georges1

You have these two models available on bike 24:
vsf fahrradmanufaktur TX-Randonneur - Men Trekking Bike - 2022 (ten years of warranty on the frame)
vsf fahrradmanufaktur T-700 HS22 XT - Men Touring Bike - 2023 (ten years of warranty on the frame)
One of my friend bought one two years ago and is happy of the quality and the craftsmanship on it

indyfabz

Not shippable to the US.

wvridgerider

Waterford/Gunner closed its doors, what a shame. I have 2 Gunnars and reallly like them. I have a Rock TourII and a Crosshairs.

Irishred

I really like my SALSA Marrakesh...well built, comes with front and rear racks...lots more.

PDKL45

As a tourer, you can ride a Surly BC/DT/Ogre/CC or a Kona Sutra, etc. Steel frame w/ racks and panniers, more traditional. This is a great option for real expedition touring, for months or years at a time.

You also have the option of a lighter, faster bike in modern times. Grab any endurance road or gravel/cross bike you like and fit it out with handlebar roll, framebag and waggy tail saddlebag. Many bikes now have 3 bolt bosses on their forks, so you can add cages, like the Topeak or Salsa anything cages. This is a good option for fast credit card touring, staying hotels etc.

rekmeyata

I don't think anyone needs an expensive touring bike unless you want one, but to do a tour it really isn't necessary.

For the money I think the best touring bikes are the Masi Giramondo 700c and the Kona Sutra. I have a 2019 Masi Giramondo and absolutely love it for touring/camping. The Kona has some interesting upgrades but does cost more, but I didn't find the upgrades worth it to me, plus I had to make changes to it to suit my needs which would have cost me more.

Touring bikes for some reason are difficult to come by, Masi for a long time when Covid started didn't have any, they now only have the large size made for 5' 10" to 6' 2" person. They changed the new Masi a bit from mine, the new one now has a segmented fork crown, mine is sloped, also known as a unicrown; my paint is a brassy color, the new one is a light blue; the new one uses a Masi crank, mine uses Deore crank, both have the same gear teeth as does the cassette, these gears on this bike are the best for hauling loads up mountain roads of any bike I found; the new one has gone to full Microshift transmission and shifters, whereas mine has Deore transmission and Microshift shifters; the tires are the same CRAPPY and heavy Kenda Drumlin tires; the new one has flat mount disk brakes, mine does not; the rotor size on the new one is now 160mm front and rear; mine is 180 front and 160 rear; they still come with the famous Tubus Tara front and rear racks. The only change I made to this bike was the saddle to a Brooks C15, tires swapped for Schwalbe Amotion, and I took off the front Tubus rack because the curl at the bottom interfered with the quick release, so instead I put on a Blackburn Bootlegger rack which I don't think Blackburn makes anymore, but it holds my sleeping bag and other assorted stuff using a cargo net to keep the stuff in place; and just last month I switched the stem and seat post to Redshift Sports suspension system, haven't tried it yet but it should be a noticeable improvement on rough surfaces by taking some of the banging out on long rides which means less fatigue.

cyccommute 

A tri bike is the antithesis of a touring bike. They are, essentially, time trial bikes which are even shorter and twitchier than race bikes. Here’s the specs on the 87 to 89 Ironman. I had one of the ugly pink ones as a fixed gear for a couple of years.


Here’s the geometry of an 89 ST400 from Cannondale (nothing in the 1988 catalog scan)



The chainstay length is much longer (about 2”). The wheelbase is longer (about 2”). Fork rake and trail on the Cannondale is significantly different. All of these add up to a relatively relaxed bike with predictable steering. You have to put more effort into steering the bike. The Ironman is quicker with less input needed to steer the bike. It would feel “twitchy” compared to the touring bike.

And you have no way to carry stuff.

rekmeyata

I never caught the post about the Centurion Ironman being an excellent touring bike...it's not! Unless you're credit card touring.

Modern touring bikes have decreased the rear wheel distance to the seat tube because the vintage geometry had problems with frame flex when loaded, which caused a whipping or shimming action, so they have closed the distance a bit and increased the diameter of the tubeset to help further. Just because they did that to the geometry doesn't make them less comfortable then the vintage bikes, because the modern bikes went to fatter tires; vintage bikes were running 27 1 1/4 tires, which is about 31.75mm wide, modern bikes are running a minimal of 38mm tires, thus the wider tires mean less psi which cushions the ride a bit more. The science on modern touring bikes are better than the vintage bikes, but there is a con to modern touring bikes in that the average weight vs a vintage bike went up by about 4 pounds on average, that was due to increase tubeset diameter and wall thickness, larger rims and tires. Really all the vintage touring bikes were is that the companies took a road tubeset and stretched out the geometry and called it a touring bike, so if their racing bikes weighed 21 to 22 pounds, their touring bikes weighed 23 to 24 pounds, it wasn't till Reynolds came out with the 531st tubeset that they thickened the tubing and in that process added about a pound to the weight of the frame, then Columbus followed suit, so touring bikes of the mid 80's weighed on average 25 pounds. Modern touring bikes the forks are stretched out a bit further than vintage bikes were mostly because the forks had to be made more stout to handle the disk brake, so they stretched out the front geometry to put comfort back into the bike, this effectively makes the bike track very well and slows down the turning so it's not twitchy.

However vintage bikes did have old friction shifting systems, to me those were better for touring than STI, friction was much easier to keep in adjustment, just trim the shifters while riding, STI was more problematic for long term touring due to if they went out of adjustment you couldn't trim the shifter to take care of it, this means you have to now stop the bike and fiddle with system. Also friction downtube or barends are a lot easier to maintain and repair than briftors are on the road. Of course modern touring bikes have a pro and that is disk brakes, while the old cantilever touring brake system could stop a loaded bike very well, rain became an issue in stopping quickly as did grit picked up by the rain that ground away at the rims; some tourers back in the day complained that brand new rims sometimes didn't even make it 3,000 miles if they ran into a lot of foul weather. Overall modern touring bikes are better, just stay away from the briftor system and go with bar end shifting for repair simplicity on the road. I'm also not a fan of hydraulic disk brakes, especially on a touring bike, I don't need to mess with carrying fluid and a bleeding kit plus more tools, plus in remote locations repairing a hydro setup could turn into a nightmare. Also parts for mechanical disk brakes are much easier to find than hydro parts and their cheaper. Of course, since mechanical brakes use a cable, they do stretch, so there is some adjusting you might have to do but it's easy enough to do on the road, just make sure the pads don't rub the rotor while adjusting. If you are planning on a world tour and will be in remote areas you might not want disk brakes since getting parts might be impossible, and some countries will not import brake fluid!

As far as rear panniers hitting feet when pedaling, that happened to both vintage and modern if the bags are not position correctly on the rack. I had more trouble with that happening on my 85 Schwinn Le Tour Luxe than I do on my 19 Masi Giramondo 700c, I had to slide my panners almost off the rack they went so far back to keep me from contacting the bags. The racks may have had something to do with the problem I had, I was using the 85 Schwinn stock racks that came on the bike new from the factory, they were unnamed Blackburn design, the Masi uses Tubus Tara racks.

My loads I carry I think are medium, not heavy and not light, but I carry about 50 to 60 pounds of gear, food, and water, some people carry 70 to 100, and others carry 15 to 35. I don't think the ultralight stuff holds up as well as the medium weight stuff, but ultralight stuff cost a lot more. My weight distribution is about 35 pounds in the rear, and about 20 on the front. I don't use front panniers, I took off the original Tubus Tara front rack and put on a Blackburn Bootlegger porteur rack instead, and on that goes my sleeping bag and some other stuff goes, doing that opened up the fork bosses for expandable water cages; I don't think Blackburn is making that rack anymore.

I also didn't like the 45mm tires that the Masi came with, the Kenda Drumlins were junk, so I put on Schwalbe Amotion 38c tires which have the lowest rolling resistance of any touring tire on the market, I think with my medium weight level a 38 is fine, it enables me to run about 45 psi which offers some cushioning. Speaking of cushioning, I put on Redshift Sports ShockStop stem and seat post, what a dramatic change in comfort those items made, a bit expensive but worth it to me, having that stuff on is like riding in a Cadillac!

There's more I could mention but I yakked on too much and no one probably cares!

cyccommute 

I’m not arguing with what you are saying with the exception of weight. I’ve never run across a touring bike that weighed anywhere close to 23 lbs unless it is a very, very, very small frame. There might be some mid 80s custom frames that weigh in at 25 lbs but the vast majority of steel bicycles from that era would struggle to get to less than 30 lbs. Cannondales from that era would probably weigh less but would still be more than 25lbs

Not in my experience of more than 20 years. STI isn’t that hard to keep in adjustment nor is it delicate. My touring bike’s STI system has 10,000 miles of use and I have STI on my everyday bike that has over 25,000 miles on it. Neither is difficult to keep running in top condition nor have they needed any thing in terms of maintenance. My “everyday” STI bike still has traces of red dust from being dragged around on the back of my truck on dirt roads in North Dakota in 2018. It hasn’t hurt the functioning at all.

While I might agree on the hydraulics…my issue is more with the complicated procedure and the number of tools needed to bleed them than the actual fluid…, I don’t necessarily agree with the idea that discs are any better than cantilevers. Not all cantilevers are equal, of course, but then not all disc are equal as well. That said, I’ve ridden in all kinds of weather with cantilevers and never had them fail me. I even mountain biked in the 80s with them and never found them to be a limitation. I use Paul’s now which are far better than just about anything I’ve ever used.

The Le Tour was always a bit short compared to other tour bikes of the era. The ‘84 Le Tour had 17” chainstays when other touring bikes of the era were about an inch longer. I had a Univega Sportour from around the same time that had similar length chainstays. I had similar heel strike problems. When I got my 84 Miyata 610 with chainstays 3/4” longer, it was night and day in terms of space and, more importantly, handling. The short stays put the load further behind the axle and “wag the dog”.

I think you are going more honest than most. In 2003, my Cannondale and load weighed in at 93 lbs. Given that currently my Cannondale weighs 28 lbs and isn’t that much changed from the configuration in 2003, that meant that I was carrying 65lbs including food. I’ve shed a lot of touring weight …bike’s still the same…over the intervening years and I’m down to about 40lbs including food. I can’t for the life of me figure out how people get down to 15 lbs. I think it’s a bit like catching 24” fish…there’s a bit of truth stretching going on.

rekmeyata

I have a Schwinn Voyageur, according to specs it's wheel length is only 1/2 an inch longer than the Luxe, and the head angle is 1/2" longer on the Luxe. Those are the only two vintage touring bikes I have, and the Luxe is dead but still in the garage, so I can't compare those to others of the mid 80's. The Voyageur is a bit too big for me, so I'm saving it for my grandson who, according to docs, say he'll get to 6' 2' or so, if he does it will fit him fine, if not, I'll sell it. The Voyageur was a dumpster find that was covered in gray blackish gunk, wasn't even sure what the bike was, but after about 5 cleanings the bike turned out to be in near mint condition, which surprised the heck out of me due to how I found it. The Voyageur has that weird color I call it a mossy green, but Schwinn called it champaign, I never saw champaign look like that color!

The only cantilever brake I have experience with is the DiaComp 960 and 981, those are nowhere near the level of your Paul's, but rim brakes, regardless of quality, would still have the problem with the pads and rims picking up crud on a mucky day and scraping the crap out of the rims, disks don't do that. I'm not a fanboy of disk brakes, but in some situations, like touring, I think they're a better choice. I use to many moons ago did some mountain biking myself, those brakes were just standard side calipers and never had stopping issues either, nor did I have stopping issues with the cantilevers, but one day I encountered heavy rain all day, a miserable ride, anyway, I picked up quite a bit of crud on the rims and pads, I had to stop several times and clean the crap off so as not to damage the rims.

I don't know how people run just 15 pounds either, that just seems absurd, but it might be possible if they're are two or more going on the same trip and they share stuff. I sort of go overboard with water, I have to drink a lot of water due to I'm prone to kidney stones, so I need to keep my system flushed, so I carry two 48 ounces bottles of water, two 24 ounce bottles of water, and one 18 ounce bottle of water, so I'm running 10 pounds just in water! But not having a kidney stone while bike packing is sort of more important than the weight.

cyccommute 

I’ve never really had much of an issue with rim brakes despite using them on a lot of bikes over a lot of years in a lot of different conditions. I’ve only ever worn out a few (at most 5) rims due to brake wear over several decades and about 3 dozen bikes. I’ve picked up grit during wet rides but I don’t really worry about it. It’s a bit of an overblown issue in my opinion.

GhostRider62

If you are going heavy touring, look at the Rodriguez Makeshift.

What is your budget and what mode of touring is pretty important to help.

Personally, I greatly prefer light. 45 pounds would be my max total weight with food and water for a TransAm style tour. Yes, including the 61 cm 19 pound bike.

indyfabz

Yeah. The original rims of my LHT lasted 7.5 years of loaded touring on pavement and dirt and urban commuting/transportation miles. During the latter, I often applied the brakes every 250-500’ for intersections. What finally did them in was 3 days of hilly riding where I literally got rained on to one degree or another every mile I was on the road. Sometimes I was riding in 1-2” of water on the road, and there was lots of grit.

bikemig 

If you want a new bike, go for it. That said, every problem you have with your Cannondale can be fixed. That is a very good touring bike as long as you're fine with 32c tires (perhaps it takes a bit fatter tire but it sounds as if that bike tops out around there which was more or less normal back in the day). Also you can find plenty of quality used touring bikes if you want something different. I picked up an inexpensive 1993 Trek 750 (lugged chromemoly hybrid very similar to the touring Trek, the 520) to fix up as a touring bike. It can take a 38c tire and with 135 OLD rear triangle, I can set easily set this up with 3 x 9 gearing.

To my mind one of the advantages of new touring bikes is that they can take a larger volume tire. Disc brakes are nice too but I have no issues with cantilevers. The point is that there are a lot of older touring bikes floating around which can serve your needs.

rekmeyata

Why do touring people scream about their rims lasting 3,000 to 5,000 miles in prolonged rainy conditions? I'm with you in regards to the rim wear with rim brakes, but then again 98% of my riding was in dry weather, the worse rain ride was the one I mentioned that lasted all day and was heavy, everytime I applied the brakes, cantilevers, it made a grinding sound, so I would wipe the rims and pads off to prevent the abrasive sound. This rain was bad, I had to ride through standing water up to 6 inches deep, debris would get scooped up by the tires and bang around the underside of my fenders, which is normal, but it also was creating the grinding sounds. I don't have too much, if any problems with rim brakes in light rain or normal rain, but heavy rain created lots of standing water. That rain was so strong and last so long that by the time I got to a bike path bridge I needed to cross to get home about 4 hours into the rain ride, they closed off the path due to high water, I had to detour around that due to the river rose pretty high.

I got concerned by the noise because of what I heard from touring people on the internet concerning this problem, so not sure if it was overblown as you said or not.

indyfabz

I’ve never heard “touring people” scream about that.

cyccommute 

I’ve heard some people from the Northwest US complain about excessive rim wear but I’ve never been able to figure out exactly why. I often wonder if the people complaining about excessive rim wear…and 3000 to 5000 miles is extremely excessive…are doing wrong. I live and ride in a hilly city and mountainous state. I don’t wear out a pair of brake pads in 3000 to 5000 miles much less a rim in that distance. Even in town where I brake much more often, I don’t wear out a set of pads all that often. But I don’t drag brakes on downhills.

rekmeyata

I use to live in Southern California and rode and raced all over the mountains there, and the Mathauser Salmon brake pads lasted years. All that screaming I heard over at Adventure Cyclists forum.

Pop N Wood

I love this guy's take on things

What’s The Best Touring Bike? (Updated 2023 Edition) (tomsbiketrip.com)