Is there a market for an off the shelf steel light tourer?

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fossala
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Re: Is there a market for an off the shelf steel light tourer?

Post by fossala »

Sweep wrote: 15 Aug 2022, 10:12am
fossala wrote: 15 Aug 2022, 9:47am
Sweep wrote: 15 Aug 2022, 9:09am
kind of what I was thinking.
Also strikes me that the Hewitt Cheviot SE is an ideal light tourer/day ride bike - bought mine as a full on tourer but don't use as that.
No longer current I believe but lots still around (including on here fairly often) and the frame also had other brandings.
I don’t think it is, nor the thorns. If you compare them to something from 20 years ago you’ll notice how unforgiving they are.
I'm no tech expert on these mysteries but mine feels pretty light on its feet since I changed the Conti touring tyres it came with to Vittoria Hypers.
You can only compare what you’ve used previously. I’ve owned maybe 60 bikes and worked as a mechanic in a bike shop so maybe 6 a day for two years.

Vittoria hypers are good (if not slippery in the wet) but have nothing on a modern subtle tyre from the likes of challenge or Rene herse (compass).

Also modern bikes are good. But they are overbuilt, they have to be. Look at frame weights being 2.1kg instead of 1.6kg, forks that are over a kilo rather than 700g. While good tyres help they’re only part of the picture.

As I have said I have two bikes that have been a “dream ride”. One is my Mercian that is off the road at the moment but I won’t get rid of it as it has a ride quality that is so hard to find.
PH
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Re: Is there a market for an off the shelf steel light tourer?

Post by PH »

fossala wrote: 15 Aug 2022, 9:47am
Sweep wrote: 15 Aug 2022, 9:09am Also strikes me that the Hewitt Cheviot SE is an ideal light tourer/day ride bike - bought mine as a full on tourer but don't use as that.
No longer current I believe but lots still around (including on here fairly often) and the frame also had other brandings.
I don’t think it is, nor the thorns. If you compare them to something from 20 years ago you’ll notice how unforgiving they are.
I agree with pwa's point that rider weight will influence this comparison.
I'm also 95kg (+/- 5 depending) I find my Thorn Mercury and previously Hewitt Cheviot (Which was from almost twenty years ago) to be spot on as light day tourers. I couldn't ask for more in terms of comfort, yet they're not too fragile to load up a bit and venture slightly off the beaten path. Requires the right build to get what I want from the frame without adding all the stuff required for a full on tourer, but that's not difficult and as already said modern tyre choice makes a huge difference.
I've had a couple of Audax bikes that were borderline too flexible, which would no doubt have been fine for a lighter rider, I didn't really get on with them. The one bike I've had which hit my goldilocks sweet spot better than the Thorn or Hewitt was a SOMA ES. The sort of riding it was perfect for isn't the sort I do much of, so it went, but for that type of ride I've never had anything as nice.

All this of course is faffing at the margins, it's something for the bike obsessives, which is something a bit different from the cycling enthusiast. Nothing wrong with that I tell myself as I buy something else... unless we start thinking it's something we can't do without. The LEL gallery I linked earlier is worth a look if you need a reminder of this, along with various touring galleries, amongst the incredible bling (And a few novelty items) there's plenty of fairly standard bikes.
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fossala
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Re: Is there a market for an off the shelf steel light tourer?

Post by fossala »

Sorry, I completely disregard weight. I understand that all bikes handle differently due to load.
slowster
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Re: Is there a market for an off the shelf steel light tourer?

Post by slowster »

pwa wrote: 15 Aug 2022, 4:56am I wonder if one's perception of this is influenced by one's weight and height. I can see why someone weighing 75kg a riding a small frame might find they can have a pleasant ride on a bike with slender tubes and a bit of flex built in here and there. But I am nearer 95kg and over the years I have found slender tube bikes to be unnervingly noodly, especially on fast descents. It is only since slightly wider tubes and aheadset steering became the norm that I have found I can feel confident that my bike won't feel like mush going into a fast corner. Bear in mind that my extra mass is accompanied by a need for a large frame size. My early years in cycling were plagued with problems caused by excessive flex in the frameset.
I think that is the crux of it. We both have a Spa Ti Touring; yours is a 57cm and mine is a 54cm, and I am overweight at around 75kg. I find my Ti Touring significantly stiffer than my Raleigh, and unladen the Raleigh feels much nicer. In addition to any difference in the weight of rider and luggage, a bigger frame with the same tube sizes will also flex more. Brucey commented once that he had a frame with which was much nicer to ride than he expected given that it had only plain gauge tubing, and it was only belatedly that he realised the reason for that was that the frame was a larger size than he normally rode.
pwa wrote: 15 Aug 2022, 4:56am And having a lot of stiffness in the frame and forks does not mean abandoning a plush ride. These days we can enjoy the greater choice of higher volume, supple tyres. We are no longer struggling along with 23mm rubber and having to look to the frameset to supply springiness. We can leave the frameset to do the rigidness thing a bit better and rely more on good, higher volume tyres to refine the ride.
I use either 40mm Vittoria Hypers or 40mm Marathon Almotions on my Spa Ti Touring. The Raleigh feels better whether it's fitted with 32mm Hypers or 23mm HPs.
PH wrote: 15 Aug 2022, 10:52am All this of course is faffing at the margins
Just as you, pwa and other heavier/taller riders found the sort of frames generally made in the 1980s and 1990s with narrow tubes to be too flexible, and are much better served by modern frames with larger top and down tubes and 1 1/8" steerers, it seems many of us who are lighter/shorter and have had the experience of both types of frames find the older type similarly better for us, and we don't find the differences marginal.
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Re: Is there a market for an off the shelf steel light tourer?

Post by PH »

slowster wrote: 15 Aug 2022, 1:07pm
PH wrote: 15 Aug 2022, 10:52am All this of course is faffing at the margins
Just as you, pwa and other heavier/taller riders found the sort of frames generally made in the 1980s and 1990s with narrow tubes to be too flexible, and are much better served by modern frames with larger top and down tubes and 1 1/8" steerers, it seems many of us who are lighter/shorter and have had the experience of both types of frames find the older type similarly better for us, and we don't find the differences marginal.
Well, none of us can experience what another does, yet there's no shortage of opportunity to look and hear the choices others are making and their reasoning. That leads me to think the market for the type of bike you describe will be small, many riders, including the lightweights, have had them and moved on to something more modern. Those older bikes then languish unloved in a shed or fetch peanuts on eBay. So, while I'm not questioning anyone else's preferences, why would I, I am suggesting there's little evidence that they're commonly held.
crg
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Re: Is there a market for an off the shelf steel light tourer?

Post by crg »

Seems to me that in addition to frames of different sizes, we need frames rated for different weight in each size.
So frame choice to be based on size & weight.
Last edited by crg on 15 Aug 2022, 5:44pm, edited 2 times in total.
Nearholmer
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Re: Is there a market for an off the shelf steel light tourer?

Post by Nearholmer »

Let’s assume for a minute that a supplier does produce a run of these notional bikes, in a range of sizes, and possibly a range of stiffnesses at each size so as to suit riders of different weights. Let’s assume it’s a big firm, with the resources to promote the product, smooze the cycling journos, run a subtle web campaign, get articles in magazines etc.

So, come April 2023 you can buy these things.

Will they sell enough to make a decent profit and justify all the diversion of effort from other products (opportunity cost)?

My gut feel is that the answer is: no.

Why? I can’t for the life of me see how you could make the product appealing to enough people. Where is the ‘lifestyle appeal’ in it? It’s not super fast, it doesn’t allow you to perform death-defying downhill dashes through forests, it’s no clear that it’s really up for truly “off the beaten tracks” riding, it has no ‘tech appeal’ (because it deliberately eschews tech). And, it’s not going to be a cheap bike by any means, so you can forget most ‘occasional leisure’ buyers.

You’d sell some to older riders, but not many, because they already have something they either restored themselves or had made bespoke, and you might sell a few to retro-cool youngsters, but again not many, but I reckon that come October, you’d be heavily discounting the leftovers.

Which is a pity, because it would be very comfy!
rareposter
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Re: Is there a market for an off the shelf steel light tourer?

Post by rareposter »

crg wrote: 15 Aug 2022, 3:59pm Seems to me that in addition to frames of different sizes and in each size, need frames rated for different weights.
Quite a few manufacturers, within the last 5 years or so as both materials engineering and data measuring have developed, have started doing size-specific tubing (easier with carbon) - smaller frames don't usually need the same levels of stiffness as bigger frames for example so to get the same ride quality between XXS and XXL frames, you use different carbon lay-ups.
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Re: Is there a market for an off the shelf steel light tourer?

Post by ANTONISH »

rogerzilla wrote: 15 Aug 2022, 6:53am Isn't that close to an audax bike?
IMO they are both pretty well interchangeable.
What in the end is a tourer ? - I've seen many varieties of bikes used for touring - in fact in the fifties and sixties many of us used road bikes for a tour ( most of them in those times had mudguard eyes ), I've seen young Dutch and Germans touring on what I would consider to be heavy city bikes.
My own touring bike has front and rear fittings for racks but I've used it for audax - I've also used my "audax" bike for touring - albeit I had to use rubberized "P" clips to fit the carriers.
It seems that manufacturers are only too keen for us to buy the latest special purpose machine.
Years ago we rode "rough stuff" on whatever bike we had available.
Biospace
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Re: Is there a market for an off the shelf steel light tourer?

Post by Biospace »

slowster wrote: 14 Aug 2022, 10:09pm Every time I ride my 1980s Raleigh tourer I am struck by how much more comfortable it is and how nice it feels compared to modern touring/gravel bikes. Decades ago this type of bike probably accounted for the majority of the quality bike market. Now it seems to be almost impossible to buy a bike or frame of this type off the shelf.


Brucey wrote so many posts about this subject that I find it almost impossible to search through them to find any particular one, but it was clear that he was in favour of frames with threaded 1" steerers, quill stems and traditional narrow clamp diameter bars. Currently if someone wants a light tourer like that, the choice is either to seek a nice second hand example on Ebay, or to get a custom frame made.


To be clear, by light tourer I mean a steel frame with (certainly in the medium and smaller sizes) a 1" steerer, 1" top tube and 1 1/8" down tube, clearance for ~35mm tyres with mudguards, and - as 531colin stated - designed for lightly laden touring.

My Randonneur and Touristique are both superb riding machines, if I could find anything more suitable - fast, comfortable over a distance, then it would replace them, although I do use a Bear Valley SE with some ancient but rebuilt Quadra forks for using offroad.

The industry is financially driven by fashion, bikes like mine which had been around largely unchanged for decades by the time they vanished were the very antithesis of this, even 30 years ago. Why had the same fundamental design been around so long? Because there was a steady commercial demand, I presume, plus nobody could really improve on it.

New is always good for commerce and now that bikes are recreational more than transport we have a vast choice of niche products made on the other side of the world where there are few considerations for environmental pollution. None of them - for me - does as good a job of being a bike to go to work on or as load up for a few nights away as either, but there's an entire generation grown up with fat tubing, suspension forks and wide tyres riding up kerbs with arms rotated inwards to grip straight handlebars.

Perhaps it's not good commercially to have a bike which does everything you wish of it except riding where wheels aren't designed to go, but I'd be not at all surprised to see the return of what I grew up with in another 10 or 20 years with little changed other than room for an extra quarter inch of tyre. Would the fashion for as little exposed seatpin as possible return with it?
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Re: Is there a market for an off the shelf steel light tourer?

Post by scottg »

Nearholmer wrote: 15 Aug 2022, 4:50pm[snip]

Why? I can’t for the life of me see how you could make the product appealing to enough people. Where is the ‘lifestyle appeal’ in it? It’s not super fast, it doesn’t allow you to perform death-defying downhill dashes through forests, [sni]
You’d sell some to older riders, but not many, because they already have something they either restored themselves or had made bespoke, and you might sell a few to retro-cool youngsters, but again not many, but I reckon that come October, you’d be heavily discounting the leftovers.

Which is a pity, because it would be very comfy!
I found your bike company.
https://crustbikes.com/collections/fram ... bolt-canti
This is a light weight road and light gravel bike, so don't go all Evel Knievel thinking you're
Missy Giove bombing this thing down some single track. It's not designed for that.
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Nearholmer
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Re: Is there a market for an off the shelf steel light tourer?

Post by Nearholmer »

That looks very good, although I instantly spot a “mistake”, in that the derailleur hanger will forever be getting bent, until it breaks, and the supplier seems to have a sense of humour.

Oh, and I’d have to eat 25kg of pies to reach their design rider weight.
rareposter
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Re: Is there a market for an off the shelf steel light tourer?

Post by rareposter »

Biospace wrote: 15 Aug 2022, 5:19pm
The industry is financially driven by fashion, bikes like mine which had been around largely unchanged for decades by the time they vanished were the very antithesis of this, even 30 years ago. Why had the same fundamental design been around so long? Because there was a steady commercial demand, I presume, plus nobody could really improve on it.
We've sort of been here before with this thread:
viewtopic.php?t=149422

which was started because the OP was struggling to get his head around what was "best" and stuff that was old-fashioned vs new.

I'd disagree with the
plus nobody could really improve on it
because modern bikes are vastly improved over even a top-end bike of 20-30 years ago. Far more variety for custom builds, everything on the market is lighter, stiffer, stronger, better optimised for its intended purpose.

I've got quite a retro top end road bike - genuinely top end, the full-on World Tour level from early 2000's - and back in its day it was a phenomenal bike. Still rides nicely but compared to even a mid-range road bike now, it feels twitchy and flexy and a bit fragile. My modern road bike (nothing special at all; mid-range carbon frame, mid-range groupset) is far stiffer, faster, comfier and actually about the same weight in spite of the "lower grade" components.
I remember riding original CX bikes (the true old school, basically a stripped out road bike with canti's) and compared to my current carbon CX/gravel bike, it's worlds apart; the current one is so capable, far more comfortable and with fatter tyres and disc brakes it's also MUCH faster - as in if I were to race them back-to-back, it'd be minutes difference on even a basic CX course.
Biospace wrote: 15 Aug 2022, 5:19pm Would the fashion for as little exposed seatpin as possible return with it?
God I hope not, it looks truly terrible!
More seatpost is much better - you build the flex into that, shorten and stiffen the rear triangle so you have a neat stiff frame and a load of vertical compliance in the seatpost. Plus it's loads easier to fit racks, mudguards, lights, saddlebag etc if there's a long seatpost.
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Re: Is there a market for an off the shelf steel light tourer?

Post by scottg »

Nearholmer wrote: 15 Aug 2022, 6:22pm That looks very good, although I instantly spot a “mistake”, in that the derailleur hanger will forever be getting bent, until it breaks, and the supplier seems to have a sense of humour.

Oh, and I’d have to eat 25kg of pies to reach their design rider weight.
Sacrifices must be made. :)
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keyboardmonkey
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Re: Is there a market for an off the shelf steel light tourer?

Post by keyboardmonkey »

rareposter wrote: 15 Aug 2022, 6:33pm
biospace=time=1660580353 wrote: Would the fashion for as little exposed seatpin as possible return with it?
God I hope not, it looks truly terrible!
More seatpost is much better - you build the flex into that, shorten and stiffen the rear triangle so you have a neat stiff frame and a load of vertical compliance in the seatpost. Plus it's loads easier to fit racks, mudguards, lights, saddlebag etc if there's a long seatpost.
And it gives you somewhere suitable for your work stand to clamp to if, say, you favour Longboards (an old pic).

The other thing I wouldn’t hanker for on my modern bikes is cantis such as those on my old Touristique. I am much happier with dual pivot calipers.

Post clamp work stand
Post clamp work stand

Hardly any visible seat post makes it trickier to fit longer mudguards if you use a “Euro style” work stand
Hardly any visible seat post makes it trickier to fit longer mudguards if you use a “Euro style” work stand

I once took my Raleigh back to the shop I had bought it from. There’s barely an inch of seat post sticking out and when I picked it up later the original seat tube transfers had been crumpled and torn where the mechanic had clamped the FRAME :(

Re an off the peg light tourer I would go for a Spa Audax if I didn’t already have a few bikes that ticked enough boxes for me.
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