returning to the traditional frames (such as the MTB from the 80s and the English/French style)... there must be something about those frames that works. But you have to have some experience to know what you are looking for.

Or... you can have a pocketbook of cash that you can just keep throwing at a problem until you get totally frustrated, finally heed the sagely advice and buy something that is specifically designed to do the job. I have done it with the MTB that I converted to a touring bike, but at least I learned from the experience, and that Fuji Touring and the Shogun have been worth every cent.

Rowan

You are incorrect. It does matter in practice. It might be that the bike you have ridden can take the movement of a load back a few centimetres.

But downhill speed wobble is not something to be toyed with, and does matter when your life depends on being able to correct it. Likewise, there is nothing more irritating than trying to stand to power up the camber of a corner on an incline only to find the tail is wagging your dog; it upsets your rhythm and if you've changed to a higher gear ratio, you have to get back to the lower one again.

Can I just ask... what is your experience that you can say this, and also that your older MTB is steadier than most touring frames out there? You must get around a lot of tours on different bikes to have such broad knowledge of how other bikes perform.

Rowan

Oh yes, I will also chime in here before the inevitable and say: The best possible touring bike is a recumbent.

Not that I've ever ridden a recumbent and have no desire to, but that is what I have been told by the recumbent marketeers.

I am feeling cynical this morning...

Niles H.

Please note that the statement was "...is typical of these points that sound good in theory, but in many cases just *do not matter* in practice." [italics added], which is quite correct.

The wobble to which you refer simply does not occur on many bikes, including many that are not dedicated touring bikes.

The other problems you mention also do not occur in many cases, including my own. They are again typical of the overrating of these problems (with non-dedicated touring bikes).

gerv 

Not all older mountain bikes have short chain stays. I picked up an old Fuji Thrill (90's variety...) as a beater bike for my son. However, when I got to looking at the bike, I realized it had chain stays 3 cms longer than my Bianchi Volpe. The more I look at the bike, the more it seems to resemble an expedition tourer. Or maybe I'm just dreaming...

Niles H.

Re: the stability of the older MTB frame mentioned: It has tubing that is larger in diameter than most touring bikes. It is rock solid, even with heavy loads at high speeds. The rack is a Tubus Locc, and is more solid than virtually any other rack, including those on the 'dedicated' tourers.

The so-called cantilever effect is overrated, in many cases, as is the tail wagging theory. It simply hasn't happened. Period. It is more likely on some of the noodlier touring bikes, and with the less-stable racks that are usually used.

Also, the weight in the panniers can be more carefully packed, which will more than make up for the slight shift rearward. But even that (which sounds reasonable in theory) doesn't really matter in practice, I have found, and there has been no need to bother with it. It's perfectlly stable without more careful packing, and it works just fine going up hills as well.

All these issues have proven to be non-issues.

foamy

Got your mind all set, huh? By all means, suit yourself. I sure do. People tour on everything under the sun. Successfully for the most part. A dedicated tourer is not a neccessity—but they sure are better for tours and distances than your average converted bike.

Niles H.

It could probably make for a fine expedition touring bike.

Niles H.

I'm taking one side for the sake of discussion. I'm actually not as set as it might seem -- I would like to hear some attributes of dedicated touring bikes (or at least certain ones among them) that are real and meaningful (not just theoretical) advantages -- and not just in the certain sorts of selected cases that are most often given.

foamy

Got your drift. When I got a touring style bike, I wanted something that wasn't a "pure" tourer. I wanted the advantages of certain characteristics in a tourer: Long wheel-base for a steady, smooth ride. Steel fork for a rack. A more upright riding position. A steel frame, just because I like the feel of steel. But I also wanted some of the advantages of a dedicated road bike: 700c wheels. A light(er) frame, so that when I doff the racks and touring wheels, I can have a fair performing road bike that's comfortable.

Niles H.

Many of the early mountain bikes had quite long stays -- most were long.

Tom Stormcrowe

Real advantages of my touring bike:

1. Brazeons out the butt
2. Not all noodly under load.
3. Very relaxed geometry, comfortable all day
4. Stable dropping a hill at speed under load
5. 3 bottle racks
6. fenders
7. brutally simple reliability with friction shifting and easy field repairs
8. 32 MM wide tires for load carriage and multiple road types of surface
9. 40 spoke rear wheel, 36 spoke front for load capacity

None of this is theoretical advantage. It's all proven itself. Oh, did I mention that my ride is 21 years old and will last another 50 if I take proper care of it?

robow

"I would like to hear some attributes of dedicated touring bikes (or at least certain ones among them) that are real and meaningful (not just theoretical) advantages"

1. Longer wheel base for stability
2. Longer chain stays to aid in preventing heel strike, (also aids in producing #1)
3. Stiffer than your average frame so as not to become a wet noodle when loaded down (also aids in increasing stability)
4. Will accept wider tires which makes for a more comfortable ride and you guessed it ..... aids in increasing stability

I think I'm seeing a trend here.

Tom Stormcrowe

Oh yeah, one more thing: I can switch to Cyclocross tires if I am going to ride dirt roads......I certainly have the clearance!

robow

Tom, I'm jealous, three bottle rack mounts. I mean yes we can rig something up but I'm not sure, are there any stock production tourers out there that come with a third bottle mount??

Rowan

The OP can please himself... which is my point, anyway. But being deliberately argumentative and dismissive... well, you can go jump, mate. Your experience obviously falls very short of knowing much at all.

Tom Stormcrowe

I believe the LHT does, as well as several others.

Mine is an old Schwinn Passage, by the way. One of the last of the US Made Schwinns, Lugged Columbia Steel frame and all.

Tom Stormcrowe

Rowan, if you're talking to me, I'm not being dismissive, I'm just trying to answer the OP as best I can.

You can tour on any bike, and your mileage varies, so to speak. What's comfortable for me, might be pure hell for someone else. There are just several major advantages in using a bike built for purpose......it's a tool.

You can hammer a nail with a heavy wrench, but a hammer works better, if you'll pardon the metaphor

halfspeed

A sample of one proves nothing.

hockeyteeth

I can vouch for the theory that heavy loads placed very far back make the bike whippy and unstable. I put a rack on my Cro-Mo tubed Panasonic DX-3000, but the short stays and my size 13 shoes necessitated moving the panniers almost as far back as the rack will allow. With a moderate load of 20lbs I must climb hills and accelerate with great concentration to prevent losing control from the sway. I also try not to descend any hills above 25 mph.