and the Rohloff speedhub.
The frame is dependable and well made. It's no frills, but its beauty is in its elegance. The welds are smooth and the fork details are fine. The cost is reasonable too. It's not the lightest frame around, but if you know my brother, you know that keeping the weight of the bike down is kind of unnecessary. The Rohloff Speedhub is a 14-speed internal gear system that, while again not being the lightest bike part around, is one of the most well-machined and durable pieces of bicycle gear technology. The cost on this item is quite another matter. For the Canadian shops that carry them, the MSRP is around $2000. The little bike shop in Altona, Back Alley Cycle, managed to find one, and bring it in, for well under that. Kudos to Bruce and Curt for this! The reviews say that the Rohloff is durable beyond 100,000 kms and that, in fact, it only starts to run and shift smoothly after 10,000 kms!
Here's the weirdness of this endeavour. Tim recently moved to a place near Coderington (which is near Belleville) in southern Ontario, a few hours East of Toronto. There he tried to get the bike shop near his place to order the above items in, and help him build his dream bombproof all-season machine. Uh, no. For various reasons the guy was not prepared to or interested in this project. So from the heart of the progressive, always better than everybody else in Canada land of southern Ontario, Tim had to turn to southern Manitoba for help. He found it in Altona (where he could have had both the Rohloff and the Surly ordered in (the Rohloff was ordered and arrived in the shop within one week)) and in Winnipeg (Olympia (Portage) brought in the Surly, and Natural Cycle will do the build for him). So help me out here. How can it be that at the centre of the universe (at least the Canadian universe) you can't get good bicycle service, while in the hinterland, it's readily available from a variety of sources? Yes I'm sure he could have found a shop or two in Toronto to do it, but my point is ... I don't know ... what is my point? Go with them what brung 'ya?
Anyway, it's going to be a great bike, and if I get a picture of the finished product, I'll post it here for you.
2 comments:
Hey Paul,
Great post! (although I might be a little bit biased). I will definitely see to it that you get a photo of the bike when it arrives at our place. Can't wait!
Tim.
Paul -- good project. About a year ago I found a very clean Surly LHT and a used Rohloff on eBay and converted it over. Love it to death -- it's really ideal for touring but right now it has to serve as a commuter. I will be interested to see where you end up with the twist shifter if your bro is using drop bars. There is post on ebay right now from a company in Austrailia that claims to have perfected an electronic shifter for the Rohloff -- $325USD -- not much more do I know. An iffy proposition, methinks. Anyway -- good luck to you guys.
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