New Ride: Traitor Wander

I've been on a bike buying binge this fall. I spent most of the summer selling bikes: the Raleigh Pardner went to Indianapolis, the Raleigh Kodiak went back to Raleigh, the Rockhopper became a winter beater for a local, and my old Raleigh Technium is hanging from the garage rafters, waiting in vain for another Technium fan. At one point this year, I was down to just two bikes: my Karate Monkey and my Black Mountain Monstercross.

Of course, that situation couldn't last. As mentioned in my previous post, I picked up a Niner ROS9 to handle my hard charging mountain biking duties, and now the KM is back to its normal rigid and single lifestyle. For a while, I ran my BMC as my city/camping bike, but that didn't take. I like to have a lightly loaded road bike for solo rides, and something good for running errands: upright position, racks and fenders and baskets, that I don't mind banging on bike racks.

Which brings us to my latest buy, a Traitor Wander frameset.

Traitor bills this as a touring type bike, built around a modern semi-compact geometry and disc brakes. My build leans more towards an upright city bike:

I used my trusty but aging On One Mary bar, which I find to be a nice width for city riding. I wouldn't mind a little more rise, though. The fork's steerer tube is just 300mm, meaning my XL frame only allows about 30mm of spacers to get the bars up. This put the bars right about saddle level. With a drop bar, this would end up much too low for me:

I picked up some new disc brakes for this build, $35 Shimano M396s. Obviously not high end, but they feel strong and have the great, easy to modulate feeling of my (slightly) higher end Deore M6xx brakes. I had hoped that my experience with the dual caliper Tektro Spyke brakes would convince me that mechanical brakes can be as good as hydros, but that just isn't the case. Once you've experienced hydros, it's hard to go back to cable brakes.

I still need to trim my brake lines, though. There's a downside to hydraulic brakes right there.

The rear caliper is nestled in the chainstay. This looks clean and allows for good fender and rack mounting, but takes up the space used for my rear mounted kickstand.

Up front is a nice segmented fork. I love the looks of this fork with its joints and gentle bend, but the tire clearance is pretty marginal. I might have clearance for a fender over my 34mm tire, but it will be tight. To their credit, this looks about right for the tire width Traitor claims (35mm with fender, 40mm without), but why not add more clearance on a disc bike like this? These tires are starting to feel pretty skinny these days, even for road and bike path riding.

Tons of tire clearance at the seatstays:

But not much at the chainstays:

I had an idea that a 650b conversion would improve the tire clearance, but my only 650b wheelset is on my Niner right now. I'm trying to avoid buying more tires and wheels for a bit.

I was happy to find that Traitor included down tube cable stops on this frame. The lack of these on my BMC is a minor irritant:

Down tube shifting clearly isn't the best option for this type of build, but I couldn't get a thumbshifter to work well with the bulky hydraulic brake lever. I might change this to my gripshifter at some point, but this Silver shifter does the job for now.

My drivetrain is a 1x9, 36 x 11/36. It's enough range for flat central Ohio, and I like the simplicity of the 1x setup.

I've only had the bike out for a few rides so far. Handling is pretty typical of a higher trail 'cross bike. Low trail fans will surely squack about not being able to change their line on a hard corner while carrying a bundle of newspapers up front, but this works fine for me--even with my Wald basket up front.

I was most surprised at the ride of the bike. When I first pulled out the frame, I was a bit taken aback at the top tube's size. At 35mm outer diameter, it's the same size as on my burly Niner ROS9. Bicycle Quarterly says the top tube stiffness and frame balance is the key to planing, that springy feel that steel riders constantly seek. In measuring a tube stiffness, the outer diameter is much more important than the inner diameter (controlled by the butting profile), so this frame oughta ride like a lead covered brick. But it doesn't. No, it doesn't flex like my vintage Treks or my old Technium road bike, but it certainly doesn't feel too stiff or dead.

Contrast this to a couple of mountain bike that stick in my memory. I used to have an OS Blackbuck, a Rawland Drakker, and a State Pulsar. All had 28.6mm OD top tubes, skinny for a modern mountain bike. And yet, all threee had dead, flat rides that didn't inspire me at all. There's something to planing beyond just getting the flexiest top tube available.

Anyway, this isn't a bike I'm going to sprint against my friends with. For running errands and riding around town, it should work pretty well... though it would work better with room for some 40mm tires AND fenders.