Ride Report - Cycles Toussaint Vélo Routier v2

Read the entire story of the research, acquisition and assembly of my new Cycles Toussaint Vélo Routier v2.

Cycles Toussaint Vélo Routier V2.

The Ride

After the now months long process of researching, buying and assembling a new bike, my "new" Cycles Toussaint Vélo Routier v2 is ready to ride. Despite projected temperatures in the high 80's accompanied by soul crushing humidity last Sunday, I set out on a planned 50 mile ride, more or less my normal weekend ride. After a 4 mile scamper up to the Forest Glen Metro station, I met up with one of my close riding buddies and we set off toward Olney, Maryland.

I don't think I made it another 500 yards before the front derailleur cable slipped, leaving me with only the small chain ring. I stopped and made what I thought was a valiant attempt to snug the cable back up, but I just couldn't get it tight enough to pull the derailleur to the big ring. Now I don't know about you, but though I like a nice high cadence as much as the next guy, the prospect of spending four hours in the saddle trying to keep up with a buddy on a fly weight carbon fiber racing bike with only a 30 tooth chain ring has only limited appeal to me. I had the 11 tooth cog in the rear, but my buddy was turning over a 52 tooth ring, pulling 22 more inches of chain than me with every peddle stroke. My heart was beating like a hummingbird's as I tried to keep up something like 120 RPM just to maintain 15 mph on the flats. After about 16 miles of spinning my brains out, I bid my buddy adieu and headed back toward the Bartlecave for a little visit with my Park Tools 4th Hand.

After a couple of miles of plodding along at a somewhat leisurely pace, it occurred to me that although I couldn't get the cable tight with my feeble hands, I had a newly installed cable adjuster on the down tube that might provide the necessary leverage. And sure enough, a couple of turns of the adjuster and that derailleur popped right up on the big ring just like it's supposed to. Who woulda' thunk it? So though my buddy had rolled off into the distance, I'd still be able to get my ride in without having to go home and futz with the bike.

I'll take the opportunity here to point out that the front derailleur has caused me a fair bit of anxiety from the beginning, as it is a super tight fit with the crank arm. Even adjusted as well as I can, the derailleur makes contact with the crank arm on every revolution, so every time I shift up to the big ring I have to back the derailleur off a hair to keep the crank arm from scraping. Not a big deal, and I'm sure it will eventually become a natural action to just "trim" after each shift, but it hasn't yet become a habit. I seem not to be alone in this - my buddy Phillip Cowan notes in a comment to my previous post that he ultimately decided to do some creative derailleur cage bending to get it to work right.

Nevertheless, having more or less sorted out the front derailleur, it was time to do some riding, to get a feel for this new bike, to start to understand what, if anything, is different between a low trail 650b bike and the more common race-inspired bikes I have been used to riding. Uncertain about whether I would encounter any further technical challenges (I am pretty new to bike wrenching), I decided to stay close to home. So I plotted a course down Rock Creek, where I could test the bike over a variety of terrain. Unfortunately, I had forgotten that the park road is closed at the exact section of the road I was planning to use.

 

Not to worry. Though no Magellan, I know the roads around there fairly well and would just make a detour through Takoma Park over to Sligo Creek to make a nice loop with plenty of climbing and descending to give the Routier a thorough workout. Though I got a bit lost, I eventually had a lovely, if sweaty, meander through the hilly streets of Takoma Park, up the lovely, cool Sligo Creek valley and then back home via upper Rock Creek. According to the Garmin it was 51.01 miles in 4 hours exactly with an elevation gain of 1,813 feet. With an average moving speed of 13 mph, it was a bit slower than my normal, but remember I was working with a very small gear for the first third of the ride. Altogether it gave me a nice introduction to the Vélo Routier. 

First Impressions

I have to caveat my impressions of the Vélo Routier v2 with the acknowledgement that in acquiring this bike I am making a serious conscious change in my expectations of what I want my bicycle to do. The last bike I bought was a Trek Madone, among the raciest of carbon fiber racing bikes available. I think it weighed under 16 pounds (without pedals or bottle cages). The Vélo Routier is steel and comes in around 28 pounds (with fenders, a rack, pedals and bottle cages, but without the Acorn handlebar bag which probably adds another couple of pounds). The VR has low trail geometry to accommodate a handlebar bag, fat tires and a friction drive train. Nearly everything about it is diametrically opposed to the Madone. Intentionally so. After years of riding impractical race bikes, I am getting to be more interested in being comfortable over long rides, able to carry the kinds of supplies that support such long rides and less concerned about not being passed by the shaved leg boys in their aero helmets. I now lean more toward Grant Petersen than the Velominati. I still like a little woo hoo when I ride, but it's not the main point anymore. So I'm open to taking a new direction, and I want to see if the low trail approach is it.

The other caveat I'll put out there is that a bicycle is a complex machine made up of a variety of different parts, many of which can have a profound effect on the performance of the bike. Is the ride less buzzy because the frame is steel or the angles are slack or because the tires are wide or because they have supple casings? Of course I have no alternative but to talk about the bike as a whole, but the particular attributes could come from any of a number of little choices I made along the way about components or configuration. My bike is made up mostly of the parts shipped with the DIY Kit, but as I have documented in these posts, I swapped out a few significant pieces here and there and had to modify some others to make them work. Your results may vary.

Handling
Low trail geometry is kind of the main point of this bike and I think it contributes significantly to my initial impressions, so I'll start there. The first thing I noticed was that the bike is super responsive to even subtle rider input. Low trail steering seems to be done more with the hands than with the hips, unlike mid and high trail bikes on which steering is done more with body lean. That's great because even at the apex of a turn I can adjust my line. But it also means that steering takes constant attention. In order to get the bike to track in a perfectly straight line, I have to keep my body, and especially my hands steady. Rocking my shoulders rocks the bike. Shifting my weight on the handlebars makes the bike weave slightly. Looking over my shoulder makes the bike drift off its line. It's a subtle but important characteristic that encourages me to try to ride with zen-like stillness.

My next impression, and this may have to do with the 38mm Pari-Moto tires -- their greater width, their grippy rubber, the file tread pattern, or their lower pressure -- is that the bike feels much more planted to the pavement than my skinny tired racing bikes (FYI, I generally favor 25mm Continental Gator Skin tires for most of my skinny tire riding). It feels like I could be scraping the bottom bracket bolts on the ground before the tires' traction gives out in a turn. And that planted feeling came on the first day of dry weather following a solid week of sometimes violent rain storms. There was plenty of water, mud and wet leaves on the ground.

The bike also descends with a surprisingly solid, dependable feel. I mean rock solid. This too may be attributable to the larger contact patch of the 38 mm tires. Or the bike's geometry - it has a bit longer wheelbase than my racing bikes. I'm not sure. Anyway, combine the solid, wobble-free descending with the ability to alter trajectory mid-course and you've got a really confidence-inspiring package. 

Reach
There is another characteristic of the bike related to geometry that is worth commenting on and that is reach. While the effective top tube seems to be just about the same as my racing bikes (~530 mm) I thought the higher stem would give me a more upright riding position. But I find that I'm pretty stretched out when my hands are on the hoods. I suspect it has to do with the 70mm stem and Nitto Olympiad handlebars I swapped from my Fuji. But even that cockpit took out nearly 50mm or about 2 inches or forward reach from the stock stem and bars supplied with the DIY Kit. Modern race bikes tend to have very short reach and drop compared to "classic" bikes, so this may be just me getting used to a new cockpit. But I have the feeling I could go with an even shorter stem and a handlebar with less reach. Without brifters, I'll likely spend more time with my hands in other locations than the hoods, so this may not prove to be a problem at all. I'll give it some time and see how I get along with it before making a decision to try a new handlebar/stem setup.

Speed
Okay, it's probably 15+ pounds heavier than the bike(s) I'm used to riding. It has substantially heavier wheels that are bound to take longer to get rolling and they're smaller so each revolution is fewer inches of circumference, right? So it's going to be slower all around than a fly-weight carbon racer. It's not going to lunge off the line and each pedal stroke up a hill is not going to propel the bike forward like an eager steed desperate to be unleashed. That is a given. But the question in my mind is how much speed have I sacrificed in this transition?

The bike does feel a bit slow to get going and when it's up and rolling I never had the sense of flying along effortlessly; what Jan Heine would call "planing". But I'm a bit skeptical about the whole concept of planing anyway. The bike just feels like what it is: a wide tired steel bike. At the same time the Routier doesn't feel lifeless or overly plodding. It feels about the same as my '86 Fuji which weighs about the same, only the Routier has appreciably better gearing. Still, the Fuji "feels" faster with its slightly thinner 27 x 1 1/4 inch tires.

I wonder how much of my sense of speed is affected by other aspects of the bike's build. Certainly climbing is probably slower just because of the added weight, but on flat sections and descents I occasionally looked down at my computer and noticed that I was traveling much faster than I would have expected, pretty much in line with my other bikes. And my overall average speed, given the mechanical issue and unexpected detour, wasn't all that slow for me. Is the Vélo Routier really much slower than my racing bikes? Or does it just "feel" slower? Do I just associate the feeling of speed with the jarring ride quality of a super stiff skinny tire racing bike?

The jury's still out on this one. It'll probably take a while for me to come to terms with the exact trade off I've made moving to this bike. I do tend to ride the exact same courses repeatedly through the year, so I should ultimately be able to determine pretty well how much slower this bike is to my others. I'll provide an update after I've had time to accumulate more data.   

Shifting
Okay, I'm just gonna say it. I'm diggin' the Microshift bar-ends. Having primarily used indexed integrated brake/shifters (brifters) and occasionally down tube levers (on the Fuji), making the switch to bar-end shifters was a shot in the dark. I have become frustrated with index shifting over the years, and I definitely wanted to move to friction shifting, but the placement of the levers at the end of the handlebars seemed strange and I wasn't sure I was going to like it. I even toyed with getting an adapter that would let me mount regular down tube shifters up on the stem like they used to do in the 70's. But lots of touring bikes come with bar-ends, so I figured I'd try them first. And for the moment I'm really glad I did. It hardly took any time at all to get used to them, though I still have to do a little more thinking than I did with brifters as I come up to stops. No worries though; I can already tell it'll come naturally before I know it. And the cable routing seems to work with my handlebar bag, so I am very pleased on the whole. 

As for the gearing, that is another change I'm going to have to get used to. I'm used to either a Shimano 105 road triple chain ring (52-42-30) with an 11-27 9-speed cassette or a typical compact chain ring 50-34 with a slightly wider 11-30 10-speed cassette. The Vélo Routier's 46-30 seems a bit low on the top end, but the 11-36 cassette gives oh so much room to move around. I can do most of my shifting in the rear and only go down to the small chain ring when I'm actually climbing. Again, I'll have to change my habits a bit, but I think the system is a good one. That sub 1-1 ratio is a climber's dream. I may be going uphill slowly, but it would have to be one hell of a hill before I had to get off and walk. Kudos to Cycles Toussaint. Not withstanding the somewhat finicky adjustments necessary to get the front derailleur working correctly, I think they've made a really good choice of gearing here.

Brakes
There seems to be a lot of criticism of the Dia Compe 750 center pull brakes. I did find it impossible to make the stock straddle cable hangers work right, but acting on the advice of ace MondoBlahBlah commenter Phillip Cowan, I swapped them out for some Tektro hangers that let me adjust for what seems to be uneven spring tension, after which everything worked just fine. I also swapped the stock brake pads for some Kool-Stop dual compound pads. Jan Heine called the 750s "mushy" in his review of the bike but honestly I don't know what he's talking about. I think the braze-on mounted center pull brakes work every bit as well as the Shimano dual pivot brakes on my Treks (105 and Ultegra). Maybe Jan's beloved Mafac Raid brakes are altogether better than the Dia Compe brakes. Or maybe my Origin8 brake levers are exceptional. I don't know. But the 750s seem just fine to me so for the time being I'll be sticking with them.

Conclusion(s)
My feelings about this bike are sort of complex, so I'll try to break them down.

Is it a good bike? Is it worth the money? Yes. It is a really good, economical version of a very unusual type of bike (650b wheels on a low trail frame). It has all the right braze-ons, though I as I mentioned in a previous post, the frame pump braze-ons don't seem to fit any commercially available pump - a huge disappointment. The quality of the welding seems to be top-notch and the frame seems to be of very high quality. There will always be debate about the horizontal rear dropout; I find it a pain, but not a deal breaker, and I understand that it might help the bike appeal to the wider "single speed" audience, making it a more viable product.

How about the DIY Build Kit? That depends. I am not an experienced mechanic, and I don't have a well stocked parts bin for this type of bike. So for me the DIY kit was an easy way to make sure I got all the essential parts to start with. It was a relief not to have to source appropriate 650b wheels, a needle bearing headset, bottom bracket and drive train parts. For most people who are even tempted to buy a "kit" bike, I presume you have some mechanical aptitude or a desire to learn. In my case it was very much the latter, so the kit was comforting. If you have a pretty solid mechanical capability and the willingness to do some sourcing, I think you would probably be happier getting the frame and putting the build together yourself.

I ended up ditching the stem/handlebar because it didn't fit the handlebar bag/rack setup I wanted. Nothing wrong with the stock setup - that's on me. The kit originally came with just bar-top thumb shifters, but I wrote back to Cycles Toussaint and they happily supplied me with the desired bar end shifters I wanted. So, I ended up a happy customer on that score.

The fenders were a bit of a disappointment. The front fender isn't long enough to provide adequate coverage. With a mud flap it will be serviceable I think. It also wasn't drilled to attach to the threaded fitting on the bottom of the fork crown - it had a riveted tab for connection to the more conventional fork crown center bolt. Velo Orange's 45mm Hammered fenders would almost certainly offer better coverage and more appropriate attachment options. They may not allow for graceful upsizing to 42mm tires, but so what? They would do what they're supposed to do without having to be augmented, which is attach to the bike properly and keep my feet dry.

Now that I've been through the assembly process, if I had to do it again, I think I might be inclined to just buy the frame along with the individual parts I needed, i.e., headset, wheel set (I really like the wheels that came with the set, by the way - the Velo Orange equivalent would easily cost $200 more), and maybe the rear derailleur/cassette combo which is as wide a set of gears as you could want. The front derailleur is a bit of a pain, so I might look for alternatives there. If I had a deep parts bin or other bikes I could scavenge, I would probably take Jan Heine's advice and just build up the bike with spare parts.

Despite all the trouble and the couple of disappointments along the way, I am extremely happy with this bike. It's still very much in the break-in phase, and I continue to wrestle with the derailleurs, but everything else has come together as well as might be expected. It's a special bike at a very modest price. I sincerely hope the Cycles Toussaint guys can make a go of it, though this is obviously a passion project for them, and I imagine it will be tough to make any money on such a niche product. I wish them luck and sincerely hope they succeed. After I've had more time in the saddle, I'll do a longer term review.

Recommendation
For the record, my hopefully constructive suggestions for Version 3 would be as follows:

• Provide barrel adjusters with the brake levers. Mine came without them which rendered the levers useless. I had a set of serviceable levers in my parts bin so I didn't bother reaching out to Cycles Toussaint about it. I'm sure they would have made good. Not including them with the kit just looks like an oversight in quality control.
• Make sure the pump braze-ons, even on the small frames, fit the Zefal Lapize. If they don't fit the most popular version of that style pump, take 'em off.
• Offer better fenders. Make sure the fronts are long enough and that they are drilled properly to fit on your frames, i.e., the threaded fitting on the bottom of the fork crown and the seat stay bridge. Though I made them work with my trusty drill, neither was right out of the box.
• Offer the horizontal dropout as an optional, not standard feature (I know, I know, production volume limitations).