Functional bikes. Not Porn not Anti

That there'll be one of them Crust Clydesdales

Tore preferes shorter cranks, so he takes old 175 mm and drills and taps new holes for the pedals at 153 mm and cuts of the excess material at the end.

Yup, Crust Clydesdale. Often imitated, never duplicated.

I also did this to an old set of MT62 cranks. I always thought even 165mm cranks looked a bit long for the missus who's 167cm short. And when we moved away from track cranks on her bikes I couldn't find any decent double or triple cranks in 165mm or shorter (actually I could but a) I didn't fancy them b) they were too pricey and c) I had a good stockpile of 175mm cranks).

I wouldn't use the term milled but the process involved a drill press, pedal taps, angle grinder and some files. Now she has custom 155mm MT62 cranks and her rotation looks much better. She told me it was a bit weird at first but got used to it after just a few km's. She can't really hammer down like she used to on 170mm cranks when she's out of the saddle but otherwise she's completely sold on the idea of shorter cranks for shorter people. A bit like smaller frames, handlebars, wheels etc.

That makes much more sense, and those cranks would make ideal candidates for that with their profile. Thanks

My Bike Friday became more functional with the rack/basket addition. Zip ties for the basket and the rack "folds" enough that I should still be able to get it into the suit case with the bike for travel. Basket is smallish and would have to go in a carry on or checked bag to the destination.

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Not sure if best place, but any recommendations on a nice functional, sporty bike?

I love my AWOL, but the wheelbase, weight and tall head tube make day trips a bit tiring when wanting to go faster (as opposed to being a real joy on tours etc).

Would need full fenders, absolute minimum of 32 tyre clearance (more better), will be using a bagman too for Carradice. Sporty, but not a race bike.

I have a Giant Revolt that I absolutely love and would recommend but you should first
find out what kind of geometry you want because that is going to make the biggest
difference.

Omnium CXC
Pelago Stavanger

Surly midnight special
soma wolverine
Cube nuroad race fe or radon regard fe

Cube Nuroad fe

I saw one of those with the mudguards and everything and it looked like a great commuter.
Does anyone here own one of has ever ridden one??

sick

I had one, with Schwalbe G-Ones and Supernova dynamo lights, which ran beautifully through the rear rack with integrated fender which I immediately removed when I got it. Frame was on the stiff side, but I found it fun to get up little bumps in the road as it would be easy to give it a kick.

FYI, I swapped it for a Midnight Special. Purely for looks and favouring steel, mind.

I'm confident it would have made a lovely commuter indeed. You see a lot of them about here in Berlin – the home of practical and functional.

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This is a left field opinion, but how about a Specialized Sequoia? I used mine as a club ride bike for quite a while and with lighter road wheels and skinny, well skinny for something with clearance for 700x45c it was super comfortable and kept up ok. I had 700x32c with full guards at one point and there was plenty of space.
But I’ll give a massive thumbs up for the Surly MS absolutely love mine, proper road geo and room for massive tyres or just run some smaller ones if you like.

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Tonight's carry

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Specialized Sequoia

Yeah I did think that, but they're few and far between now.

I quite like the Diverge, but the Roubaix sl8 looks pretty good, takes wider tyres and has three bottle cages and can take mudguards.

Anyone ridden one?

Thanks for the other suggestions too all.

I'm thinking an ideal functional winter road bike for me would be

all steel frame and fork,
disc brakes
Clearance for 35 with mudguards
Drop bar
Hub gear
Dynamo routing
Endurance/ touring geometry
Classic steel looks e.g. like Singular cycles

Basically something as simple to maintain as possible.

Anything I should be looking at? Possibly custom?

Wouldn't this be very heavy?
Disc tabs,rotors etc could potentially add a kilo to a steel bike's weight.
Factor in a hub gear too and you could be looking at 26lbs plus.

What kind of shifter do you expect to use?
I'm not aware of any stock builds with IGH and drop bars.
Could convert at Bombtrack Arise singlespeed to hub gears or Pelago Hanko Commuter to drop bars.

Sounds like a genesis day one maybe

Shand Stoater Rohloff?

just checking you've looked at the "obvious" - Thorn/SJS? they have rohloff options for drop-bar & after many years of "don't do disc brakes on steel forks it's shit", they now do "disc brakes on steel forks is shit, but here they are"...?

Böttcher, co-motion and a few other do it with rohloff and di2 alfine11 is even easier to incorporate with drop bars. you can also check through this to find stock rohloff drop bar bikes

Banger !