yashicamat
New Member
- Location
- Macclesfield, Cheshire
In early summer this year, I decided it was time to buy myself a decent touring bike.
Biting the bullet on cost, I decided to set myself a ceiling in the order of Dawes Galaxy type money. The Galaxy was the obvious initial thought being virtually a household name, but my LBS also stocked Surly bikes, a brand I'd never heard of before really. I spent some time looking at reviews and it would seem that the LHT is a worthy touring machine.
Back to the LBS eventually (after scraping the funds together), I gave both a Galaxy and the LHT a good test ride. While the quality of the Galaxy was evident, I was bowled over by the solid feel and smooth ride of the LHT. The components were all good quality too, so I purchased the Surly at the end of July, complete with SKS mudguards, a rack and a Brooks B17 saddle.
Here was the bike upon getting it home that day:
Well, 537 miles further on and as we enter winter, I gave the bike a good service and clean, dismantled the drivetrain and thoroughly cleaned everything and decided to reflect on the miles covered since I bought it.
During a 3 day tour of Shropshire in August the bike was very comfortable and remarkably easy to handle, even loaded up with camping kit, be it batting along a flat lane or slicing up a twisty downhill road. It would seem that the frame is equally well suited to both loaded and unloaded use, with day rides being comfortable although it does ride better when loaded. The only slight issue I felt was that it was lacking braking power a little (especially when loaded up), so as part of this service I've upgraded the front pads . . . we'll see how this goes. This bike is very stable at speed, I've had it to nearly 50mph on a wide fast downhill locally and it was steady as a rock, but with the aforementioned lack of braking power, I wouldn't take this bike over 30mph with any amount of kit strapped on.
The bike 130 miles into the tour of Shropshire:
The gearing is absolutely perfect, there are low enough gears to drag the fully loaded bike up 15% gradients, yet enough top end to keep some pedalling going on fast downhills. I rapidly tired off the indexed bar ends for the rear mech and switcing the indexing off resulted in a much more pleasant gearchange with no nasty clicks from the index.
The bike seems to draw a lot of comments, partly because of the unusual colour, but also because the brand seems to be relatively unknown on this side of the pond. Probably a good thing too, as it hopefully is less of a target to theives.
Overall I am very pleased with the bike, it is a bit heavier than some of the competition, but at the same time it feels like it will go on for decades . . . in fact, I'm sure it will.
The bike now:
Cheers,
Rob
Biting the bullet on cost, I decided to set myself a ceiling in the order of Dawes Galaxy type money. The Galaxy was the obvious initial thought being virtually a household name, but my LBS also stocked Surly bikes, a brand I'd never heard of before really. I spent some time looking at reviews and it would seem that the LHT is a worthy touring machine.Back to the LBS eventually (after scraping the funds together), I gave both a Galaxy and the LHT a good test ride. While the quality of the Galaxy was evident, I was bowled over by the solid feel and smooth ride of the LHT. The components were all good quality too, so I purchased the Surly at the end of July, complete with SKS mudguards, a rack and a Brooks B17 saddle.
Here was the bike upon getting it home that day:
Well, 537 miles further on and as we enter winter, I gave the bike a good service and clean, dismantled the drivetrain and thoroughly cleaned everything and decided to reflect on the miles covered since I bought it.
During a 3 day tour of Shropshire in August the bike was very comfortable and remarkably easy to handle, even loaded up with camping kit, be it batting along a flat lane or slicing up a twisty downhill road. It would seem that the frame is equally well suited to both loaded and unloaded use, with day rides being comfortable although it does ride better when loaded. The only slight issue I felt was that it was lacking braking power a little (especially when loaded up), so as part of this service I've upgraded the front pads . . . we'll see how this goes. This bike is very stable at speed, I've had it to nearly 50mph on a wide fast downhill locally and it was steady as a rock, but with the aforementioned lack of braking power, I wouldn't take this bike over 30mph with any amount of kit strapped on.
The bike 130 miles into the tour of Shropshire:
The gearing is absolutely perfect, there are low enough gears to drag the fully loaded bike up 15% gradients, yet enough top end to keep some pedalling going on fast downhills. I rapidly tired off the indexed bar ends for the rear mech and switcing the indexing off resulted in a much more pleasant gearchange with no nasty clicks from the index.
The bike seems to draw a lot of comments, partly because of the unusual colour, but also because the brand seems to be relatively unknown on this side of the pond. Probably a good thing too, as it hopefully is less of a target to theives.
Overall I am very pleased with the bike, it is a bit heavier than some of the competition, but at the same time it feels like it will go on for decades . . . in fact, I'm sure it will.
The bike now:
Cheers,
Rob
