[David C]

I'm sick of my current heavy commuter, I need to spend some cash to get my mind off all the **** happening in my life lately. What's your ideas for a fun commuter bike for urban short to mid commutes (less than 15 miles round-trip, usually 6 miles/10km), to ride on winter too (must use 26" wheels), clearance for tires up to 2" wide, with compatibility for front disc brake and either Roller brake or disc brake in the rear, must be ready for a solid rear rack and full fenders, could be alu, steel or carbon, size small/med (max 17"), rear IGH would be fun too. Make it in a cool flat black, pimp orange, etc, and around $1k.

 

[ChristianCoté]

You just described a Surly Troll.

 

[David C]

Looks nice. But kinda expensive (almost $600 frameset or $1 300 complete) at first look. Also seems heavy by design, buy I'll have to look into it. Otherwise it's a fun bike from what I can read online. I already have a 100mm fork with my front disk brake and wheel, so I guess I'll only have to add a rear wheel and drivetrain to a frame. Maybe. Thanks.

 

[CommuterBoy]

You just described a Surly Troll.

ding ding ding

 

[David C]

I'm ordering a Troll frameset on Monday, $650 with tax. Too bad it's not available in pimp purple or orange, black will have to do.

 

[David C]

Please disregard my previous post. I actually bought it an hour ago from a small lbs I pass on my way to the bigger outdoor bike shop, and the owner made it $30 cheaper than the other guys without even me talking about pricing in the first place. So $620 with tax. Now I need a green crank with 73mm bb and green housing.

 

[ChristianCoté]

Glad I could be of service, it's a really great bike that you can do a lot with. If you ever want to run 650b, 700c, bikepack, tour, it's all there.

Enjoy your purchase!

 

[David C]

Thanks. Now I'm trying to decide between black or eggplant purple. The black looks like a cheap bike, but the purple doesn't look pimp enough on Surly website, although a Google image search with "Surly Troll eggplant" show some nice purple pimp Troll. Is the 2014 eggplant purple dark or pimp ? I love purple bikes

Also, is it only me of the Surly website doesn't really show much details in the few pictures ? Also, since it's an all-steel frame set, and I'll be commuting year round, how durable is the Surly powder coat in your experience ? Does it chip easily (mostly when you lock it up or in a bike rack) or is it a thick and flexible coating (not brittle) ? I'm gonna wax the frame and fork before the build and grease everything, but does it required extra wrapping of old inner tubes around the frame and forks ?

 

[scubaklook]

I vote purple. I got the black troll because I figured it would be less likely to be stolen. I built up a purple for a family member this summer and wish I had just gone ahead and gotten the purple. It is not super dark, kind of a medium. There are some decent pics in the Surly Troll thread.

The paint is pretty durable. Mine is an urban utility bike and after a couple years of being treated like one it only has some mild scratches no real chips. Much better than the salsa vaya I had that chipped everytime you looked at it.

 

[ChristianCoté]

I'd vote purple as well, it definitely has more character. I'd say that it catches the light pretty well, so how pimp it looks is going to really depend on the conditions.

I miss the orange colour of previous years. Maybe eventually we'll get it in a nice bright blue.

 

[David C]

Thanks, that's some good info. My current frame is a 96ish GT Tempest in purple-blue and I have a 100mm RS Dart 2 fork since '10, new front wheel with BB7 brake, rear is still an old Nexus 7 IGH laced on a 24" Alex rim that I picked up a few years ago for $5 at a garage sale, and now it's starting to give up, so I found a Nexus 3 laced on a 26" rim that I'm gonna swap from a friend, except I had to clean the whole hub and figure out which parts are missing and put it back together, so I'm still waiting on a few little parts from the distributor before I can rebuild the Nexus 3 and get rid of the 24" Nexus 7. Plus I have a rollerbrake in the rear. Currently using the stock triple crank with a recent XT bb and LX derailleur, SRAM X4 front shifter. I can shift almost always in the front, it's really setup perfectly and I get superfast acceleration, but thanks to the whole setup of the bike, it's hard to maintain a decent cruising speed. Lucky with all the traffic lights around here, you find yourself doing accelerations more often then keeping up a good pace.

I'm gonna try to go with maybe a double or single crankset, throw a Marathon Winter 26x1.75 in the front (will be nice and square on a 27mm wide rim) and a CX Pro 26x1.35 in the rear (curious to see if I can maintain my grip and comfort in the rear with less rolling resistance), stick with the same brakeset, seatpost and cockpit. I'll add full fenders and a rear rack, ideally bags too or something I can use as a back-pack at school, but that I can hook on the rack when I commute. Gonna add a few bottle cages or big plastic jars to carry my water and chain/padlock, add safety lights and mounts for real lights, some black reflective tape on the forks front and rear, maybe a wider bar for more room for mounts (found a purple anodized one for $20 on eBay, pretty legit too), and maybe add some air horn and camera mount.

Should get close to $1k in the end. Last time I rode on a rigid steel was with my old Raleigh Summit over 5 years ago and that thing was way too stiff and killing my wrists. My brother's '96 GT Timberline cro-mo is actually very nice and smooth, I really feel confident on that bike, even better after I got him a sweet 2001 Marz' Z5 100mm fork. Too bad that I decided to give him that bike when I first got it second-hand haha. I reckon the Troll all-steel frameset will be somewhat similar to that Timberline and I'll try the Troll fork first and see if my wrists approves. My RS Dart 2 is 4.5 pounds, so quite heavier than the Troll steel fork, but our streets here are even worst than our trails...

I was also thinking of getting rid of the heavy IGH setup and get a disc hub with single cog in the rear, use a singleator-type device and run a triple crank in the front, like a road triple. That'd save so much weight, but I'm still shy of running out of gears when I hit cruising speeds. I guess I would have to size the rear cog by trying out over time.

 

[David C]

Summer 2012, Dew Tour at the beach in Ocean City, MD !


His first winter (2012-2013) !


His second winter (2013-2014) !



End of September, almost done with tune-up since the build 3 years ago.


28th of October, after a driver intentionally ran into me, I landed 12ft further and my bike was stamped into the rear of a car parked 15 ft from the initial impact.

 

[newfangled]

Still really sucks about that driver.

I think you'll like rigid, although you should give it a couple of rides because it'll force you to learn a slightly different technique. And big tires (2.2+) at low pressures (<30psi) help too.

 

[David C]

Still really sucks about that driver.

I think you'll like rigid, although you should give it a couple of rides because it'll force you to learn a slightly different technique. And big tires (2.2+) at low pressures (<30psi) help too.

Yeah, the police doesn't want to press charges against him. Plus I'll have to pay a $15 fine because I was riding on the left of the one way, very narrow street. With fees, it actually goes up to $42 total. The driver got fined $283 with fees for passing a cyclist without enough distance, plus 2 points of demerits, but he won't be fined another $200 for passing a vehicle by the right nor another $600 for neglecting to assist the victim or contacting 911.

This winter I'll try to actually go skinny in the tires, hoping to reduce rolling resistance, because 90% of the time I'm riding on pavement, streets are cleared within 24 hours of any snow storm and I only have a very short commute of less than 2 miles. Before I used to ride 2" to 2.25" tires with or without studs and while it was fun on the snow, it sucked big time 15 days out of 20 days of commute. However I won't be saving much weight, the Schwable CX Pro 26x1.35 in the rear is 400g and the Marathon Winter 26x1.75 in the front is over 1kg. But I got a very good deal on both tires, at $35 for the Winter and $15 for the CX, so I'll give it a try. I like the reflective sidewall on the Marathon Winter too. I wish all city tires would have them, it's such a big safety feature. Otherwise right now I'm using a worn-out Kenda 8-block small 26x2.1 in the front and it's really nice for the city.

 

[NDD]

Definitely keep the rigid fork IMO. Is most of your riding pavement? A lot of my riding is pavement and some capricious singletrack or grass/ dirt path adventures. I don't think there is any reason for a suspension fork for that type of riding. Might as well let the tires do the work.

 

[BrianMc]

DavidC: "...he won't be fined... another $600 for neglecting to assist the victim or contacting 911"

I assume because someone else did call, so it could not be proven that he would have otherwise done so? Were you intending a left turn, or are their particular Montreal rules for bikes being to the left on one way streets in Montreal? In other words did they make something up?

 

[CommuterBoy]

Late to the party, but congrats! I have the Ogre and I love it. In my experience the surly stickers are horrible and they will randomly fall off in chunks, but the paint is very durable.

 

[David C]

NDD, the streets are are so full of potholes and cracks that a front suspension is a real blessing, even with big tires. But I'll try the rigid fork (steel should help) and see how my wrists do. Also I like the wide options of mounts and to finally run a full fender in the front.

Brian, I'm the one who called 911. The driver never got out of his car until I got hold of the operator, after picking myself up the ground, crawling in front of his car 30ft away to make sure he doesn't drive away and he never even spoke to me. I was riding on the left, but I was trying to actually pull to the right half of the road, since there isn't even enough room for a car to pass, but he kept sticking to my rear wheel so I couldn't move right in front of him or to go to the extreme right of the street. There's cars parked on both sides and you can't physically fit a car and a person next to each other on that street. No matter which side I would have been, it doesn't change the fact that you can't pass without running over. They didn't made anything up, but they sure didn't do much either. Our driving regulation code is outdated, the only article treating of a bicycle use are dated from 1986 and there's like 6 articles only. We're militating for changes, but in the meanwhile people are free to run us over as they wish and we have to deal with shitty ass laws that incapacity riding in many safe ways, like to be allowed to ride on the left (on one way streets mostly) or to take the full lane if needed, or to dictate a real safe passing distance for cars (right now it just says a reasonable safe distance, aka just don't hit them too hard). We can't turn right on a red light in Montreal, even if you're on a bike and you did a full stop before turning. A lot of ridiculous and dangerous situations happening everyday here unfortunately.

CB, thanks, I agree the Surly stickers never really made me happy, I will probably take them off anyway and splatter some various bike stuff stickers to make it less attractive to *******s.


Now I'm trying to decide if I should go with a mtn triple crank or a road double in front... I'll have a Nexus 3 in the rear, but might actually go with a single speed hub at some point and keep a front crank with double or triple rings to help with climbs and winter slush. Either way, I need to buy a crank, since my current one is the stock '96 Alivio with a recent 68mm square taper XT BB. I can get a Deore M590 triple for $86, or a Sora double or triple for $75, brand new from a local distributor.

 

[CommuterBoy]

Are you going drop bars, or flat bar? I've had both crank set-ups, but eventually landed on the mountian triple for the Ogre, because that's what you'll want if you ever actually do any touring with it. I built the Ogre after doing a little touring on a bike I had to do a bunch of swapping on to make it tour-ready, and wanted to be able to just grab the bike and go if the opportunity came up again. For strictly commuting, I'd go with the double and drop bars. I had a road double with no front D for a long time...sweet set-up. Leave it in the Big ring all the time, and kick it down with your toe in the rare extreme headwind or monster climb. With the predictability of my commute, a front D was just extra garbage to haul around. I was never using it anyway.

 

[David C]

Well I'm keeping my riser bars and I've been doing the no fd with triple crank thing a few times, it's fun, but when the very first 200ft of your daily commute is a steep climb on a street, then a slow uphill on pavement full of potholes and stop signs, it's fun to have a fd tuned like a swiss watch.

I think I'm gonna order the SLX M675 double crank in 28/40t ($117 CAD at ChainReaction) and stick it on my XC bike with single NW ring, then use my old LX M571 from the XC bike which has a 73mm BB and the rings from the new crankset, plus I have a few granny 22t rings left in the bin if I ever need. Then I'll be able to keep my fd and shifter setup. Streets are are worst than trails, remember that haha.