Thread: Touring Bike
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Old 11-19-19, 05:52 PM
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Tourist in MSN
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Bikes: 1961 Ideor, 1966 Perfekt 3 Speed AB Hub, 1994 Bridgestone MB-6, 2006 Airnimal Joey, 2009 Thorn Sherpa, 2013 Thorn Nomad MkII, 2015 VO Pass Hunter, 2017 Lynskey Backroad, 2017 Raleigh Gran Prix, 1980s Bianchi Mixte on a trainer. Others are now gone.

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If you think you would be happy with a 12 speed Pinion, give it consideration. The range of top tube lengths across the bike sizes is not very broad, but I suspect that the average biker would find a size that would fit.

I personally would not want the 12 speed Pinion. One of my bikes is fitted with a Rohloff, the steps between the 14 gears are about 13 percent. On the 12 speed Pinion the steps between gears are about 17.7 percent if this link is accurate:
https://www.cyclingabout.com/tour-wi...inion-gearbox/

That said, the Pinion 12 speed with a range of 600 percent beats my Rohloff with about 525 percent, so it does have some advantages over a Rohloff. It took me a while to get used to the large spread between gears of about 13 percent, so a jump between gears of 17.7 percent would be larger than I would want. My derailleur bikes have jumps between gears smaller than the 13 percent on my Rohloff, so I found a 13 percent jump to be pretty large. Bottom line is that I would find the 18 speed Pinion to be an upgrade from what I have, the 12 speed not so much.

I am not sure which dynohub it is fitted with, but virtually any dynohub is an advantage over non-dyno touring bikes these days when almost everybody wants to charge up something. The text says it has USB charging capability, I suspect you need to add a pass through cache battery for that to work well.

I think it has some nice features for the price. If you want maintenance free, the belt is a big selling point. I do not know what the maintenance schedule for the gear box is, I suspect is similar to my Rohloff, that needs an oil change every year.
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