The best bike company?

I've spent a fair bit of time waxing rhapsodic about my two Crust Cantilever Lightning Bolts. Best bikes (of their kind) in the world. No offense to the great Constructeurs, past and present, but though their bikes are undoubtedly more beautiful, prestigious and coveted, I can't believe they perform substantially better than the Lightning Bolt, the best production version of the classic Rando bike.   

https://crustbikes.com/blogs/builds/black-bolt-in-bethesda

https://crustbikes.com/blogs/builds/peggy 

Bikes are supposed to be fun, aren't they?

But buying, assembling and owning a "special" bike like this means more than the average consumer acquisition. I've owned Treks, Specialized, Fuji and Giant bikes. In the process of owning these bikes, I have had the good fortune to form relationships with folks at local bike shops, which I would generally recommend over direct-to-consumer purchasing, though LBS folks run the gamut from helpful to scornful, and in some cases, seem increasingly to be shills for the company store (I'm talking to you, Trek). Still, I've found these companies to make good products and generally back them up through what sometimes seems like their increasingly short lifespans (I'm talking to you, carbon fiber). 

I once snapped the derailer hanger on a USA-made Trek Madone Project One, and was amazed when Trek covered the entire repair under warranty, along with shipping to and from Wisconsin. No questions. No hedging. Kudos to Trek. A great consumer experience, facilitated by my local Trek dealer. 

Despite these positive experiences, I have never felt a sentimental, personal attachment to the designers and builders responsible for making the bikes. John Burke? Mike Sinyard? Undoubtedly interesting guys with rich backstories and impressive credentials, but even owning several of their products, I've never gone to any trouble to learn a thing about them or their companies. Likewise Fuji and Giant. Crust is different. 

Maybe I'm just biased toward small, quirky, boutique companies that make niche products (I am). Perhaps I fancy myself an iconoclast who resists popular trends (I do), or I'm too easily influenced by the cool kids who go against the grain (I am). Or maybe I have fallen completely under the mesmeric sway of the vélo-Svengali Jan Heine, the über retrogrouch Grant Petersen or Sheldon Brown, patron saint of fun, practical cycling. All true. Nevertheless, I maintain they are all correct in their assertion that the mainstream bicycle industry places too much emphasis on the "sport" cyclist, at the expense of all the rest of us who want bicycles that are practical, fun, durable, inexpensive and easy to maintain. In short, against the enshitification of bicycles. Examples:

• Does your bike use proprietary parts or standards supported by only one or few companies? Shitty
• Does your bike need batteries to operate? Shitty 
• Does your bike need hydraulic fluid to stop? Shitty
• Do you need a mobile app to tune your bicycle? Shitty
• Is your crank limited to a single gear? Shitty 
• Does your bottom bracket make incurable, ungodly creaking sounds? Shitty 

There are a few small companies still making non-shitty bicycles, and though Rivendell is probably the preeminent example, Crust is among them. Unlike Rivendell, most Crust bikes are designed for disc breaks and 1 1/8 inch head tubes, and all the appurtenances that go along with them. And of course you can choose to put electric shifters on any multi-geared bike if you want. And carbon fiber forks are starting to work their way into the lineup. But they also still make all-steel, rim brake bikes designed to use technology that has stood the test of time and will likely survive much longer than proprietary press-fit bottom brackets or battery-powered shifters. And they'll be cheaper, more comfortable and look better doing it. All hail the analog metal bicycle! And thanks to the companies that still make quality versions of them. How can you not form an emotional attachment to such non-conformist characters?     

As you know, I recently assembled my second Lightning Bolt (Peggy, short for Pegasus - above). I had planned to get a set of Pacenti Brevet wheels for the bike, as that's what I have on my other Lightning Bolt, but while personally picking up the frameset at Crust International Headquarters, I spontaneously decided to pick up one of Crust's dynamo 650b wheelsets. What I didn't recognize was that the wheelset I got was for 135mm rear spacing, while the Lightning Bolt has 130mm spacing. Apparently Garrett didn't notice either. Even Travis Evans from Just Riding Along Bike Shop, who did some of the initial assembly on the bike (headset, bottom bracket, etc.) didn't notice; or at least didn't say anything. At first I thought, well, whatthehell, I'll just leave the wheel in the frame and eventually it'll cold-set to the new size. What could it hurt? That was just me being lazy. But it was also me being stupid - why modify a brand new bike because I bought the wrong wheels? 

Crust 135mm rear wheel

I had no intention of actually cold-setting the frame, and the wheel was wedged into the rear triangle so tightly that removing it to fix a flat was damn near impossible and took a lot of paint when I tried. So I resolved to reach out to Crust and see if there was any way I could resolve the situation without having to buy an entirely new wheelset. They only sell assembled wheels as complete sets and I only needed the rear wheel. So I reached out to Garrett who immediately responded, "Woah, dang, really!? Could you send me a photo of the hub???" We went back and forth a couple of times, but ultimately, he sent me a new wheel and a return label for the old wheel. Just like that. Another satisfied customer. 

So I have two very satisfying experiences. One with the megabike corporation and one with the little boutique company operating out of a cinder block hovel in South Richmond. Why do I feel affection for Crust, but not particularly for Trek? Partly it's to do with how I came to discover Crust and my subsequent identification with the personalities at the company and my growing affinity for the "alt" bike online community with which it is often associated. 

Of course, it all starts with Grant Petersen. He's been floating around in my consciousness for so long, I can't possibly recall when or how he got there. But he was there long before I could afford a Rivendell, and has remained a guiding light of sanity as I made my way through what I presume to have been a necessary infatuation with bicycle racing and racing bikes (call it my 30's and 40's). The next catalyst for my transition away from racy bicycling was Eben Weiss, the venerable BikeSnobNYC, whose writing I almost certainly encountered first in his column in Bicycling magazine, a publication that used to mysteriously show up in your mailbox after joining the League of American Bicyclists (LAB) or making certain bicycle related purchases. Back in the late oughts and teens, I was also reading Lovely Bicycle which was covering the low trail/650b trend. I'm pretty sure that lead to a subscription to Bicycle Quarterly and Jan Heine, godfather of the trend. 

I was riding a Trek Madone Project One at the time, but starting to dream about these curious, classic steel cyclotouring bikes with fatter tires and the ability to carry more stuff - it was a return to my original dream of traveling by bike - should've bought that Trek 520 when I had the chance! I was skeptical about having a bike custom built (and wouldn't have known what I wanted anyway) and there really weren't any inexpensive "production" options available. I fiddled around with an '86 Fuji Allegra I bought on Craigslist, but really only managed to assemble a bike that looked like what I wanted. It's geometry was still a typical Bike Boom sport bike's and I wasn't enough of a mechanic back then to do a proper conversion to 650b. 

1986 Fuji Allegro

Then came the BQ review of the Cycles Toussaint Vélo Routier in 2014. It wasn't exactly a glowing review, but more of a, "want to try low trail/650b without spending a lot of money?" type review. I hemmed and hawed long enough to miss out on the first version, but snapped up a DIY build when v2 came out. It helped that I had just destroyed my Madone driving into a parking garage with it on the roof rack. So that was my first foray into this exciting new world of unconventional, Randonneuse bikes. I liked it, but the Vélo Routier still didn't rise to what I was beginning to suspect were the unrealistic expectations Heine created in describing the classic mid-century Rene Herse bikes and subsequent custom frames he was advocating. It was good, but not great. Then came his glowing review of the funky looking Crust Lightning Bolt. I mean it was an uncharacteristically positive review. And of course, if you were looking for a second opinion online, you were definitely going to run into the piece by the Radavist. This is where shit got weird. How could it not, encountering Ronnie Romance for the first time in his speedo.      

I bought a bike from this guy? Ronnie Romance puts the Alt in Alt Cycling.

Meanwhile, I had been watching YouTube videos from Path Less Pedaled. Party Pace? Sounds right to me. I'm not likely to be found riding a bike wearing Crocs, but the reminder that riding bikes is supposed to be fun was exactly where I was in the arc of my cycling life, and what has come to be known as Alt Cycling was, and is, really appealing to me. A couple of versions of the Lightning Bolt came and went and then came a model in glittery galaxy black. It took me about 10 minutes to pre-order one. The rest, as they say, is history. 

The Lighten-ing: Seatpost

I recently described the upgrade to the set of wheels on my Cycles Toussaint Vélo Routier v2, a low-trail, 650b bike. Not that you care, but you can read it here: https://mondoblahblah.blogspot.com/2021/07/the-lighten-ing-wheels.html

There are a few other upgrades I've been meaning to make, foremost among them, a new seat post. There was nothing inherently wrong with the Kalloy seatpost that came with the Velo Routier DIY package. It is a simple, classic-looking seatpost that fits this bike perfectly. But there was a minor (hopefully just cosmetic) manufacturing defect that has always bugged me a bit. At the rear of the post there was a tiny "dot" of adhesive foil stuck on for no apparent reason. One day I mindlessly started picking at it, as one might a scab, and once pealed off, it revealed a hole in the post, an obvious defect in from the casting of the aluminum. What have we here?! I exclaimed.

Kalloy seat post with foil concealing the manufacturing defect

Kalloy seat post from Cycles Toussaint

Too lazy to make a fuss over a $19 seatpost, and presuming the defect doesn't constitute a high risk of failure, I left it. If that's the bike's biggest problem, I'm certainly happy to live with it. And did. For a long time. But then the binder bolt on the Managing Partner's fancy-schmancy carbon fibre Specialized seatpost snapped off. 

Well, as you may imagine, while purchasing a new seat post for her, I couldn't resist the temptation to slip an extra into the ol' René Herse Cycles shopping basket. So it is that the Vélo Routier has come to sport what I think is one of the nicest looking seatposts available, the S65.

Nitto S65 "Crystal Fellow" seatpost

Nitto S65 "Crystal Fellow" seatpost - profile view

Nitto S65 "Crystal Fellow" seatpost - saddle cut-out view!

Nitto S65 "Crystal Fellow" seatpost - box

Now I am plum jiggered if I know why it's called "Crystal Fellow". Sounds like a sex toy. But as the box says, it is forged alloy pillar seatpost made in Tokyo, Japan. The Managing Partner's bike is a teeny-tiny "compact" frame, so she needed the 300mm version, while my Vélo Routier shows only the traditional "fist-full of post" so I got the 250mm. It's the same length as the original Kalloy post. So, of course I had to weigh them!

The Kalloy seatpost weighs 261 grams

The Nitto S65 "Crystal Fellow" seatpost in 250 saves 10 grams!

In addition to being marginally lighter (c'mon, ten grams?!) the Nitto is forged, which I presume means it is stronger than the obviously cast (K)alloy post. I suspect this makes the point about weight: saving that 10 grams cost me about $86 with shipping. So, you know, about $9 per gram. Cheap by bicycle standards but given there was nothing functionally wrong with the original, a bit of an unnecessary extravagance to be sure. Nevertheless, I love Nitto products, want to encourage the company to keep making them, think the "Crystal Fellow" looks just a bit nicer and hey, 10 grams is ten grams, am I right?

The Lighten-ing: Wheels

For those of you who don't know, a few years ago I smashed up a midlife-crisis-carbon-fiber-super-bike and replaced it with a low trail do-it-yourself-built steel rando bike from Cycles Toussaint of Alberta, Calgary. Read all about it here: https://mondoblahblah.blogspot.com/search/label/VR2%20Build

I've swapped some cockpit parts over the years, but in general, the bike looks like this:

Cycles Toussaint Velo Routier V.2, 51cm

With the exception of the tires, handlebars, stem pedals and bottle cages, all parts came with the Cycles Toussaint Velo Routier DIY package. Though I could never quite get the front derailleur adjusted perfectly, I've been extremely happy with the bike, and find I like it more the longer I own it.

People who ride bikes like this, absolutely should not be weight weenies. The frame is steel, the rims are metal, the tires are wide. This bike is designed and built to keep the rider comfortable over long distances, not to race. So it's heavy compared to the bike it replaced. Ready to ride it weighs just about 32.6 pounds as I originally set it up. 

For a while I have been thinking of getting a second set of wheels. Nothing particularly wrong with the original set, and the kid at the local bike shop even complemented me on them when I took them in to get trued (I can do a basic job, but I like to periodically take them in to a professional get the dish and spoke tension right). My first inclination was to order a new set from Cycles Toussaint, as they have a wheelset for sale for the insanely low price of $169. The set, like most of their components, runs a tad heavy at nearly 1,900 grams, plus another 100g or so for quick releases. 

I had heard Russ Roca from PathLessPedaled mention he thought "good" wheels should generally not exceed around 1,500 grams, so I thought I'd look around to see what my options were. It doesn't take long to discover there aren't a lot of good options for 650b alloy "box" style rims on the market. In fact, aside from those available through Cycles Toussaint, only Pacenti seems to offer pre-built wheels that fit the bill. Velo Orange used to offer a nice set, but I haven't seen them actually in stock for a number of years and they seem to have been captured by the disk brake tractor beam. Of course I probably should (and thought I might) break down and get a set built at the shop, but that would require more effort than just plunking down my credit card, dammit!

After reading Jan Heine's description of the wheels he built for the bike he rode during the 2019 Paris-Brest-Paris ride, I decided the Pacenti Brevet 650b was close enough and somehow ordered during a brief window of availability during the Covid-19 pandemic. Looking at their site, it looks like there's now a backlog of at least 10 weeks, as is the case with a lot of products these days.

Pacenti Brevet 650b wheels

Built just for me by someone named Ryan from Devon, UK!

Ryan from Devon built my wheels with their own two hands.

Fortunately, before the end of the world, I acquired a back-up set of tubes and Loup Loup Pass 650b x 38mm extra light tires from what was then still Compass Bicycles, now René Herse.

Compass Cycles Loup Loup Pass tires and Schwalbe SV21A tubes

I've only used two models of tires on this bike in the three or so years since I bought it - the white Pacenti Pari-Moto tires that came with the Cycles Toussaint DIY package, and the Compass Loup Loup Pass extra lights. Both are made by Panaracer in Japan, in what looks like nearly identical molds. Both are absolutely outstanding quality tires, the primary difference being lifespan - the Pari-Moto tires are what Jan Heine has described as "event" tires, and for me at least, were very short lived. But they performed every bit as well as the Loup Loups at about half the cost, so you decide. If you like the white, buy two sets and just swap them out twice as often.  

A note on tubes: The René Herse site recommends Schwalbe SV14A tubes for the 38mm tires. When I originally installed the Loup Loups, I did so with those tubes, and both of them blew out. I allow that there may have been a problem with my rim tape or something (though the tubes blew out on both front and rear rims), but having blown $34 to smithereens, I elected to get some SV21A tubes and haven't had a problem with them. 

Technically the SV14As are listed on the Schwalbe tube-finder as 26 inch tubes which Jan has pointed out are plenty big enough for 650b rims (there's only about 3% difference in circumference, which should be fine). The SV21A tubes, specifically rated for 650b rims are a touch heavier (just under 3 ounces). I'm willing to suffer the extra 80 grams for just a touch more confidence.

Schwalbe SV14A inner tube specifications

Schwalbe SV21A inner tube specifications

https://www.schwalbetires.com/bike_tires/tubes/finder

I was originally going to install a new MicroShift 10-speed cassette on the new wheels, but I figured while I was updating the wheels I might as well "upgrade" the cassette as well, at the risk of introducing yet another variable to complicate matters. So I installed a SRAM PG-1070, 11-36 cassette. Not sure it's superior in any way to the much less expensive Microshift alternative, but it saved about 2 ounces. I used one of the "extra" KMC 10-speed chains included with the DIY package. 

SRAM PG-100 Cassette

So I have the new Brevet wheels on the bike with new Loup Loup tires, Schwalb SV21A tubes, SRAM cassette and a KMC chain. Just in case you don't know, here's a Rivendell video demonstrating the process of swapping out the cassette and chain:

https://vimeo.com/505415805

So, does all this extra effort (and money - probably about $350 more for the "upgraded" wheels and cassette) yield any benefit? The simple answer: hell, yes. I can't say it's completely revolutionized the bike's performance - it's still piloted by a middle-age slacker after all - but there is a definitely a notable improvement to the ride quality. Spinning up to speed seems quicker, as does sprocket engagement after coasting. I'm not sure it's actually faster, but it feels faster and just somehow "smoother". 

I suspect a large portion of the improved ride quality has to do with the quality of the freehub, which is undoubtedly of better quality than the DIY hub. But weight might also play a role, particularly in the front which, despite having four (count 'em, 4!) fewer spokes, feels more "definite". I will test my freehub theory when I next swap out wheels. When ordering the Brevets I picked up a Pacenti freehub to get to the $500 free shipping limit. I'll put that on the stock Cycles Toussaint wheels with the MicroShift cassette and see how it compares. Of course that probably won't be for another year, so...

The conclusion is that I'm super happy I went this way. Nothing particularly wrong with the stock build; it is what it was supposed to be: entry-level. But the stock wheels really do a disservice to the bike. This one upgrade reveals the true quality of the frame with its compliant steel and uncommon geometry. When supported by higher quality components, the Velo Routier absolutely shines. I'm happier with the bike now than when I bought it.

Pacenti Cycles Brevet 650b wheels for rim brakes