Ray’s Rohloff tourer

I built Ray a road bike last year – he was pleased with it and so asked me to build him a touring bike too. I was excited for this project, because despite having done a lot of solo loaded touring myself, I hadn’t yet built a machine designed especially for the purpose. For ease of use and low maintenance the bike features a Rohloff 14spd hub paired with a Gates belt drive, along with disc brakes and a generator front hub.

The seatstays curve so that they can act as the front part of the pannier support, with the custom rack matching the shape. There is a Supernova rear light mounted on the back, to match the front light that is mounted on the custom front rack. Both racks feature carbon top-plates made by my friends at Ruckus. The SON-SL front generator hub is paired to special dropouts that mean there are no connections for the power – just clamp the wheel in and the dropouts provide the connection. The power is sent internally to the front lamp and to a USB charging port on the top of the steerer.

At the rear there is a split dropout on the right for installing the belt, and a extra long dropout on the left for the torque arm of the Rohloff hub, which is controlled by a Co-motion dropbar Rohloff shifter.  An eccentric bottom bracket takes care of tensioning the belt. This isn’t a light bike at 28lbs, but with the addition of a set of bags it is all ready to be self sufficient for weeks on the road.

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