Racing bike no. Touring or sport touring yes. You’ll want braze ons to attach racks in at least the front and rear and ideally low rider racks on the forks as well. Fatter tires is another key. Many tourers from the 80’s can fit up to 38mm/40mm without fenders, 35 with. 32mm will be the minimum you want, but I would go higher. Fenders may also be useful depending on your terrain and climate.
A vintage mountain bike would also be a good choice and If you prefer the feel and look of drop bars you can do that.
I would do a search here for the gigantic show your vintage touring bike and show your vintage sport tourer threads. They will give you inspiration.
Also do a search on Flickr for words like vintage, touring, bikecamping etc. Also do a search for “randonneur”, most of the results will be vintage randonneur bikes and these are often well geared for activities like bike camping. There are also several Flickr groups full of wonderful photos of these types of bikes for inspiration. Many will be vintage or modern classically built bikes. Some of my favorite groups:
- Racks n’ sacks
- Randonneur
- randonneur & touring lightweight steel bicycles
- the Carradice club
- Bikepacking (and ultralight bicycle touring)
- Bike overnights
- Cycle Touring
- Fully Loaded Touring Bicycles
- Touring bicycle
For a lot more money there are still many companies and independent builders making bikes capable of (and often geared towards) bike camping and in the traditional lugged steel diamond frame design. Surly, Rivendell and Velo Orange are three of the big ones. Also check out the “Peregrine” that is about to be released by the company Singular. Stanforth Bikes is another. The bonus to modern iterations of this style of bike is they are all design to fit tires into the 40 and 50mm range, often in 650b. As Neal stated above, the rockier the terrain the wider the tires you’re going to want. 32mm is fine on very light gravel for shorter periods of time.
Good luck and have fun entering this world of beautiful looking bikes that also offer lots of utility.
Last edited by polymorphself; 03-28-21 at 10:01 AM.