23 Mind Blowing Touring & Bikepacking Bike Features!

[Music] I've been documenting the technical side of touring bikes for about a decade and in my time I've seen some mind-blowing touring and backpacking features I've just spent the last week scouring the Internet so I can take you on a tour of the most insane touring bike features ever conceived we will start out with lots of nifty but uncommon bike features that I really appreciate on my various bikes but you really want to stick around until the end of this video as the features are going to get seriously out of hand one of the coolest features you can find on premium touring bikes is Schmidt SL Dynamo wiring with the matching SL dropouts all you need to do is fit a front wheel to your bike and your Dynamo system is all wired up while plugging in a dynamo cable really isn't actually a big deal I figure if touring Forks are going to be equipped with internal Dynamo cabling we may as well add the SL connectors to complete the clean look after the Dynamo table has run up the inside of your fork it makes sense to keep the internal wiring right through to the back of the bike this is actually not as hard as you'd think given their holes in the end of most frame tubes the best touring racks use hollow steel tubes and this is a great opportunity to wire rear Dynamo lights inside your rear rack I have drilled a small hole at the top of my rack so that my cable is hidden all the way to my lives on the subject of internal routing another very neat feature is guided internal cable routing for your brakes and gears this not only looks incredible but it silences your cables on bumpy roads and keeps them free from debris too it's a pretty labor-intensive process given the need to drill holes in your frame install long metal tubes and finish off the surface but it's definitely one of my favorite features of the kögel world traveler [Music] direct mount frame packs have been around for a while in the handmade bike community but it's only recently that major adventure bike brands salsa Marin and Niner have committed to this setup other than looking super clean these bags are actually quite functional as velcro bag straps usually like to scratch your frame when the mud and grit inevitably works its way in anodizing is a surface treatment process which allows you to add color to your bike without adding any extra weight plus it's more durable than paint and less prone to scratching - the most incredible anodizing is done by Firefly bikes just check out how pretty these designs are frames aren't the only thing we can anodized though you can buy many components in anodized colors and you can even take your fenders and roll off hub shell to an anodizing specialist to make something truly unique it's safe to say that artist Kerrigan thha has carved out a niche for herself while motorbike and horse saddles have long been decorated it only seems reasonable that somebody carves up your favorite bike saddle - according to Cara nothing carbs as nicely as a Brooke saddle Cara has gone on to create a very impressive resume of saddles from a Japanese Great Wave saddle design right through to pretty much anything you can possibly imagine another artist doing cool things with saddles is Mike Peel in Australia he recovers many popular saddles with incredible designs and colors his combination of perforated hole sizes raised edges and subtle colors will add something truly special to your bike Carbon makes for a great frame and fork material but did you know you can also get custom-made Carbon touring accessories this is a cofee carbon fork with integrated front rando rack the rack adds 270 grams to a fork and calfy can actually build these into your existing carbon for another popular touring component that can be made using carbon is your fenders let's shift gears a bit don't know whether to pick opinion 18-speed gearbox or a roll-off for ten-speed hub on your next Turing bike well why not combine both that way you can have 250 to individual gears and you can finally pedal your buff legs at a hundred and twenty eight kilometers an hour okay this is technically an April Fool's joke but you could actually make it happen there are a few people on earth who would actually pedal fast enough for this drive system but this boss bird is one and this poor guy is another but seriously you can extend the range of a roll of hub by fitting a schlump two-speed crank set to your bike these nifty cranks have an overdrive gear of 1.65 or 2.5 times which results in an insanely wide gear range of 868 percent or 1315 percent Aero bars are gaining in popularity on backpacking bikes but what you may not realize is that for ultra events and adventure riding in general Aero bars aren't really about speed most users will agree that the biggest advantage is the extra comfort they offer by taking the weight off your hands and wrists and changing the angle of your back and neck if you know your exact bar height and reach why not integrate the arm pads into a custom stem cap or a fork for that matter in the case of this Victoire build a really neat by packing accessory that can be integrated into a custom aero bar is a magnetic hydration pack hose connector these allow your hydration bladder hose to always be at the ready let's hang out at the front of the bike a little longer and ogle over some custom bar and stem combos it turns out that I'm not the only person who can design a handle bar to their every specification anybody can do curved cycles and Moonman bikes make some incredible custom handlebars James a black sheep also constructs some very appealing titanium bar and stem combinations adjusting for all the dimensions back sweep and angle you prefer but if you throw enough money at him James can even integrate the handlebar stem and fork together into one incredible work of art James doesn't only make incredible handlebars he also makes custom leaf sprung titanium forks that require zero maintenance which is perfect for the backcountry or an extended tour the only fork option which operates using the same principles is the incredible loft carbon suspension fork when you order a custom frame you're given the option for various coupler and frame break designs while these options are rarely cheap the idea is that you can break your bike into smaller pieces so that you can fly without oversized baggage fees hopefully recouping the upfront cost over time one of the most impressive bikes that will fit into two standard cases is this moon man tandem fat bike it boggles my mind that all that titanium rubber leather and carbon fits into two tiny boxes but couplers don't have to just stop at your bike frame you can drop nine hundred dollars on a couple of stem which will turn taking your bars off your bike from a sixty second job into a ten second job if you do this a hundred times in your life you'll save an hour and 23 minutes if we assume a nice stem is seven hundred dollars cheaper you're looking at a stem feature that costs close to one thousand dollars per hour to use custom racks always look very pretty but they often improve on standard designs too you can integrate dynamo light protectors baskets bottle cage mounts and bag supports for bike packing bags it gets really fancy when you start to permanently braze the frame racks and fenders together or simply build the rack into the fork and squeeze a custom bag inside if you carry a front load on your bike you'll have noticed that the front wheel likes to turn when you park your bike there are a few aftermarket solutions to this problem including the steer stopper and stabilizers but none is as elegant as this stainless steel pin that pierces right through your fork and head tube there are some completely ridiculous things on this list but the next few bike features are going to take things to the next level Tony from breadwinner bikes takes the idea of a steering lock much more literally he has managed to use his custom bike frames stems and Forks as the lock cylinder and body simply slip the key into the side of your stem to free your bike as the lock integrates with the steerer tube this stops the wheel from turning when the bike is locked to before Roloff created their revolutionary 14 speed gearbox they actually specialized in making chains and in the late 1980s they did a very limited run of 24 karat gold plated chains you can sometimes come across these chains selling today for a mind-boggling 1500 euros if only there was a hub that was the perfect match for a gold plated chain well there is one 24 karat gold plated roll of hub in existence it was constructed by bernhard roll-off himself the mastermind behind the roll off gearbox at the euro bike trade show in 2008 and it signified the 100,000th Roloff hub sold 55 Roloffs owners who had completed more than 60,000 kilometers on their current hubs went into the drawer to win this gold hub the winner of the competition then went on to auction off the only gold-plated roll of hub for charity what a legend this roll-off hub is rare and blingy but what if gold ain't your thing don't worry because phil wood is here to save the day you no longer have to deal with common folk hub shells from roll-off and Schmidt phil wood is going to help you stand out from the crowd with a set of custom made of polished hub shells other than the incredible aesthetic the only reason to invest in new hub shells is so that you can use lower or higher spoke counts than roll off or Schmidt themselves offer that's 24 spokes per wheel minimum and 48 maximum ask anyone who builds wooden bye frames and they would not think there is anything crazy about their construction material wooden frames often offered the same stiffness as carbon at a similar weight to steel and they actually proved to be stronger than steel in many load tests the key attribute to wood is that it absorbs more vibrations than almost any other typical frame material which makes for a silky smooth ride wooden frames are usually constructed by cutting two matching frame halves hollowing out the tubes sometimes with the CNC machine other times by hand and then gluing the pieces together the ride characteristics can be refined for the customer by selecting the appropriate wood types and wall thicknesses for the riders weight and riding style I've actually spent some time on a run over wooden bike and I can honestly say it offered a very dreamy ride what is the ultimate bike for cycling to the South Pole probably something like this Carver fat bike in fact this incredible piece of titanium machinery literally visited the most southern point on earth the bike is running for 5.5 inch tires at 2 psi H providing massive float across the polar terrain a driving chain runs between the rear tires to a custom-made cog and the front and rear hubs are actually all connected together so that the wheels spin at the same speed opinion gearbox at the crank set provides 18 years that are enclosed in a sealed oil bath and there is only a front disc brake to stop this bike it is definitely a crazy build I almost fell off my bike when I first saw a guy touring on a string bike I was overtaking him at the time and looked down to see two weird alien arms moving in a very bizarre way I immediately struck up a conversation with the guy and made him pull over so that I could take a closer look the string bike uses to crank police and Dyneema ropes to drive the rear wheel offering 19 non-overlapping gears spread over a three hundred and fifty percent range you can change the gears with a simple twist forwards or backwards at the grip the main advantage of this design is that it is silent and as little maintenance in all weather conditions that said given all of the proprietary parts I don't think we'll be seeing string drive on many bikes in the future as someone who is cycled across multiple continents on a tandem bicycle let me tell you it is one of the best ways to explore the world with a partner or friend these days my tandem bike gets very little use but perhaps I would still be riding it if I chose rod bikes to construct my custom tandem this Pacific Northwest bike company specializes in convertible tandems from two riders to one or four to one for that matter by cleverly locating SNS couplers so that you can remove sections of the bike you can own one bike that adapts for multiple riders in less than 15 minutes here we go the most insane feature I've seen on a touring bike has got to be liquid storage in the case of this moots fat bike the liquid can be stored inside the titanium fork legs the frame down tube and the entirety of the trailer if you look carefully you will see the input screws at the highest points of the bike and small brass taps at the lowest this fat bike was originally designed to cross some of the most remote places on earth which is why you'll find more than 6 liters of fuel storage in the custom titanium trailer alone but when not out on epic adventures I'd imagine this bike would make a pretty amazing party bike filled with whiskey pay and if whisky is your game those six liters of titanium stowed deliciousness need to be consumed out of the right Cup the best cup in this instance is the removable titanium bail dome from a king cage bail you can literally buy these shot glass bowls for $40 right it's time for you guys to tell me what the craziest touring bike features you've seen are in the comments below and which feature on this list was your favorite and why and if you like my videos and haven't yet subscribed hit that red button for much more black nerd content [Music] [Music] [Music]

Channel: CYCLINGABOUT

Views: 345,530

Rating: 4.7802138 out of 5

Keywords: touring bike, touring bikes, bicycle touring, bikepacking bikes, bikepacking, bikepacking tech, bikepacking bike, best bikepacking bike, surly, custom bikes, fat bikes, custom bicycle

Id: wn4YY5ablWk

Length: 15min 29sec (929 seconds)

Published: Thu May 28 2020