What is a Touring Bike?
A touring bicycle is a bicycle designed or modified to handle bicycle touring. To make the bikes sufficiently robust, comfortable and capable of carrying heavy loads, special features may include a long wheelbase (for ride comfort and to avoid pedal-to-luggage conflicts), frame materials that favor flexibility over rigidity (for ride comfort), heavy duty wheels (for load capacity), and multiple mounting points (for luggage racks, fenders, and bottle cages). Touring bicycle configurations are highly variable and may include road, sport/touring, trail, recumbent, or tandem configurations.
Road touring bicycles have a frame geometry designed to provide a comfortable ride and stable, predictable handling when laden with baggage, provisions for the attachment of fenders and mounting points for carrier racks and panniers.
Modern road tourers may employ 700C (622mm) wheels - the same diameter as a road (racing) bicycle. Other road touring bikes may feature wider rims and more clearance in the frame for wider bicycle tires. Before the 1980s, many touring bikes for the North American market were built with 27-inch (630mm) wheels which have a slightly larger diameter.
Other touring bikes use 26-inch wheels for touring bikes, for both off-road and on-road use. Advantages of the slightly smaller wheel include additional strength, worldwide tire availability, and lighter weight. Some touring bicycles, such as the Surly Long Haul Trucker, offer frames designed for 26" (ISO 559) wheels or for 700C wheels, with the frame geometry optimal for the selected wheel size. Specially-made touring tires for 26" wheels are now widely available, especially in developing countries, where 700C may be difficult to obtain. Hence, on the mass ride from Paris to the Beijing Olympics in 2008, the Federation Francaise de Cyclotourisme asked all riders to use 26-inch wheels. 16" wheels and loaded for touringFactors that affect rolling resistance include tire air pressure, tread and tire width as well as wheel size.
Sport touring bicycle is a very lightweight touring bike fitted with lighter wheels and narrower 25-28 mm (1 - 1.125-inch) tires. It may also be described as a road racing bike fitted with heavier tires and slightly more relaxed frame geometry (though still quicker than the average road touring bike). It is designed as a fast-handling, responsive and quick day touring machine. As such, it is intended to carry only the rider and very light loads, such as encountered in credit card touring, where riders typically carry little more than a pocketbook and credit cards to book overnight lodging at any handy motel, pension, or bed-and-breakfast while on a journey. Gearing is often a mix of closely-spaced ratios for speed, combined with a few low gears for long climbs. Sport touring bikes may sometimes have provisions for mounting slim fenders and a rear carrier or pannier rack, though in the interests of weight savings and quicker handling, most do not.
Expedition tourers are strongly built bicycles designed for carrying heavy loads over the roughest roads in remote and far-flung places. These range from simply stronger built mountain bikes, equipped with racks, panniers, mudguards and heavy-duty tires, to purpose-built bicycles built to cope with long-haul touring on tracks and unsealed roads in developing countries throughout Asia, Africa, and the other continents. Their frames are often made of steel as any breakages can be more easily repaired in towns all around the world.
A typical expedition touring bike would be made of relatively heavy duty steel tubing, with 26 inch wheels, and componentry chosen for robustness and ease of maintenance. The main design criteria for such a bike would be to allow all day comfort on the bike, have good handling characteristics under heavy load, and be capable of running smoothly on good roads, but also on the roughest of tracks. Some bike tourers have made their own expedition bikes, by building up on mountain bike frames. The key difference between a mountain bike and an expedition touring bike would be the addition of racks for panniers, and tougher, all purpose tires. They will have a longer wheelbase to allow for more comfortable cruising, at the expense of the manoeverability of an mtb. Most tourers also prefer heavier, stronger wheels than would be normal on a production mountain bike and although some are now equipped with disc brakes to cope with the extra loads and weight. Most expedition bikes will have the same range of gears as a mountain bike and for reliability some use the Rohloff Speedhub at the expense of its high cost.
It is a small, specialist market, so only a small number of bikes are sold under this description, few if any by the biggest manufacturers. Examples are the EXP and Raven from Thorn Cycles, and the Roberts Roughstuff, all made in the UK. Koga-Miyata produce the Signature range of bikes that allows users to specify many aspects of the bikes components to ultimately achieve an expedition bike.