Thorn Raven/Nomad to compare at Patria terra

[jul]

Hi everybody,

I would like to know yours opinions about the Patria terra bike. 

http://www.patria.net/en/bicycles/terra/

It's will be my second choice after Thorn Raven/ Nomad, also i think the Patria terra is almost similar at Thorn about the geometry and sturdiness..

Information about my size frame:

Top tube:    590 mm
Seat tube:   540
Seat tube angle : 72°
Chainstay length : 465
Center wheel front to rear length : 1096
Weight capacity : 150kg

Can you tell me what do you think about it ?

Thanks in advance

[in4]

Now that is an interest thought, however: The Patria website says that there are no authorised dealers here in UK. Any comparison would have to factor that in. Personally, I'd much prefer to visit Bridgewater and get properly fitted by people who are experienced and expert.

[mickeg]

Patria frame appears to be a soldered/lugged instead of welded, but with modern welding equipment, modern steels and technique, not sure if that means anything anymore.

Has a kickstand, Thorn is somewhat resistant to that concept.

Patria using 36 spokes on the Rohloff.  Thorn I think generically uses 32.  I built up my Nomad with 36, SJS sold me a 36 spoke Andra 30 rim with Rohloff drilling, so I suspect that SJS would build up a 36 spoke Rohloff wheel on request.

Not sure how the chain is adjusted, sliding dropouts or an eccentric?  The mixte frame photo looks like sliding dropouts.  I do not have an opinion on sliding dropouts vs eccentric since I have never used sliding dropouts.

Racks appear to be Tubus.  But I am sure if you wanted to order a Thorn that way you could since the Thorn is built up to order from a list of component options.  I built up my Thorns from the frames (bought one used, one new from SJS), I do not own any Thorn racks.

Patria tubing appears to be smaller diameter.

Thorn is probably more "custom" as it looks like the Patria has specific components for their different categories.  While you could say that the Patria comes standard with a dynohub, since a Thorn can be ordered that way it is not really a good comparison.

There are so many differences between Raven and Nomad, difficult to make a generic Thorn comparison with that bike.  Thus, maximum tire width, ability to use a suspension fork, total luggage weight capacity, availability of S&S, weight of bike, etc., varies with which Thorn model you compare against.

And who knows that the comparable costs are?

[jul]

My objective it is to build my future bike from the frame/fork and at this time i dont know which modele to choose...Thorn or Patria

For me to buy Thorn Nomad frame will cost me about 850 euros (shipping included)
Thorn Raven cost 900 euros
And about Patria 600 euros ..

Both of this frames are very strong.. (Patria frames are built by hand in germany !!)
12 colors are available
Possibility to choose some options before to order the frame  ( disque brake or V brake, rohloff or shimano, géométry frame too )

For you why i should choose Thorn rather than Patria terra ?

Weight capacity : 150 kg (cyclist included off course^^)

[martinf]

I considered a Patria Terra before ordering my first Raven Tour.

At the time the Patria was considerably more expensive, with the rising pound the price difference may be less now.

According to their brochures, Thorn seemed to have spent a lot more time researching and perfecting the design of their touring frames.

I thought it would be easier communicating with an English firm rather than a German one (though I expect Patria can deal adequately with queries in English). It was also easier for me to visit Bridgwater than Germany. For all these reasons I chose Thorn.

Thorn were extremely helpful in answering my questions and with constructive criticism of my choices for certain components, even as regards the model of bike. I originally thought I wanted a Nomad, but Andy Blance persuaded me to get the (cheaper) Raven Tour as he reckoned it would suit my stated purpose better. I doubt that other firms would go this far to try and ensure the bike would be right for the customer.

The Patria, being German, is offered with several components that Thorn don't usually fit, like kickstands, hydraulic rim brakes, Chainglider. Adjustment is by sliding dropout rather than eccentric. So if you prefer most of these things it would probably make sense to choose Patria.

When I looked at the specifications in 2009-2010 I thought the Patria fitted somewhere between the Raven Tour and the Nomad. 

[martinf]

If buying just frame/forks to build up a bike, a lot of the comments in my previous post no longer apply.

It comes down to the choice between sliding dropouts versus eccentric, the way the frame is designed and price. The latter seems to favour the Patria for frame/forks only.

Unless you already have a significant number of parts, it will almost certainly work out to be more expensive to build up the bike yourself. I did this with my second Thorn, but I used the wheels and several other parts off an old mountain bike frame. The Thorn frame/forks were also on special offer, as they were the Raven Tour model, which is now replaced by the Raven.

[jul]

Thank you Martin.

Can you tell me why did you selected the Thorn Raven rather than Nomad Mk2 ?  why Andy Blance persuaded you for the Raven ?

[mickeg]

My objective it is to build my future bike from the frame/fork and at this time i dont know which modele to choose...Thorn or Patria

For me to buy Thorn Nomad frame will cost me about 850 euros (shipping included)
Thorn Raven cost 900 euros
And about Patria 600 euros ..

Both of this frames are very strong..

For you why i should choose Thorn rather than Patria terra ?

Weight capacity : 150 kg (cyclist included off course^^)

I am not going to try to sell you on one or the other, I am simply a user that is familiar with some of the Thorns.

[martinf]

Can you tell me why did you selected the Thorn Raven rather that Nomad Mk2 ?  why Andy Blance persuaded you for the Raven ?

I wanted a bike that would do loaded touring and rough tracks. But I only plan trips in Europe, so no need to carry large amounts of water or food for crossing deserts or similar.

I had already done a 3,300 km trip to Spain/Portugal, using an old derailleur equipped mountain bike adapted to make it more suitable for touring.

I sent Andy Blance details of the load I actually carried (24 Kg at the start of the tour, whittled down to 20 Kg at the end) and said I'd need about 27 Kg for some of my projects (for wild camping in cooler weather). And I sent photos of the roughest tracks I used, I probably wouldn't attempt to ride anything rougher.

On that basis he advised that a Nomad would be overkill, and a Raven Tour fitted with 2.0" tyres should cope adequately with the rough bits, while being easier than the Nomad for most of the riding on ordinary roads and smoother tracks.

[Danneaux]

Hi Julio!

You mentioned a needed cargo capacity of...

Weight capacity : 150 kg (cyclist included off course)

This is an important point...the combined weight of yourself and the bike plus cargo can help determine which model you choose as best suited to your needs.

For comparison...

In my case, though I weigh 78kg, I do extended, self-supported desert touring in summer season, so I must have enough capacity to allow for not only my weight and my normal touring load, but also so I can occasionally carry as much as 26liters (=26kg) of water plus food. The result is, I needed a bicycle that can carry a heavy load on occasion, so the Nomad Mk2 has been a good choice that handles the extra weight well.

It has been a great all-'round bicycle and I often use it like a mountain bike to ride unladen or lightly laden on very rough logging roads or cross-country. As one might expect, a bicycle made sturdy enough to carry such heavy loads can have a harsh ride when ridden without a load on rough surfaces. I addressed his problem by substituting a Thudbuster LT (Long Travel suspension seatpost for the original rigid seatpost and have been completely happy; the bike remains as sturdy as ever, but is now comfortable regardless of terrain or load. Fortunately, the Nomad's sloping top tube allowed enough clearance for me to use the Long Travel version of the Thudbuster. I have the Short Travel version on my road bikes, and while it is nice and helpful, I needed the extra travel of the LT version where I use the Nomad.

I am fortunate to have a number of bikes to choose from, so there is usually one ideally suited to my needs. My preferred bike for 300-400km day rides is a derailleur bike that is a 32 year-old randonneur that is similar to a Thorn Club Tour with perhaps a little of Thorn Audax mixed in. I can also tour on it on gravel roads. It weighs 14.5kg. With my weight, it is most comfortable carrying about 17.5kg, and has a hard limit of 25.4kg. Total maximum combined weight for this bike is 78kg (me) + 14.5kg (bike) + 25.4kg = 117.9kg.

In contrast, the Nomad weighs 20kg dry (as I have it configured) and has carried 52kg (the same 25.4 as the rando/touring bike's hard maximum + 26l/26kg of water plus a bit more food), plus my own 78kg. Yes, my Nomad weighs as much as my tandem, but is also sturdy, which is what I most desired. I have come to value highly its steeply sloped top tube when dismounting in rough terrain; the extra standover clearance is really nice. Total maximum combined weight for this bike is 78kg (me) + 20kg (bike) + 25.4kg (cargo) + 26kg (water) = 149.4kg, very close to your stated 150kg.

In comparison...
In Summer 2014, one of our Forum members kindly loaned me his Thorn Raven Tour for a four-month double-crossing of Eastern and Western Europe. It rode much like my previous Thorn Sherpa...much sturdier than my rando-tourer, but not as capable with large loads as my Nomad. Unlike my desert and wilderness tours here in America, I was near stores for food resupply, and carried at most a couple day's supply with me and generally much less water. I didn't have scale with me while touring, but my impression is I was at times near its comfortable handling limit when I added 8l of water to my regular touring load (as I needed to coming and going through Serbia, when air temperatures reached 45.5°C during a heat wave and I drank a lot of water and needed a bit more in camp to prepare my meals). The Raven Tour proved to be the ideal bike for that adventure, sturdy for use on the extremely rough roads of Eastern Europe while being comfortable to use with a rigid seatpost. It would not have been as ideal as the Nomad for my expedition use here in the States. For that, I really needed the sturdier bike capable of hauling more weight, primarily in extra water and food. However, the Raven Tour would still be a great rough-service tourer for less extreme loads, and I'd like to have one. I think the newer Raven might be just a touch light for my cargo-carrying needs, but would surely ride superbly.

All this is to say combined rider weight or rider weight plus cargo weight can help determine which frame is best for you and your needs. I am particularly sensitive to this issue because several of my touring friends are large people and I have helped them by building wheels for their needs and figuring what will work best. For example, my tandem had been owned by a pair who each weighed 170kg (plus the 20kg bike), and a close friend in Germany tips the scales at about the same and is very tall. He builds his 700C wheels with spokes intended for German Postal bikes and they do remarkably well when a touring load is added. He has come up with some workable solutions, but his aluminum frame has proven to be seriously overloaded and he recently opted for a truss-framed steel bike to address his needs.

In his Nomad brochure, Andy Blance has mentioned selling frames to larger riders, and he seems well experienced in meeting their needs. I worked with him directly in spec'ing my Nomad and I could not have hoped for a nicer experience. Though we differed in our preferred configurations, he was respectful and helpful in every way toward meeting my needs and was a real pleasure to deal with. It's worth a call or email to Thorn to seek their further input, Julio.

Also, if you prefer drop handlebars instead of straight handlebars, you will require a frame with a shorter top tube, and this can affect overall load capacity.

All the best,

Dan.

[Andre Jute]

Like Martin I too looked into Patria bikes.This was about ten, twelve years ago. I was looking for a replacement for a bike I designed and couldn't find anyone to braze for me. A key part of my spec was that the bike should take 60mm Schwalbe Big Apple tyres as its sole suspension. (The triple-helical spring Brooks B73 I now swear by was a later successful experiment.)

My short list of makers of proper bicycles was Utopia, Patria and Pedersen, all German, and Thorn in England. Thorn was on the list despite not quite making my spec on several aspects (welded rather than lugged or filleted, 26in wheels rather than 700C, forks limited to 55mm tyres rather than 60mm) because they clearly knew what they were talking about in every tiny aspect of bicycling. Pedersen fell off the shortlist because their design by its nature has a standover too high for anyone in middle age to mount with dignity.

Patria fell off the shortlist because there was considerable evidence that their tube specification or lugs or soldering practices -- something anyway about their frames -- did not work well with the balloon tyres I wanted to use. This is more important than it seems at first, because today most of recommended tyres for loaded tourers are balloons or semi-balloons of one kind or another, at the most medium-pressure large-volume tyres, next door neighbours to the outright, huge-volume low-pressure balloons I use. The problem evidenced itself as a dangerous shimmy on Alpine descents on the biggest of the Patria bikes. Patria's management, instead of working with their customers to solve the problem, first tried to pretend there was no problem. At this point I was gone, and they were gone from my shortlist, forever.

Contrast Thorn's behavior when Dan Wood, now the moderator, but then a newbie to Thorn, had a shimmy on his bike: Thorn paid to have the bike repatriated, gave him a new one that worked better, and published a video of the designer Andy Blance riding the bike at dangerous speeds while followed in a van by the owner Robin Thorne; they failed to duplicate the shimmy, which didn't surprise me, as from my motor racing/suspension development days I know a great deal about the wave-frequency of American roads, and it is very different from that of British roads. The important point is that Thorn at no point blamed Dan; they just did the right thing and ate the loss.

In the end I bought a Utopia Kranich see http://coolmainpress.com/AndreJute'sUtopiaKranich.pdf , because it is a large low-stepover frame of great stiffness. But Thorn is still on my (three-bike) shortlist, which is revived every year when I wonder if I want to buy myself a new bike for Christmas.

One assumes Patria has since fixed the problem somehow, but I didn't like what I saw of their management's attitude then. So, since you're asking advice... If instead of a Thorn for some reason you want a German bike, I'd say Utopia has a very great deal more prestige (it's justly known as "the Rolls-Royce of bicycle makers" -- I know, because for many years my car of choice was a Bentley, made by the Rolls-Royce company), and their frames are designed and built on custom-drawn Columbus tube with the utmost punctilio. They're a sort of a German Thorn, people who take care of every detail, obsessively. For such outstanding quality, their frames, around eight hundred euro, aren't all that expensive either, and their complete bikes, though pricier than equivalent Thorns, are in my opinion very good value when you compare them with run-of-the-mill excellent bikes from German custom builders and baukasten. A serious consideration is that Utopia was the first bicycle maker to specify the Rohloff gearbox as a standard fitment, and that Rohloff, Schwalbe and other German manufacturers routinely design new parts specifically for Utopia bikes.

***

The thing about a Thorn, since you write pretty good English and can thus communicate with them as if they're next door, is that for anyone who doesn't care that the frame is welded, it is the most bike you can get for the money, a bargain in topclass touring bikes. None of the parts recommended are boutique crap; more positively, all the parts recommended are proven in heroic tours. The second important thing -- for many tourers the most important thing -- is that Thorn stands behind their bike and are familiar with servicing a world-wide clientele. (Try getting parts out of a German baukast, no matter how prestigious, for delivery even as far as Paris and see how far you get...)

Buying a bike the price of a good secondhand car isn't just a matter of technicalities and fit; in the end the human element is probably as important as the mechanical/material elements. You're right not to rush so important a decision.

[onrbikes]

The 1st warm shower guests we ever had, rocked up with a set of Patria's and I saw my first ever Rohloff.
They'd just done the Stan's which planted the seed for our eventual trip there.

Great bike but when I decided to build went for the Thorn's.
There seemed a bit more support in communication, better spares (not that I ever needed it yet) and a better range of sizes. I'm 6'4" while the wife 5' 7".

Have never looked back at purchasing the Thorns.
We take them everywhere and they're bulletproof. The wheels have yet to be trued and are good with the Rohloff's.

Either way a great bike.

[jul]

Yes it's a difficult refexion to choose the right bike. I would like a bike polyvalent, comfortable on all terrain, even if almost roads are smooth all around the world..

My first choice is the Nomad, because i like his geometry frame, but i'm afraid about his weight, and how is feeling on the smooth roads for long distance... Even if it's a super cargo and it can accept a lot of weight, i think for a long travel it will be rarely to exploit his capacity on the long distance so i think maybe it's not necessary to have the best of super cargo bike if it's for use 100% of his capacity  only a little of the time.

Do you know the weight of the frame/fork Nomad only ?

And the Raven i like it also, it looking similar to the Patria terra... but more expensive than patria and i dont know if it's justifed because the Thorn frames are built in Taiwan, i imagine by machine, unlike to Patria frame who are built in germany by hand ...

Anyway, thank you very much for helping me in my search !

[John Saxby]

Julio,

I think that the posts above cover the merits of Thorn's bikes pretty well. My comments are more of a footnote. I am adding this because I recently had to make the same choice as you are looking at.

Two years ago, I was looking at a choice among the Thorn Nomad, the Nomad X (a slightly lighter version of the Nomad, now discontinued), and the Raven.

I liked the geometry of the Nomad, especially the longer chainstays and the lower stepover height, but not its weight.  The Nomad X seemed to offer the same geometry, but at a lighter weight. I liked the lower weight of the Raven, and its chainstay length and stepover height were the same as my touring bike at the time, so no disadvantage there.

I looked at how I would use the bike: not expedition touring, but rather tarmac roads of varying quality, and some gravel, both for touring and for day and overnight rides.  I checked with opinions on this forum, as you are, and also with one or two riders of Thorn bikes on crazyguy. One rider in Australia has a Sherpa which he has used in demanding outback conditions there, and reckons that it's very robust, maybe even overbuilt for non-expedition touring.

On the basis of those considerations, I opted for the Raven. It's been very satisfactory, exactly what I need for what I do.  I use Marathon Supreme 26 x 1.6 tires. When these wear out, I might move to 1.75's -- otherwise, the Raven's spec is fine for me.

(For reasons of cost--Canadian duty on imported bikes, and the Canada/UK exchange rate--I ordered the frame and forks from Thorn, and the hubs from an online supplier in Germany. I sourced other components here in Canada & in the U.S., and my local shop built up the bike for me.)

The weight factor is interesting: the titanium-framed light-touring bike which the Raven replaced weighs only 700 gms less than the Raven, which comes in at a little more than 14 kgs.  That's with a rear rack, a handlebar rack, and a couple of lights.  I was pleasantly surprised by that.  The Raven is a lot more comfortable than my older bike (which isn't bad), and the Raven is very steady with a load.  I usually carry 20-plus kgs of gear, food and water, and I weight about 85 kgs.

Hope that's helpful, Julio, and good luck.

[mickeg]

...
Do you know the weight of the frame/fork Nomad only ?
...

My Nomad Mk II (size 590M, with S&S couplers):

 2,710 grams - Rear Wheel without Tube or Tire - Andra 30 rim, 36 straight gauge 2.0mm Wheelsmith spokes, Rohloff
 1,330 grams - Front Wheel without Tube or Tire - Andr 30 rim, SP Dynamo PV8 hub, 36 Wheelsmith DB-14 spokes.
11,980 grams - Frame, fork and all components; with Brooks Conquest saddle, Ritchey Pedals, water bottle cages, Bontrager fenders; excludes wheels, racks, handlebar bag, spare tube, tools and tool bag.

So, add tires, tubes and racks to get total bike weight.

Thorn rates their frames by different sizes for what luggage weight capacity without rider weight is.  Nomad carries a lot more than the Raven.  You will have to decide what weight you expect to carry.