Each cyclist has their own requirements and preferences for a bike. This is particularly so for touring bikes for a few reasons (long and frequent periods on the bike, load carrying requirements, terrain and conditions, requirements for high levels of reliability on the Long Haul etc).

The standard Long Haul Trucker is a great starting point for a touring bike, and in this case the customising focused around the cyclist-to-bicycle interface (high bars, different shifter positions, interruptor levers) and touring equipment (front and rear racks, light mounts, pannier bags and handlebar bag etc).

This post describes some of the changes made to this particular Trucker including photos of the final product.

The starting point was a 42cm Surly Long Haul Trucker. This is the smallest frame size available. The Long Haul Trucker is available in a wide size range with good spacing between each size (42, 46, 50, 52, 54, 56, 58, 60 and 62cm – see the geometry chart on Surly’s site). Given the range available and how critical getting the sizing correct, this cyclist had a professional bike fit performed to confirm that the 42cm frame was suitable.

The two shots above show the complete bike. The Ortlieb Front and Back Roller Plus pannier bags give HEAPS of storage room for unsupported touring. we also fitted an Ortlieb Ultimate 5 handlebar bag with map pocket:

An important change was from the standard bar-con shifters at the end of the drop bars to thumb shifters. This is achieved by refitting the bar-cons to the bars using Paul Thumbies. We keep these in stock (actually, both the road and mtb thumbies) for this kind of conversion.

You can see how tight the cable routing is with the limited room on the bars:

The interuptor brake levers make it even harder to fit everything on the bars:

And with the handlebar bag obscuring a bar-mounted headlight, an accessory bar was required to get a clear view for the light:

Of course, other options for a headlight mount would have been possible. These include mounting the light from the fork crown or using a replacement cap on the headset like the Paul stem cap. If there was no front pannier rack mounted, a randonneur style light mount off an eyelet midway down the fork blade or on the fork dropout (the Paul site gives good illustrations and we have these in stock, excuse all the links to one manufacturer – Paul Gino) would have been possible too.

Unfortunately we didn’t take any shots of the naked bike (ie, without pannier bags) but the front rack is a Tubus Tara and the rear is a Topeak Super Tourist DX. In some ways, fitting a Tubus Cargo or similar to the rear would have been great to match the front but in this case she chose the Topeak rack to allow mounting a Topeak racktop basket or bag (eg the MTX Trunktop) later on.

There are quite a few upgrades that may not be clear in these photos including Schwalbe Marathon Plus tyres front and rear and Planet Bike Cascadia mudguards. Even things like leaving the fork steerer tube so long and spacing the stem up to the height in the photos was a specific choice to get the correct riding position as specified by the bike fit.

Every bike build is different and in particular, every touring bike build is unique. If you are interested in setting up a touring bike, hopefully the brief points and images above help shed some light on things to consider.

There are many other issues we haven’t touched here which are also super important (eg gearing options and wheels). For this build, we kept the standard derailleur gearing supplied on the Trucker and focused on the changes listed above. Gear hubs and dynamo hubs are popular choices for touring builds (and city bikes!). We’ll save more talk and photos of these kind of mods for a future post or for conversations if you drop into the shop!