Sarah has been coveting the lowness of my Challenge bents, but the hassle of changing the boom length made it too much trouble to adjust them so we could both ride with our butts close to the ground. I figured we'd eventually get Sarah onto a Challenge bent, but I was thinking about next season. Biding our time until the right used bike came along or I could pop for a brand new Fujin SL.
BlueCoyote posted on BROL that there was a Hurricane for sale in Calgary on Craigslist. Naturally I had to take a look. A local purchase would save us $300-$400 not to mention the PITA that buying a bike from thousands of miles away can be. The bike turned out to be a nice blue Hurricane Sport. Sarah liked her test ride so I made a fairly low offer as the bike is well used. The buyer accepted and the rest is history.The bike isn't perfect. The seat is a large size which will work, but the medium seat would be better [anyone want to trade?]. Although the large seat is long enough that with a bit of padding Sarah will have a nice head rest. I'm going to get the hubs serviced today and I suspect the wheels will need replacing once we get through the wet rides of Fall and next Spring. If we are lucky they'll be good rain wheels for a couple years and we can build up something nice for the summer. Components are nothing special Deore/Tiagra, but everything seems to work well so we'll just use them and upgrade as things get funky. One interesting thing is that the bike has Magura hydraulic rim brakes - they seem really nice, but the frame and fork have special brake mounts that will only work with these kinds of brakes. I've never seen that before. I've heard lots of good things about these brakes so we'll use them and see what happens. I've just got to get down to my LBS and order up a couple sets of brake pads since they will be a special order for sure.
The Hurricane came with a rear rack and sidebars - both of which we'll need to do some touring next year. This will be Sarah's touring bike and recreational bike. I've adjusted the fenders that came on the bike and installed some blinkies front and back. I had a FBS bottle holder in my parts box that we threw on [it's my goto hydration solution for these Challenge bents]. I also put on a Hostel Shoppe Large Euro seat bag which fits nicely. I installed a no-name mirror to the left bar and eventually I'll get two B&M long stalk mirrors for this bike. It looks like a very purposeful bike now and we won't be worried about getting rained on anymore.
Sarah has already commented on how responsive it is and very easy to ride due to the low seat height. The short wheelbase - much shorter than my Taifun makes for a tight turn radius. I noticed that the suspension is a lot more active than on my Taifun. Given Sarah's lighter weight that is probably a good thing. I'm not sure how I'd like it - although it did feel comfy when I test rode it.
10 comments:
Nice, for a head rest it looks like a small lumbar pillow connected would be almost too perfect a fit for neck comfort. Not too sure about holding head up though. So from looking at how her racks are setup does it help you setup your own?
B
Great idea on the lumbar pillow that sounds like a winner.
Seeing Sarah's rack - exactly the rack I thought I had ordered just confirmed that the Challenge Day Rack was not what I needed on my Taifun. I sent it back. I have a line on a used rack exactly like Sarah's.
I saw that ad the day it came out and was thinking of forwarding you the link, but then thought you probably won't be interested. Glad to hear you got it regardless. Looks cool. All this talk of low bikes has me curious.....
She'll love the magura rim brakes. They feel great, they modulate great. They're quite powerful. They're easy to work on, once you get the hang of it. The only problems: you go through pads in a hurry. And they'll wear out your rims pretty quick, too. At least replacing the pads is quite easy.
Nice to hear another positive comment on the Maguras. They seem really nice. I don't mind replacing pads and rims [within reason] if the braking performance is great.
In the long run we can always put a disc fork on that bike if we want to spare the rims.
Hey Vik, when the internet began there were two photos that I found that will stick in my memory forever. One is a couple out for a fast recreation ride on a RYAN tandem. The interesting thing is they were doing over 30mph, and she was on the back knitting. :-) And the second was another tandem shot, the stoker (back rider) flying over the handlebars on a MTB tandem with Magura brakes.
SO she has a nice bent, with amazing stopping power. If I find either of those photos on an older PC in the house I will post them.
B
One other nice thing about the Maguras - they don't care at all about all the tight bends on the hamster bars or the long run to the rear brake.
Now I just have to get over my paranoia that the hydraulic hose will fail at an inconvenient time.
Vik, no worries about problems with the Magura's. Richard/Sunraycer the creator/owner of the hpv Ottawa web site has a Greenspeed with Schlumf and Rohloff and Maguras. His tandem has approx 20k on it and I have never heard a complaint about the brakes, just bragging that they work all the time in winter. If you want to dialog in real time a lot of us in Ottawa leave IRC on all the time. irc.oftc.net hpv is the channel. I live as there Otto, Drumbent from Jerome's page is there as is Vic Gedris etc...
B
PS here is tandem with canoe on top.
http://hpv.tricolour.net/history.html
That URL didn't work for me.
Okay - I'm going to sound dumb, but what is IRC?
http://hpv.tricolour.net/ This should work, it is a direct cut and paste. Sorry, I thought your computer experience went back to pre-windows days. IRC is Internet Relay Chat, text based online chatting. Many browsers, such as Opera have the ability to do a "chat". Mozilla also, you can also download a windows program called Icechat. http://www.icechat.net/site/
Drumbent is a professional musician and can be on till all hours of the night here in EST.
B
PS If you use Opera or Mozilla this may open right to our chat channel.
irc://irc.oftc.net/#hpv
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