Functional bikes. Not Porn not Anti

Rings are 38/24, was running 44/28 before a chainring swap hence the odd mech placement. It's friction so it can be made to shift regardless but not as nicely as it would if properly set up, and the lower bottle bolt is preventing such.

I'm running a 38/24 Deore double crank on my Trek 520, and I ran into the same problem with the bottle bolt when trying to set up my Tiagra front derailer. I had an Alivio triple front derailer in the low clamp version laying around, and I managed to make it work with my Tiagra STI's. The cage now sits flush with the big ring, and the shifting is pretty good.

I'm not sure if it would work with your shifters, but it could be worth a try - just be a aware of the cage not hitting the chainstay when in the small ring.

edit: Tiagra 4700 STI's, if anyones interrested.

You could start with a 700c 60mm GB and ease out the curve in the profile a bit.

Compass actually recommends Honjo H80 650B guards (62mm) for their 26x2.3" Rat Trap Pass tyres, so think I'm going that route.

I think it looks good:

Oh yeah, if you've got the dorrah, they look class.

Mine (new) are on eBay right now.

Sweet!

What’s up with that front lamp placement?

What's the fork?

Crust 65mm offset Evasion fork.

Dang thats some offset. Does look pretty eager for a front load i guess. How is handling unloaded? And was it also to reduce toe overlap?
Btw, very pretty bike as always ♡

Unloaded it handles like a fat pig on stilts, although that also might have been caused by not enough pressure in the tires. Haven't ridden it unloaded since airing 'em up.

Did so to get a lower trail number for better front load handling. Loaded up it's pretty nice. Still different from a typical high trail bike. Other bonus is more room for a larger bottle underneath the DT, although not enough chainring/crank clearance to keep the Blackburn cage underneath for some Nalgene carrying.

Also, last rack and dynamo tail light fitted. This thing is prepped for proper carry everything touring.

Lots of bolts going on with the front end, and nearly every braze-on on the bike is in use. It's great.

Nice!! It looks pretty close to reaching its full potential.

I've been looking lots more at trail and front end geo as im working on a functional fork for retro mtbs, so its all starting to make sense.

I feel like having a low trail bike is really rad, but only if you have enough bikes to swap between so it rarely needs to be ridden unloaded. Like in your case, this one is so specifically put together to carry shit, that it makes sense.

But lets say you're a 2 bikes kinda guy: if you consider how decent a mid-high trail setup actually handles with a front load, it would be a shame to put a low trail fork on your one do it all bike and spoil all the riding done with out a front load.

But then again, i dont own a low trail setup so cant really speak from experience.. but i do have lots of mid-high trail bikes i only front load, and they work just fine.

1-1/8?

Looks solid👌🏼

The fork im working on?

Yes, and maybe also some 1"

I lied when I said I was done tinkering with this bike.

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Even better now!

Thank you! I think so too, aesthetically and practically.

Cool! Looking forward to seeing it :-)

My Pelago has 41 mm of trail with the 63mm offset fork, 73 degree HA and 35mm tyres.
It handles like a dream imo, but I also have more than a kilo on the front with the large Pelago rack, which weighs more than a kilo I think.

I rode the my old Kona Lava Dome (around 70 mm trail, I think) with the same rack and I can definitely say the lower trail is an improvement on wheel flop, especially carrying a load.

A functional mtb fork would be good with more offset - something like 50-60 mm, maybe even as high as 70 mm..

What are the jubilee clips on the end of the front rack for?

Probably to hold in place the lower tab on Ortlieb panniers?

To be honest im thinking more of a 45mm offset, so the trail wont be particularly low.

My gut feeling is that having low trail on a bike that wont be front loading more than 75% of the time is almost a shame. But again, maybe the handling of unloaded low trail bikes isnt as bad as i think it is!

Regardless, this is an interesting read :) They seem to think its 'all hype' ;)
https://www.analogcycles.com/debunking-low-trail/

That's certainly an interesting read!

Rockhoppeur

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