Wanted - Thorn suitable for a mega tour ....

[Undermanager]

I'm looking for a second-hand Thorn (Club Tour or Sherpa, ideally). Size suitable for 5'10'' height, 32" stepover (178cm / 82cm) - I do prefer a more upright position so flat or bull handlebars are the preference (although I can change them easily enough) - I have never got on with drop bars. It needs to be in good condition, well maintained, with no frame damage (paint scratches are no problem) and ready to go. In an ideal world, it will be black, 26" wheels, with a front and back rack, but none of these are deal breakers.

Price wise, it needs to be properly priced for whatever model it is, please! I'm sure we've all checked the completed listings on eBay etc so please, sensible asking prices only and my offers will be sensible, too! I would prefer a test ride if practical. I'm based in Coventry and happy to travel a few hours in any direction.

If that wonderful bike you have has been sitting in the garage unused for the last few years, maybe it's time to make some space and move it on to a good home :-)

Thanks for reading.

[geocycle]

Check out the for sale section, there’s a nice thorn raven for sale.

[Undermanager]

Thanks. Am still waiting for a reply to a question I sent. Not in any great hurry at the mo as I know sooner or later something will pop up that fits the bill, but at least I know what I'm looking for now! That took a month!

[Matt2matt2002]

My Raven is perfect but I need it for my own mega tours!!
Good luck with finding your bike. I am interested in your mega tour plans. Do tell.

[Spencer brady]

hey i have a nomad mk2 with a rohloff and ~1000 miles if you want. located in salt lake city however. i can get an independent mechanic inspection if you want. Price is also flexible. let me know!

https://www.facebook.com/marketplace/item/304860027025141/

Spencer

[Undermanager]

Thanks. Great bike but don’t want a Rohloff hub - I prefer something I can fix or get fixed  in remote places.

[geocycle]

Thanks. Great bike but don’t want a Rohloff hub - I prefer something I can fix or get fixed  in remote places.

It’s a magnitude v frequency thing. Rohloff rarely if ever go wrong but if they did you will have to hold up for a couple of weeks. Derailleur systems need regular adjustment and are prone to going wrong or being damaged, but if they do you can usually find local fixes.  Personally I’d go rohloff, or a very simple 8 or 9 speed derailleur with friction shifters.

[Undermanager]

"It’s a magnitude v frequency thing. Rohloff rarely if ever go wrong"

Totally agree 95% of the time, but they are not quite as bullet-proof as the very heavy marketing would suggest, and there is a lot of marketing that feeds and sustains this view. I did a lot of homework on this recently. Who wants internal gearing when something goes wrong e.g. in Iran? I guess it's a personal choice though and largely depends on whether you are just touring Europe, the USA etc, or somewhere more off the beaten track. The ability to fix derailleur systems quickly and being able to use a screwdriver to tweak the shifting wins for me any day, and after 50 odd years of cycling, so far so good, but I can see why others might take a different view.

No getting away from the quality of the Thorn frames and bikes, though. We can all agree on that :-).

[geocycle]

"It’s a magnitude v frequency thing. Rohloff rarely if ever go wrong"

Totally agree 95% of the time, but they are not quite as bullet-proof as the very heavy marketing would suggest, and there is a lot of marketing that feeds and sustains this view. I did a lot of homework on this recently. Who wants internal gearing when something goes wrong e.g. in Iran? I guess it's a personal choice though and largely depends on whether you are just touring Europe, the USA etc, or somewhere more off the beaten track. The ability to fix derailleur systems quickly and being able to use a screwdriver to tweak the shifting wins for me any day, and after 50 odd years of cycling, so far so good, but I can see why others might take a different view.

No getting away from the quality of the Thorn frames and bikes, though. We can all agree on that :-).

Absolutely agree on Thorn and I respect your POV.

[PH]

"It’s a magnitude v frequency thing. Rohloff rarely if ever go wrong"

Totally agree 95% of the time, but they are not quite as bullet-proof as the very heavy marketing would suggest, and there is a lot of marketing that feeds and sustains this view.

I think that should be closer to 99.99999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999% of the time
Most of that heavy marketing come direct from users, there's lots of it for two reasons - It's free and it's true.  Those failures there are get a lot of publicity, the reason you don't here of many derailleur failures isn't because they're rare, but because there're just not newsworthy. 

If you wrote a list of the thousand things that could disrupt a tour it'd be well down it, the most common tour ending events have to do with the riders not the bikes and even among the bikes gearing is way down the list.  But so what?  What's the worst possible scenario that doesn't have a derailleur equivalent? I've seen derailleurs take out spokes in a rear wheel, I've seen hangers snap off and I've had a shifter become unworkable after some careless baggage handling, the equivalent of all three of those is more robust on a Rohloff.  None were tour ending, because it usually possible to bodge a solution, just as it is with a Rohloff.  It's possible that geocycle is right and waiting for a Rohloff repair could hold you up for two weeks, but why would you?  We're comparing bicycle gearing systems not bike V's helicopter.  Any hub gear is going to slot straight in, as will a single speed, a derailleur can be bodged on with a temporary hanger, any sort of friction shifter will do, who needs all those gears anyway  
Choose what you want, I'm not riding it, but there's a difference between precaution and paranoia and if you applied the same logic to all your kit that you've applied to the hub you'd never leave home.   
Good luck with your search 

[martinf]

One Rohloff failure that seems to occur from time to time is spokes pulling away part of the flange.

If that happens, you either wait for a replacement Rohloff or use whatever you can find locally instead - this would probably be a derailleur wheel so you would also need a hanger, shift lever, new chain and rear derailleur. And you would have a limited range of gears with the single chainwheel.

Much simpler if the same thing happens on a derailleur bike, you just swap out the rear hub and rebuild the wheel, if you are lucky you can even use the same spokes. Or swap out the entire wheel. This happened to me on a tour to France with a derailleur bike (before I moved there). I cracked the flange after crashing the bike on ice in the pine forests south of Royan, but I was lucky, the wheel held up for several hundred kilometres and finally broke as I arrived in the road where I lived. I just had to push the bike for a few minutes.

On the other hand, with my present combination of Rohloff with Chainglider, I avoid a lot of the disadvantages of derailleurs, the list is quite long, so just a few here:

- fast chain wear in wet/mucky conditions,
- rear derailleur either wearing out or picking up road debris (had both cases), then jamming in the spokes,
- chain coming off the inner ring and getting stuck between chainring and bottom bracket shell, damaging the latter.

So I reckon far fewer problems with a Rohloff as compared to a derailleur, but something does go wrong you may well be stuck for longer. And if the bike is stolen it will (probably) cost more to replace.

Now that I have a Rohloff bike, it is my first choice for heavy touring in hilly areas, my second choice for that use would be a 3x7 or 3x8 wide-range derailleur system. I'd consider taking my old 5-speed hub geared bike for a long tour on mainly level ground (Loire-Danube cycle route or the part of the North Sea cycleroute between northern France and Denmark) as it has been very reliable and isn't worth much if it gets stolen.

It may be heresy here on the Thorn cycling forum, but you don't absolutely need a Thorn bike for a mega-tour. For my 3,300 km Brittany-Spain-Brittany trip in 2011 I converted my old steel mountain bike to drop bars and used that. The frame weighed about the same as a Thorn Nomad, but probably more comparable to the Thorn Raven in stiffness. Not so nice as my current Thorn Raven Tour, but it did the job.
 

[PH]

One Rohloff failure that seems to occur from time to time is spokes pulling away part of the flange.

If that happens, you either wait for a replacement Rohloff or use whatever you can find locally instead -

That's happened to me - twice.
What you do is tell the supplier, hope they agree to replace it and once they have you're free to bodge 
There's a whole list of things you can do, from just altering the tension of the spokes around it, or drilling new spoke holes, or fitting a bracing plate, it's a pain but it certainly isn't a show stopper.
The flange support rings that all new hubs now come with, mean you might not even notice, they won't stop the flange cracking but will keep it together if it does.
BTW - my first breakage went back the same week, the second I needed the bike and after removing the spoke and re-tensioning the wheel I used it for a further 400 miles before getting it fixed.

Much simpler if the same thing happens on a derailleur bike, you just swap out the rear hub and rebuild the wheel, if you are lucky you can even use the same spokes. Or swap out the entire wheel.

Yes, though of course the dish on a derailleur wheel makes losing a spoke a much bigger deal.  I don't know how many you could lose of a Rohloff, they'll all be off the same side so three in a row shouldn't be too much of a problem, if you're running discs and don't need the wheel to be true, you could probably get away with four or five pulled through.

It may be heresy here on the Thorn cycling forum, but you don't absolutely need a Thorn bike for a mega-tour. For my 3,300 km Brittany-Spain-Brittany trip in 2011 I converted my old steel mountain bike to drop bars and used that. The frame weighed about the same as a Thorn Nomad, but probably more comparable to the Thorn Raven in stiffness. Not so nice as my current Thorn Raven Tour, but it did the job.

I agree entirely.  Some years ago I read of a guy who'd toured all sorts of places, taking his own panniers and kit, buying a bike on arrival, touring for several months and then giving the bike away.  He felt it helped him fit in and he could be sure if anything went wrong with the bike the parts would be available in that region and there would be people used to dealing with them.

[mickeg]

"It’s a magnitude v frequency thing. Rohloff rarely if ever go wrong"

Totally agree 95% of the time, but they are not quite as bullet-proof as the very heavy marketing would suggest, and there is a lot of marketing that feeds and sustains this view. I did a lot of homework on this recently. Who wants internal gearing when something goes wrong e.g. in Iran? I guess it's a personal choice though and largely depends on whether you are just touring Europe, the USA etc, or somewhere more off the beaten track. The ability to fix derailleur systems quickly and being able to use a screwdriver to tweak the shifting wins for me any day, and after 50 odd years of cycling, so far so good, but I can see why others might take a different view.

No getting away from the quality of the Thorn frames and bikes, though. We can all agree on that :-).

You are certain that a Rohloff is not for you.  I am not going to argue with you, if you want a derailleur system, go for it.

I have one Rohloff touring bike (Thorn Nomad Mk II), and two derailleur touring bikes (Thorn Sherpa and Lynskey Backroad).  There are advantages to each and disadvantages to each type of drive train.

I hope you have a great time wherever you are off to.  But, ... ... I would never attempt to go to Iran and I suggest you stay away from there too.  North Korea might be another good spot to avoid.  But, the rest of the world awaits you.

Since you are doing research to build up the most reliable and dependable bike you can, I and possibly others here would be interested in knowing your component choices and why.  For example, I am sticking with square taper cranksets because I have heard of too many failures of external bottom bracket bearing systems.

[Makster]

Did you find what you wanted in the end?