So I’ve just got one week left to get everything together for my big trip to Japan. My travel bike is fully decked out for touring now….except for the gearing.
Jeremy Sycip came through with the new fork with lowrider mounts, as well as powdercoating the Tubus Duo rack and the fork to match the frame. Touring wasn’t on my mind when I designed this bike. The bike is basically a track bike with 130mm rear spacing and a derailleur hanger to make it a road race bike. The fork allows me to load up the front with panniers since the rear drop outs don’t have eyelets.
I have to say that I like the weight distribution with the bags on the front rather than the rear like my Davidson road bike. Part of it has to be the lower center of gravity for the front racks.
As pictured, the bike has Ortlieb Sport-packer Classic panniers on the fork mount, an Ortlieb Ultimate 5 handlebar bag and an Ortlieb Bike Box 3 on the custom Davidson titanium seat post rack. I don’t think Bill is eager to make more of these racks, but it works awesome.
I rode the bike on Bainbridge Island as a shake-down run, and I don’t think that the compact double crank with a 12-27 cassette is going to be low enough. Much as I hate triples, I’ll be re-kitting the bike with Tiagra triple cranks and derailleurs hooked to the current right DA sti and Suntour downtube shifter.
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