Good morning,
They are both nice. Ian, if your breaking steel and carbon, then alloy looks to be the way to go !
Break the habit.
Aluminum seems to have a different problem, people nick them,
https://www.cyclechat.net/threads/norco-pinched-just-in-case-anyone-sees-it-on-ebay-etc.284440/
Titanium is the way to go, once you've owned a Ti bike there is no going back.
I've never had a titanium frame so it is tempting, and a quick look at
https://www.vannicholas.com/touring-bikes/yukon was tempting, although I do need to learn more as this seems to be a budget frame their prices soar pretty quickly. Planet X have an offering by I have no idea about their stuff quality wise, is it a bargain or does it have a big cost cutting feature.
Waltly seem to have a good reputation, for me the big issue is that they will make exactly what the plans say and I have never specified a bike frame to that level of detail,
no I didn't mean that I wanted the bottle cage holders on the side of the downtube. :
I did a lot of my commuting fixed, a nice simple bike, not a lot to go wrong, they worked well.
Tempting as I have fond memories of riding a track bike with a front brake in the 1970s for club 10mile TT but there are a couple of really short sections that might have to be walked.
been commuting on 2x8 since i started around 2008 ish .
On a variety of alloy frames
I could go bling on 10 speed but like you say running costs and ease of home maintenance make such bikes a better option for me.
Ride mate just had 2 new tyres, new headset and a recable from the LBS £260 ! i think they saw him coming .
I had the BB replaced by an LBS the first time as I thought it was going to be a one-off and it saved buying the tools, £20 labour was fine £50 for the bearing was high but I said okay as I explained that it was a Shimano crank (24mm) into BB30 (30mm) and that was the going price for a bearing and adaptor. All they replaced was the bearing, leaving the old and damaged adaptor and the bearing lasted about 4 months.
I thought that carbon was supposed to give a comfortable ride?
In my humble opinion when talking about mass produced bike bits, materials is almost always marketing hype, it's usually about the geometry, does that bit load the bike in the way that you like. There is a recent thread where a chap swapped his steel fork for a CF one and it changed the ride for the better
Thanks for these, it seems that Facebook is taking over from
eBay as these are much better than what's on eBay.
I am about to commit a "crime" and install a Claris chainset (alloy cranks and steel rings 46/34)
https://www.cyclechat.net/threads/found-a-bargain-do-tell.16260/page-1247#post-7016996 onto the Raleigh which could make it into the perfect commuter.
The only thing left to decide is mechanical STI or stay with D/T shifters. I once got a fair degree of abuse for suggesting that STI for the front mech was not that great, I don't know now much abuse as a mod edited the post before I read it.
The nicked Norco had Claris STI shifters and the brake lever and cable take-up mechanism felt like they could be Ultegra, only the cable release lever felt like Claris. So providing I can avoid any nasty pull ratio issues I am quite happy to connect Claris brifters to 105/Ultegra mechs.
This would mean that I don't have to buy a new bike at all.
Bye
Ian
is performing commute duties admirably although I am getting close to giving up on the Sun Race shifters, they were intended to be a stop gap whilst waiting for something ideal on ebay and that was a bad plan.
