Are touring bikes old fashioned?

[slowster]

I come at things as a mountain biker (since early 1990's), used to...

My wife and I for various reasons are now doing more touring and day rides - on and off road. New fangled terms such as 'gravel' often appears in discussions. We still ride mountain bikes.
...
I've seen some things that just seem to make sense for touring:
...
Geometry which takes a lead from mountain bikes rather than twitchy road bikes.

I suggest you try a touring bike. You might find that one designed for the sort of on and off-road touring you are doing is better than an MTB, CX or gravel bike, e.g. the Spa D'Tour and/or Wayfarer.

As for the racks etc., aside from the engineering aspect covered by CJ, there is also the advantage of sticking with standardised parts wherever possible, and therefore a frame which is designed for them. If a conventional 4 point rack fails, a replacement can probably be bought from a bike shop or Decathlon in the nearest town. Moreover, standardised parts will give the greatest range of design (within the standardisation), price points and value for money. If your panniers will not quite fit on a unique proprietary rack or there is some other incompatibility or niggle, you may be stuck with the problem, because there are no alternative rack designs for that proprietary fitting.

[djb]

...presumably some of the newish flat-bar, fat tyre load luggers from the likes of Surly will combine MTB terrain abilities with load carrying shaped, stiffened, frames?

Obviously at the cost of being pretty lumpy and sluggish in a road environment*.

*Well, actually, our West Sussex roads...

this is why I was interested in and found a Surly Troll, mtb ish but many people were using them for touring in far off places. Being 26in wheeled and mtb-y, it is a fun quick steering bike, which I personally like. Mine has been in numerous setups, mtb bars and tires, street tires, trekking bars and finally dropbars. It has never felt overly lumpy, and not sluggish, and the quick steering is perfect with a load, and with drop bars, it still has relatively quick handling and steers nice and lively (front panniers, handlebar bag)

To me its a good example of how this type of bike that can take fairly wide tires, can make a very suitable touring bike, ie panniers and crap, not just bikepacking bags a la minimum.

*the short chainstays work for me, but I have average sized feet or smaller, and I am careful about weight distribution and not having too much weight too far back and/or high up on rear rack, so realize that a longer wheelbase frame for touring can be less sensitive to weight distribution.
re the "old fashioned" theme here though, so much camping and bike touring equipment is a lot lighter than in the past, so its easier to keep weight down, which in turn is less of a factor on a given frame for handling etc.

[Cowsham]

My mtb has front suspension and have always thought it could do without it while I'm using the bike for every day commuting or touring. I wonder how easy / cheap it would be to convert to non suspension disc fork.

[djb]

My mtb has front suspension and have always thought it could do without it while I'm using the bike for every day commuting or touring. I wonder how easy / cheap it would be to convert to non suspension disc fork.

I often thought of this for my old mountain bike, but decided to get another bike so never seriously read up on the tech aspects of it (or started to and have forgotten the specific details)

read up on maintaining a similar wheelbase, trail and all that stuff that I can't properly explain to you, but its pretty important to get a fork that doesnt muck up the handling of your bike. How much wiggle room you have and for the change not to be a problem, I have no idea, but with research you should be able to educate yourself properly.

as for costs, I'm sure it's all over the place depending on the fork, used, new, etc etc.

[Bmblbzzz]

Gravel bikes have always covered a wide spectrum, some could be ridden in UCI cyclocross: some are MTBs with dropped bars, some are traditional tourers with fancy names... And even at the racing end, the established gravel races like Dirty Kanza have not been held under UCI rules (but then neither were early MTB races, for the same reasons). So how much influence will UCI rules have? Some for sure, but mostly on those which are not so likely to appeal for touring anyway.

That said, touring bike is an equally wide concept: some tour on a UCI-compliant road bike, some on a full-sus MTB, etc.

[mattheus]

Gravel bikes have always covered a wide spectrum, some could be ridden in UCI cyclocross: some are MTBs with dropped bars, some are traditional tourers with fancy names... And even at the racing end, the established gravel races like Dirty Kanza have not been held under UCI rules (but then neither were early MTB races, for the same reasons). So how much influence will UCI rules have? Some for sure, but mostly on those which are not so likely to appeal for touring anyway.

That said, touring bike is an equally wide concept: some tour on a UCI-compliant road bike, some on a full-sus MTB, etc.

There have been several theories posted on this thread about UCI rules in different categories. We really need a clean slate - or perhaps an empty sportsfield? - on which to test this properly:

We need the UCI to get involved in Touring Bike races. THEN we will see their true colours. (and I'm really excited to see what the manufacturuers come up with for us Amateurs to buy!)

[slowster]

My mtb has front suspension and have always thought it could do without it while I'm using the bike for every day commuting or touring. I wonder how easy / cheap it would be to convert to non suspension disc fork.

You should be able to find better informed advice online if you search, but I think the issues are:

- What type of steerer, i.e. do you have a straight or tapered steerer?

- You will probably need a rigid fork with the same (or very nearly) offset.

- The Axle to Crown (A-C) measurement of the rigid fork will need to correspond to the effective A-C of the suspension fork, either in the locked-out position (if it has lock-out) or the measurement with the fork compressed under rider weight. Otherwise the rigid fork will alter the head angle and steering. Significantly increasing the head angle may put the junction of the head tube and down tube under too much stress.

[Nearholmer]

29er to rigid forks conversions are a regular topic on Gravel Bikes UK Facebook group, so worth asking about your specific one there. (Despite the prejudice evident against Facebook on this forum sometimes, it’s a very friendly group, with none of the rancour that sometimes occurs here.)

[GideonReade]

My mtb has front suspension and have always thought it could do without it while I'm using the bike for every day commuting or touring. I wonder how easy / cheap it would be to convert to non suspension disc fork.

I think it's called suspension corrected fork. Or is that the frame?

[djb]

My mtb has front suspension and have always thought it could do without it while I'm using the bike for every day commuting or touring. I wonder how easy / cheap it would be to convert to non suspension disc fork.

I think it's called suspension corrected fork. Or is that the frame?

you will sometimes see the term for a frame, ie, from the Surly blurb about the Troll:

"The Troll frame is suspension corrected for a 100mm travel fork and comes with a rigid, suspension-corrected 4130 CroMoly fork
complete with removable canti pivots, disc mounts, low- and mid- and crown mounted blade rack bosses and fender eyelets."

[cycle tramp]

..however the whole evolution of the gravel bike is now a moot point. The uci have step in. Their rules will now dicate any future direction, simply because given the choice most customers will go for a bike which fits the rules.. even if they never intend to cycle in a uci ordained event...

No.
Like MTBing, the UCI have taken a very back seat to the design and evolution of the gravel bike. They have some stipulations about gravel race courses (length, severity, number of feed zones etc) but the only requirement of the bike is that it should have dropped handlebars.
There's a sentence in there saying that tandems, recumbents and road TT bikes are banned. Otherwise, anything goes.

Well, it's more of a yes really.... already the uci have broken the gender equality act by stipulating that the route length for women is shorter than that of men...

...and the requirement for the use of dropped 'bars is still a dication.. if I was Jeff Jones, I would be somewhat miffed that a potential market for his handlebars which offer a variety of different hand positions and allows for less stress across the rider's shoulders has been removed by a bunch of middle aged men who had nothing to do with the development of gravel bikes in the first place....

And to be fair if you've removed bikes which don't have drops, tandems, recumbents and road bikes, then you what you are left with are a diamond frames made out of a variety of materials spanning a couple of wheel sizes...

..much like road bikes I expect the uci to begin to tighten the regulations in the future, even to the speciation of top tube design..

[Nearholmer]

If the “gravel road racing bike” spec becomes overly restrictive, then I would expect bike sellers to re-label non-compliant bikes that are probably more useful for many purposes/terrains as “adventure”.

[Bmblbzzz]

..however the whole evolution of the gravel bike is now a moot point. The uci have step in. Their rules will now dicate any future direction, simply because given the choice most customers will go for a bike which fits the rules.. even if they never intend to cycle in a uci ordained event...

No.
Like MTBing, the UCI have taken a very back seat to the design and evolution of the gravel bike. They have some stipulations about gravel race courses (length, severity, number of feed zones etc) but the only requirement of the bike is that it should have dropped handlebars.
There's a sentence in there saying that tandems, recumbents and road TT bikes are banned. Otherwise, anything goes.

Well, it's more of a yes really.... already the uci have broken the gender equality act by stipulating that the route length for women is shorter than that of men...

Interesting point. I think you mean the Equality Act 2010, as the Sex Discrimination Act 1975 was repealed by that. But while that applies to things like sports clubs, I'm not sure if it applies to single-sex events. If it does, then all sorts of sports are in trouble.

[Bmblbzzz]

If the “gravel road racing bike” spec becomes overly restrictive, then I would expect bike sellers to re-label non-compliant bikes that are probably more useful for many purposes/terrains as “adventure”.

Yep, ever further micro-segmentation.

[rareposter]

Well, it's more of a yes really.... already the uci have broken the gender equality act by stipulating that the route length for women is shorter than that of men...

...and the requirement for the use of dropped 'bars is still a dication.. if I was Jeff Jones, I would be somewhat miffed that a potential market for his handlebars which offer a variety of different hand positions and allows for less stress across the rider's shoulders has been removed by a bunch of middle aged men who had nothing to do with the development of gravel bikes in the first place....

And to be fair if you've removed bikes which don't have drops, tandems, recumbents and road bikes, then you what you are left with are a diamond frames made out of a variety of materials spanning a couple of wheel sizes...

..much like road bikes I expect the uci to begin to tighten the regulations in the future, even to the speciation of top tube design..

Firstly, this is way off topic from the original "Are touring bikes old fashioned?" aim of the thread and secondly, you're wrong on everything else you've posted.

Equality Act 2010 doesn't apply (at least not in full) to sports where issues of distance / time have long been separately mandated and age group separation is common. eg tennis is best of 3 for women, best of 5 for men. There's a big debate in running about distance in some of the events (arguing against making all distances equal for all branches of the sport) and cycling has an interesting mix of equality (like the recent changes to track sprint and pursuit) vs "inequality" in MTB and road in terms of distance covered. That debate isn't really for this thread though.

And the UCI have already stated quite openly that they have no intention on restricting the evolving format of gravel.
https://off.road.cc/content/feature/gra ... know-11073

The UCI are also not remotely involved in any aspect of touring bike design so quite why it's been brought up is a mystery. I know it's always been the popular thing to slag off the big bad governing body but it's got no relevance to this thread.