Do you ride a steel bike on gritted roads?

[Andre Jute]

Do you ride your Thorn or other steel bike on gritted roads? With what effects from the salt?

Hobbes

[jags]

there'#s way to much snow over here at present (ireland) anyway my baby always gets cleaned after a ride and it lives indoors always

[julk]

I have full mudguards and mudflaps fitted. They do a good job of keeping most of the muck off the bike.
A quick wash down after a salty ride is all that is then needed to keep the bike in good order

[brummie]

All my steel bikes get an annual spray of waxoyl inside the tubes to help protect them from any corrosion. Full length mudguards help too...

[stutho]

This will be my 6th winter riding, on my RST, though everything that that the weather can throw at me.  I have never really considered the salt on the roads.  No major rust as yet!  I do make a point of giving the frame a really good polish at the start of the winter season  but other than that don't take any special procedures. 

The frame has being waxoyled twice (once when I build the bike up and once last year)


 

[Znook]

Out of curiosity guys what application of waxoyl is best for use inside the tubes ie., spray can, tin etc. as I notice it's available in different forms. Thanks.

[Andre Jute]

Thanks, all. Mmm. That's a lot of votes for Waxoyl.

Despite living in Ireland, my bike gets wet so infrequently and so lightly that a pat-down with a towel kept for the purpose generally is enough. It's kept inside in heated space too. It gets washed and waxed once a year but that isn't a big deal because it isn't actually dirty even after a year. All the same, I'll Waxoyl it because if this weather stretches to months I'll go stir crazy and want to get out on a bike, any bike. Might be smart also to build up one of my ali frames into a bike I don't mind riding in salt.

Hey, Jags, i live in Bandon, on the RTE News last night for snow. Second year in a row we've had snow. I hope it doesn't become a habit because I live on a hill that will be impossible to negotiate if there's appreciable ice on the road.

Hobbes

[freddered]

Grease inside your seatpost or you may regret it.

[jags]

hobbes i seen the news report you sure got it bad 
every bit as bad up here in louth and a lot more snow to come.
so how do you like your thorn ,have you any plans for next year.

jags

[peddles]

How important is it to waxoyl the frame? I've not seen it mentioned in the Thorn literature and these frames are guaranteed for life. I'm starting to feel a bit under zealous as I had no plans to do mine.  Has anyone from SJSC got a comment on the subject?

[Andre Jute]

hobbes i seen the news report you sure got it bad 
every bit as bad up here in louth and a lot more snow to come.

We were spoiled by decades of good weather. My wife remembers 1980 when she says I never took my sheepskin coat off... Soon there will be reports of cyclists going stir crazy inside.

so how do you like your thorn ,have you any plans for next year.

I don't actually ride a Thorn. I'm on this forum because it has the best Rohloff section, and I read the rest of the forum because the Raven is perpetually on my shortlist. Last time round, a couple of years ago, I wanted lugs and 60x622 Big Apples and a low stepover, so I chose a Utopia Kranich instead, which is fab but far more expensive (and difficult to get delivered to Ireland) than my exercise-use justifies, so if it gets trashed by a rampaging Range Rover, I'll probably be glad I kept up with you Raven guys. Anyway, this is a very agreeable bike forum.

I don't tour. I just ride the lanes and safer roads around here a couple of hours a day most months of the year. As I say, my bike is far better than the use I put it to, but then so would a Raven be. I keep planning a big TV epic: André's World Tour of his Little Patch of West Cork between Bandon, Kinsale and Courtmacsherry, but every year by the time I'm fit enough for it, the winter has arrived... Twenty-five miles round trip is a good day out for me; my minimum daily ride ten and a half months of the year is 16.85 miles of hills in an hour.

Andre Jute
Kranich on the day it arrived, before I started refitting it: http://www.audio-talk.co.uk/fiultra/Andre%20Jute's%20Utopia%20Kranich.pdf
Bike ride in West Cork, pictorial essay: http://www.audio-talk.co.uk/fiultra/BICYCLE%20Kilmacsimon%201.html
and
http://www.audio-talk.co.uk/fiultra/BICYCLE%20Kilmacsimon%202.html

[julk]

Andre,
Thanks for some very nice bike and ride photos there.

About not riding a Thorn - there is still time to redeem yourself...
Julian.

[JimK]

Kranich

Here's a Workcycle with a frame very similar to your Kranich:

http://www.workcycles.com/home-products/handmade-city-bicycles/workcycles-kruisframe-step-through

[Andre Jute]

About not riding a Thorn - there is still time to redeem yourself...
Julian.

Speak to Mr Blance about making a lugged low stepover frame (he's already got a proven design he can adapt) capable of taking 60x622 Big Apples... I'll I'll give Mr Thorn the name for free: the Raven S (for Sybarite!).

Andre

[Andre Jute]

Here's a Workcycle with a frame very similar to your Kranich:
http://www.workcycles.com/home-products/handmade-city-bicycles/workcycles-kruisframe-step-through

It's the most successful crossframe design of all time, going back to the Locomotief Crossframe Deluxe of 1935, in production with one or more makers almost constantly since. The difference between the Workcycle frame and the Utopia Kranich is that the latter is built with specially developed butted Columbus tubes, and special lugs; it's likely quite a bit lighter. It is also possible the Kranich frame and fork is wider to take 60mm tyres, which is its raison d'etre, to be a suspended bike without a suspended fork. But the frames come from the same factory, Van Raam in The Netherlands. -- Andre Jute