Monday 11 June 2012

Surly Long Haul Trucker - Construction Begins

I am now in the early stages of building a touring bike based around a Surly Disk Trucker frame with a Shimano Alfine 11 geared hub. With the start of my bike build I have also decided to revisit my blog and record progress for all to see. Why? Well I have taken a lot of advice from other bloggers and so I would like to give something back - also I want to show off what I hope will be my snazzy new wheels. When I am finished it should look something like this (colour may vary);


 
There has been an awful lot of agonizing on my part about what I am building, it might seem a simple project but deciding on what I want out of the bike had a massive impact on what I was to build (obviously!). What frame - MTB or road? Wheels - 700c or 26''? Long tours or fast & light. The list of choices and questions was seemingly endless. I'll try to make my blogs fairly snappy and as interesting as possible but on occasion I can see already that I am going to have to get long winded and technical, but hopefully this will also prove to be informative to anyone else on the long road to building a touring bike. 


That's all for now but soon I'll blog some pictures of the build, lists of parts used, and why I have made the choices I have. I'll also tell you where I got everything and how much I paid.