Surly LHT Frame arrived today

Wehey!  Frame arrived today.  Only four working days for delivery as well (although it did seem a lot longer to be honest, like waiting for Santa ;)).

Copious-and-mostly-pointless but here's a stack of snapshots:

For the record, that's one excellent
toasted sandwich maker top left. :)

Mmm.... fleecy warm...

First glimpse at the frame...

Close up of the rear mech dropout...

Lots of 'masking' caps over the various
braze-ons...

Cantilever brake stop / rack mounting
braze-ons

Surly seatpost clamp...

Steerer tube...

Forks packaged up...

Front
of
fork

Back
of
fork

Have already decided on a variety of parts to go on the bike, more to come tomorrow.

Surly Long Haul Trucker frameset purchased

After quite a bit of umming and ahhing I finally settled on the Surly Long Haul Trucker frameset:

There aren't that many places that sell them in the usual mainstream places in the UK (although HAH they are abundant compared to stockists for Middleburn cranks!!!), but thankfully Wiggle do sell them at a decent price (link to the bike at the time of writing is here) so I stumped up the cash and went for it.

I opted for the 54cm 26" black version of the frameset, so for my height / 'standover' leg length I think that should be about right, maybe a touch on the small side (my last bike was a 56cm 700c steed and that's just about right), but I thought a slightly smaller frame might make for easier riding than being stretched out and I can always up the saddle / handlebar height slightly - I'm not going to be going for speed with this bike so aerodynamics isn't an issue!

So, yes, bought the frame today!  £318 was the price for the frame + forks.  Delivery says 4-6 days but I'm in no mad rush...

Bike specifications

General Requirements

The requirements I have for a new bike are slightly complicated.  Primarily this bike is replacing another bike that was used with panniers to carry (a lot of!) shopping - we don't have a car, so having a bike that can carry a lot of weight in panniers is very useful.  However it also has to be good for doing daily rides out -10-15 miles or so - and over various terrains - mainly on road but probably 10-20% offroad.

Another fairly restricting limitation was that I needed to be able to reuse a lot of parts from my old 26" Marin mountain bike.  Mainly this meant sticking to a 9 speed spec (since the chainrings were 9 speed, as was the reasonably new rear derailleur) and also it had to be able to fit the 26" wheels that I'd built up myself for the old bike (the old wheels were built around Hope XC hubs and whilst they've had 5yrs+ of very good use, they're still very serviceable).

I also wanted a bike that would be a bit different to what I've been used to over the last 10 years - my two bikes have both been aluminium frames, so I thought I'd have a go with a steel frame just for a change.  I've ridden a lot of steel framed bikes in my time, but all when I was a lot younger - maybe 5-10 or so different bikes as a teenager, all steel framed and all very good in their own little way - but when I came back to cycling again at 30 or so, everything seemed to have gone aluminium so I've just stuck with that really over the last 10yrs.

So all of that ^ ... means a 26" specific steel touring / hybrid frameset!

The quest was now on to find a frameset that would be suitable to base the build around.

Frame Options

I looked around at various different options for the frame, mainly touring framesets.  A few options I looked at included:

Thorn bikes

Thorn are a UK based bike manufacturer and they do a lot of 'old school' steel framed touring bikes that are renowned worldwide for their durability and general excellence.  I was quite tempted to go with a Thorn bike, I'm not entirely sure what put me off Thorn to be honest... I'm sure I'd have been very happy with a Thorn frame, but it just didn't work out in the end.

Cotic

Cotic do a lot of steel based frames and are known for being good for custom builders who want a unique bike.  I seem to remember that their options for touring frames wasn't great (or non-existent), or perhaps they didn't do a 26" touring frame, maybe that was why I didn't go with them?  I'm not sure to be honest... again, not to do them any disservice, they seem to be a very good manufacturer by all accounts but I just didn't find the right thing there.

Looking at the site now I remember looking at the Road Rat (pictured below as a pre-built bike, but they sell the frameset on it's own):

I thought that frame was very nice indeed and if my requirements were slightly different I might well have gone for that (and may do in future!), but unfortunately it was only available in a 700c frame size and didn't have any braze-ons / fittings for the panniers/mudguards that I wanted.

Salsa

Again, like Cotic, Salsa do a nice range of steel frames aimed at the custom build market.  I would probably have gone for one from here if it weren't for the - rather superficial - fact that a friend has the same frame that I would have had to go for!  Otherwise they do some lovely frames.

Dawes

I did briefly consider Dawes as well for a frame.  I know historically they've been a popular choice for touring frames, but when I looked at the latest range they seemed to be not quite so good as the older frames.  Whether that was people just being snooty about the older frames being better than the new... I don't know; but the general concencus seemed to be that the older frame design was better than the new one.

Incidentally when I was at Uni I used to ride my flat mates bike which was based on a Dawes Supergalaxy frame (I think?).  It was a lovely machine, with flat handlebars instead of the normal drops - which made it very practical for riding shorter distances around Uni and gave it a nice look to boot, especially with the purple frame colour (sounds a bit 'yuck' when you say 'purple frame' but this was a beautiful thing).  The feel of the frame was very nice as well, had a little bit of give / flex in it so it felt really comfortable to ride.

Surly

Surly are an American based bike company who are renowned for no-nonsense bikes that just do the job and do it well.  I'd been aware of them from reading about XC mountainbiking some years ago and had always thought they looked a bit too ... rigid ... or .. sturdy(?) ... for what I was doing back then (XC riding at that time).  However, that kind of a bike was actually just what I was looking for now.

Surly do a nice few options for touring bikes, the main one being the Long Haul Trucker.  The number of bosses / braze-ons / lugs etc that they include is huge - 3 water bottle attachments, panniers front and rear, mudguard attachment points, even a pump fitting point under the top tube and an attachment for carrying spare spokes!  Not sure I'll be needing that to be honest but still it's a nice added touch.

I also liked the fact they do the LHT in a 26" option which allows me to re-use the parts off the old bike easily.  The frame is also 'Fine For Fatties', which with my large girth I was happy about (FFF refers to 'fat' tires actually!)... so the option is there to put nice wide tires on through the winter months to get out and about in the snow easily.

Conclusion

So... in the end I opted for the Surly Long Haul Trucker frame.  It seemed to suit my requirements very well: a 26" version of the touring frame available, a huge number of attachment points for mudguards/racks/panniers, a large number of positive reviews online from happy custom build bikers*; the Surly LHT sounded like an ideal choice.

* - in fact the number of online reports was quite a big part of my decision I think, there are a HUGE number of Surly LHT builds posted out there on teh interwebs, along with lots of useful information on issues with the build - but basically there seemed to be very few issues, which was what I wanted to hear!

Welcome to my Surly Long Haul Trucker (LHT) bike build blog

What's this blog about?

On this blog I'll be documenting the build process of a bike based on the Surly Long Haul Trucker frameset (frame and forks).  As I source the various parts for the bike, I'll be adding comments about the thought process involved and on any problems I encounter along the way.  There will be copious amounts of photographs as well. :)

Surly Long Haul Trucker 26" Black Frame

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The need for a new bike came about after my old bike - a 10 year old Marin Nail Trail hard tail - unfortunately fell apart at the seams and was no longer usable.  Basically a crack developed around the bottom bracket shell and eventually this gave way, separating the chainstays from the BB shell and obviously rendering the frame/bike useless.

Cracked bottom bracket shell, thankfully it cracked at the TOP of a hill. :)

All very sad (I'd had a lot of good riding out of that bike) but actually I had been expecting it to happen for a good 1-2 years.  The crack looked like it could just be paint flaking away at the welding joint, although after 9-10 years I did tend to think that it was more than likely to be a frame failure as well, so it wasn't entirely unexpected when it finally gave way.

Marin Nail Trail in happier times - all loaded up for a camping trip in Edale in 2004

Anyway, this was the perfect opportunity to start anew and build a brand new bike from the frame up!

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Why build a bike from scratch?

Good question!  There are plenty of decent enough bikes out there to be bought 'off the shelf' but over the last 10 years or so as I've been getting back into biking more and more, I've found I really enjoy tinkering with bikes - taking components apart, servicing things, putting them back together again... all strangely therapeutic as it goes.  I find my mind tends to just clear as I work on my bike and for that short amount of time I am working on the bike, I can just relax and enjoy it.

Another reason - linked to the above - is that there's a real sense of accomplishment about spending time building something up yourself and then being able to stand back and say 'I did that!'.  Anyone can shell out a stack of notes on a brand new bike, but if you're buying the parts and putting them together yourself there's an extra bit of pleasure involved with that I think.

Incidentally a more condensed version of all of this ^ Zen-like process is building bike wheels.  This is also something I've done a few times over the last 5 years or so and the wheels I've built myself have never had any problems at all or needed to be trued (well, I have trued them but really it was nothing at all and I could easily have gotten away leaving it).  And it's actually quite easy to do after a little bit of practice and a few specialist tools (though you don't actually need any tools at all really apart from a spoke key)... maybe I'll add something on that at some point I don't know.

Which leads me on to another reason for building my own bike - I only have myself to blame if something goes wrong!  And if something does go wrong then I know straight away probably why it went wrong and how to fix it.  Compare this to relying on a bike shop to build your bike / repair it / service it and ... well to be fair you'd probably be just as well off in terms of having a 'good bike', and you could probably save yourself a shed load of time but hey where's the fun in that!

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Who am I?

Slightly esoteric question!  I'm a guy in the UK who enjoys riding bikes.  'munk' has been my online nickname for the last 10-15 years.  I used to run a personal site at munk.me.uk but for one reason or another I decided to mothball it since I wasn't really updating it as much as I used to.

I have absolutely no connection to Surly Bikes in the US whatsoever, and perhaps I'll have to change the title of this blog at some point because it does give the impression perhaps that 'Surly Munk' is a chap called Munk who is employed by - or somehow connected to - Surly.  Again, this is NOT the case, I am not affiliated with Surly in any way.  I just happen to have chosen Surly as the manufacturer of a bike frame because of numerous positive recommendations online and because the Long Haul Trucker frame happened to fit my 'design spec' appropriately (primarily that I wanted to be able to haul a load of stuff around, but still have a reasonably agile frame!).

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Another thing...

I'm actually writing this blog AFTER I've (more or less) finished building the bike(!?!).  Along the way I've taken a lot of photos and made a lot of notes about the process, and of course, it's only in hindsight that I realized a blog was/is probably the best way to document the process.

The dates on the posts will be the actual dates I did the tasks etc involved in the posts, although like I say above I'll be 'pre' dating the posts back to the date I actually did things.  And having fun getting mixed up with tenses along the way no doubt!  ;)