Technical
It’s a fairly long story into how I finally chose the bikes we will use for the tour but I’ll keep it as short as I can. When I rode the Transamerica trip back in 2004, I used a mountain bike that I had only just bought in the summer of the year before. This was the first bike I had owned since passing my driving test at the tender age of 17. This was a Scott Elite Racing Pro, a typical hard tail 26″ wheel mountain bike. At the time I really wasn’t that aware of the requirements for touring and what long distance cycling really meant.
That said, I embarked on the trip safe in the knowledge that I would use panniers front and rear on a regular mountain bike with front suspension and 2.25″ tyres having done my research. Well, it kind of worked until I got to the Appalachian Mountains and realised that once going down-hill fast, I developed speed wobbles, which were simply unbearable and also very dangerous and disconcerting. I guess it must have been about a week into the trip when I decided I had to work out another way of carrying the gear because no matter how much re-arranging of equipment was done, it made no difference to the wobbles. During my research I had considered trailers and decided against them due to the extra weight and inconvenience of handling one. After the speed wobbles I was now thinking that it would be a good idea and managed to find one in a small town bike store on sale. It was similar to a B.O.B trailer but made by Yakima and was so cheap seeing as it was on sale, and this made complete sense to me to take the opportunity to change.
Once I had converted I realised just how much better the trailer was, but I’ll talk more about that later on another page.
The importance of all this is that it does determine pretty much the configuration of your bike and the components you’ll use. From this trip I learnt a lot about cycling, and on tour, a lot of it is to do with the bike.
Putting into practice what I learnt!
Wheel size: First off, choosing the wheel size was the first decision, 26″, 28″ or 700c? Well to me it’s a no-brainer, mountain bikes and bikes generally worldwide now seem to be standardizing on 26″ wheels. Therefore, the availability of spare tyres and inner tubes is going to be greater. Obviously, this isn’t always the case if touring around Europe or in North America, where 700c at least is certainly easily available due to the large number of roadies, but in places farther a field, 26″ is more common. I’ve decided that the extra circumference of a 700c wheel does not outweigh the drawbacks, therefore, the 26″ wheel wins. Because of the terrain this trip will take us across, I knew that a road type bike is not really going to be up to the task and that we’d require something just a little more rugged, so again the mountain bike frame won through. Features such as suspension just aren’t necessary and adds weight, complication and therefore more chance of something going wrong. The fewer tools and mechanical requirements there are the better in my book.
So what have we got so far?
- 26″ Wheel size
- Mountain bike hard tail frame
Wheels & Hubs: So with this there are a few more things I think are important. Firstly I’ll talk about the wheels and hubs. On my Transamerica rig I had standard Scott rims and cheap Shimano hubs which for the most part were fine, apart from once incident! Over the course of a couple of days riding through Missouri I noticed that the rear wheel was starting to make grinding noises and was wobbling on the axle. I hobbled into my resting place for the evening at a slow 5 mph where I took the wheel to a local bike shop. I discovered that the bearings had disintegrated and the ball race was shot to bits. The ball bearings looked like peanuts and the cup inside the hub was ruined. It turned out that this failure was most like due to the skewer pressure on the quick release of the rear wheel. It made sense to me, put I never knew it at the time, that you must never over tighten a hub and cone ball race (most common), otherwise you can cause the ball race to grind away on the hub and cone causing permanent destructive damage. 
To me it was ludicrous and a poor piece of engineering that could allow you to so easily over tighten a wheel with the quick release skewers. This failure caused me to require a whole new rear wheel, as the cost of replacing the hub and rebuilding the wheel wasn’t economically viable! Had I known about hubs with cartridge bearings I would have used these first.
The point to observe here is this. When I changed over to a trailer which attaches to the rear skewer I made sure it was tight so that it would not come loose. Obviously it is difficult to guage and I over tightened it. Has this happened in the middle of the Atacama desert or somewhere very remote I could have been in a lot of trouble. Cartridge bearing hubs allow you to simply knock out the damaged bearing and replace it. If a bearing in these types of hub fails then it doesn’t destroy the hub therefore saving you money and heartache and gives you more reliability which it the most important things in long distance self supported cycling.
Tyres: Not so simple to choose… Basically you can run a nice skinny slick tyre, get less rolling resistance and hence be more efficient as I learnt making my way across america. However, you’ll be running far higher pressures, the ride will be firmer with less shock absorbtion (not the choice for the rougher roads). So again there’s a compromise to make here. South America roads will hopefully be fairly decent, however I’m expecting a fair portion of them to be off-road tracks and therefore a slightly wider tyre will be more preferrable around 1.75″.
For me the only choice is the Continental Top Contact, the handmade replacement for the famous Top Touring 2000 tyre. Read more here
The Drive train: I’m not going to talk too much about different gear ratios as these largely dependent on where you’re intending to ride, the weight you’ll carry, the inclines etc… More importantly in my mind is whether you use a derailleur and sprockets or opt for a hub with internal gearing.
 More to follow (just need to find the time)….
