20,000 Kilometer Budget Touring Bike Review: Cycling Around the World

Hey everyone and welcome to our newest bikes gear video. Our 20,000 kilometer bike review. We are 4,700 meters high in the Peruvian Andes and we are about to crack the 20,000 kilometer mark on our bicycle journey around the world. So we thought it's the perfect time to do a bike review with such an amazing landscape. We did our first bike review after 3,000 kilometers, then another one after 10,000 kilometers and in this one we are going to talk about how all our equipment is lasting, if we're still happy with all our gear and the bikes and go into a little bit of detail about everything but not too much because that would take forever. We are going to reference a few other videos though, also our bikes and gear playlist which you can find up here where we talk more specifically about many of the components and gear we're going to talk about in this review. All right, before we talk about the specific components of our bikes we want to talk a little bit about our philosophy. For a journey like this, cycling for several years around the world through really remote places like right now for example, we wanted really sturdy but also really basic bikes. Bikes with no fluids, no hydraulics, no high-end gearboxes for example, nothing that could break where we would have to go to some specialized shop to get it fixed. We wanted bikes that hopefully would last the whole journey, the whole three, four years around the world and that we could fix ideally always ourselves and so far this philosophy has actually worked out really well for this for our journey right now because we have been able to fix any minor problem ourselves, completely ourselves and actually most major problems ourselves as well. That being said we haven't had that many problems to begin with but we'll talk about all the problems we have had with our bikes, mechanical issues now when we talk about all the components. There is of course nothing wrong with high-end bikes and bikes with complex components. There are so many people around the world that are touring the world doing crazy trips on bikes with very complex gearboxes etc and they are of course proving that it's possible. This as I said is our philosophy and so far it's worked out really well for us. Alright so let's begin with talking about my bike, a Wheeler 8700 Trekking steel chromoly frame. I bought this bike second hand off ebay for 400 euros together already with the wheels, the rims and a Shimano Deore LX, a very old drivetrain and just like the drivetrain the actual frame is very old as well. According to the previous owner it's around 20 years old actually but because he took very good care of it it's in really good condition. This frame is made in Taiwan and it's a double butted chromoly steel frame, double butted meaning that the tubing is thicker in parts where it needs to be and thinner where it does not need to be making it lighter. We wanted steel frames because they are very basic, very strong and that also have a certain flexibility which you do not have in aluminum frames which is nice when you don't have any suspension that it kind of the steel flexes a bit more than say aluminum or carbon. Like I mentioned I got this bike for 400 euros second hand off ebay and 400 euros is really not a lot of money for a really sturdy, really well made touring bike. So now that I've told you about the frame let's start talking about all the components kind of going from front to back. The first thing I changed on this bike when I got it was that I added the Son 28 hub dynamo. This is a very reliable, very powerful hub dynamo that I actually laced into the front rim myself and so far we're really happy with it. We use it in combination with the Busch & Müller USB-Converter to convert this electricity to USB power, 5 volt USB power so we can charge our phones and also to power our Busch & Müller in this case IQX headlight and also tail light, LED lights. The reason we do this is and we want a dynamo is not only to charge our phones when we're in really remote areas but also because we don't want battery operated lights because we have so many other things we want to charge or keep charged anyway that it's nice to have light when you need it. The rims I have came with this bike. These are the Zakk or from the company Ride, Zakk 2000 rims with 36 spokes. They're three cross laced and we wanted, that was very important for us, we wanted 36 spoke rims just because they make for really really sturdy wheels and so far in over almost 20 000 kilometers now on really really some really rough roads I have not had one single broken spoke. Then staying at the front we have the Tubus, both of us have the Tubus Tara steel rack. So far this is holding really well and is starting to rust in a few little places but nothing big and as I mentioned we wanted really basic bikes, no hydraulics etc so we have very basic Shimano V-brakes and these are working perfectly fine when it's wet or really cold and icy. The braking power is limited but other than that they're perfectly fine at stopping these 50 to 55 kilogram bikes and very important they're cable operated so we can fix them and we have fixed them on the road when brake cables have snapped and the brake pads are easily available even in countries like Peru, Ecuador for example where you don't get a lot of bike shops and when you do they're usually very basic and yeah because these are pretty much the most basic brakes you can get you can get the the expendable parts for them anywhere as well. And last but not least up the front here the tires. We have the Schwalbe Marathon Plus Tour tires. My frame, it's a pretty old frame so it only fits 47s. Unfortunately Luisa's frame, also a very old frame and Luisa will get to that later, only fits 42s so very narrow actually for touring. But so far yeah we're really happy with them. This is our second set or my second set already. The first set I did 12 000 kilometers on. The puncture resistance did decrease after a while after around seven eight thousand kilometers but so far on this set I've not had a single puncture and because it's the Plus Tour variant it also has a little bit of like dirt texture and dirt profile so it's also good for off-road. And we do have a separate video where we talk about just these tires you can check that out up here and yeah I'm going to be referencing more videos up here when we get to them. All right let's continue with talking about the cockpit. We'll go from right to left to kind of keep an overview. Here we have our GoPro mounted on a SP Gadget swivel mount and a GoPro handlebar mount. This has worked super well the last one and a half years essentially. You can turn it in any direction and we use this all every single day. Then I just have these aluminum horns which is nice to kind of give your hand a different position. Also for climbing it's really nice and we're also really happy with these. These are a second set of grips. The first set we had were made out of cork or lined with cork and we were actually really happy with them because when you sweat and so on it didn't stick on your hands so much. But they wore out pretty quick and then we replaced them with something we found in Ecuador. Just these ergonomic which is nice for the hands rubber grips and they are comfortable it's just the when it's hot the the rubber kind of sticks on your hand and it's not it's not as nice as the cork grips. Then we have a little USB horn here electric bicycle horn which we actuate here which is pretty loud and we've talked about this in our top five bike gadgets video which you can find up here I guess somewhere here and yeah so this we're really happy with this as well as a little fun fact this is USB rechargeable but we've never recharged it in 16 months it's crazy. Then we have quad lock for a phone here also pretty happy with this. It is sometimes a bit annoying to get it on with one hand especially like right now for example if you're not in the exact right angle but other than that it's it's held up really well with the phone case for the iphone 8. Then we have our igp sport igs 320 gps bike computer we got this very recently after we got rid of our cube bike computer because that was eating batteries like crazy and this is usb rechargeable but we are unfortunately not very happy with this and we made a very detailed review of this bike computer about why we're not happy with it and you can find that somewhere up here as well. Then handlebar bag and underneath you can find the busch & müller usb werk which I talked about which is the converter to that allows us to charge our phones from our hub dynamos. Then we have a feedback in here this is great just because then it's super easy access to our water bottles also when we have to spray water at dogs that are chasing us but also as a little trash can it's just super versatile and yeah I would actually want to get another one and put it here not for another bottle because that wouldn't work with the phone but for just keeping random stuff in but yeah so far I haven't found one on the road yet so I'll have to wait and see. Then last but not least we have this little bungee cord here which we use as our brake paired with our walking stick as a kind of stand or hiking pole as our stand mechanism and then last but not least on the left here a little mirror this is also from busch & müller german brand I think and yeah this is super nice I can switch to the other side when we're cycling in countries where you drive on the left and it's just really really easy and perfect to use. Let's continue with talking about the bottles we have a 1.4 liter stainless steel bottle from the company esbit which fits perfectly in this kind of xl top peak bottle holder and then we also have a 1.5 liter thermos from a kind of no name greek brand that's at least where we got it in greece and the thermos also mentioned in our top five bike gadgets video is just incredible because especially now when at night it's minus five or celsius in the morning it's we usually boil water in the evening and then we have still have a hot coffee in the morning and yeah we this is I think one of our favorite components of all our gear is this thermos. Then down here we have a little 0.6 liter petrol bottle for our multi-fuel burner we also have a cooking video if you're interested in that and yeah this is mounted down here because if this sometimes leaks if there's a little bit of dirt in the o-ring then you don't get petrol and everything else it just goes to the bottom and that's it. The saddle I have actually came with the bike this is a leather saddle but not from brooks it's from some unknown company I can't really read the label anymore this was really already worn in when I got it and yeah I've obviously used it quite a bit now but it's still in pretty good condition I wax it every two weeks approximately and it is very comfortable but I would never get a leather saddle again just because it's too much work when it's raining or yeah just very moist or it gets very brittle and I have to take care of it a lot so it's just too much work for what it is. As you can see this has a little bit of suspension but I also have a suspended seat post this is from a pretty unknown brand I think it's called matrix or something and generally this is pretty good it's a trapezoid which is nice because it kind of goes in the right direction I don't like the telescopic one so much because it's in kind of the wrong suspending in the wrong direction the only thing is these the the joints here have if I move the weight of it you can see it's very loose because this is aluminum cast aluminum as far as I know and it's just over the time it's just being worn out so I think I need to get one a different one if I can find one where it has steel where at least where the axles run it's the joints run it's made out of steel because yeah this isn't holding up so well unfortunately. All right the drivetrain so the derailleurs and the shifters are from the shimano dior lx series this is a pretty old series but it came with the bike and so far actually the front shifter and both derailleurs are still with the second hand components I got with the bike and working really well this is a three by eight drivetrain by the way only my rear shifter broke unfortunately pretty recently I think a thousand kilometers ago or so but it was a yeah I was able to get a new eight speed shifter in Peru and so far it's working really well again and we have changed a few components expendable components along the way I think this is my third fourth bottom bracket one unfortunately failed catastrophically in Texas which so we actually had to hitchhike but and this is a pretty basic square taper bottom bracket but now this one is working pretty well and maybe that was just a faulty component we also changed our gearing over the time and I'm always going lower now I have a 22 to 34 lowest climbing gear and that's almost still a bit too high for now these really steep and rough roads in the Andes so I've yeah ideal would be even lower so I could think about upgrading to even larger cassettes but yeah we're actually thinking about upgrading our whole drivetrains to a one by 11 speed or 12 speed but this is just a thought just more out of curiosity to see to compare it to a three by something drivetrain at the front now I'm running a Shimano Altos triple and this has worked really well and just a very basic Shimano cassette at the at the back we've used all kinds of chains over the last 16 months from Shimano SRAM and low-end components that are no-name components that we've picked up somewhere along the way and to be honest we've hardly noticed any difference between the chains in their durability and how long they would last so yeah to be honest it's all kind of the same yeah and that's pretty much it the only thing is now the rear derailleur the pulleys are getting very worn out so I'm probably gonna have to change those out and the spring pushing the chain back is not as good anymore so when the chain is very wet for example when we're riding in the rain sometimes the derailleur jumps to the front just because the spring in the derailleur rear derailleur isn't powerful enough to really pull the chain back anymore when the chain is not moving super fluidly so yeah that's also one of the reasons we're thinking about completely changing our drivetrain but we'll see in future so far it's working really well and has yeah worked really well we have gone through quite a few pedals the last 16 months actually from walmart pedals which we picked up in an emergency along the way to cube pedals which we started with all flat pedals and the ones we have now we've had for around two and a half thousand kilometers but in pretty intense conditions very rocky roads but also a lot of dust a lot of water a lot of ice and so on and to be honest these have held up really well the bearings still feel really good and the problem with we had with the previous ones was always that the bearings weren't sealed so the water would get in there and just wash out all the grease and yeah the effort of maintaining them really wasn't worth it because it would happen so often with these ones now they have a little bit of rubber around the the bearings so they're sealed better and protected better from the elements and so far these are holding up really well and the replaceable little screws which provide the traction also really grippy and yeah we're really happy with them okay second the last thing we're going to talk about are all the panniers but only very briefly because we have a separate video about our panniers before we used to cycle when we started this trip with a combination of 4D and Ortlieb panniers now everything all our panniers are from the Ortlieb free series so pvc free and the reason we changed to only Ortlieb is because all the seams started opening up on our 4D panniers actually a few seams also opened up on our the Ortlieb panniers we had previously but we talked because we talk about it in great detail in this video yeah we're not going to talk more about it now we are happy with the Ortlieb free series panniers we have right now that's all we're going to say and last but not least the guitar also packed in a Ortlieb dry bag or more specifically the guitar rack and we have like with everything else a separate video about how we built this guitar rack we custom built it from an aluminum essentially rear rack which is mounted out the back 90 degrees out the back and on the Colombian death road a few months ago this unfortunately broke the aluminum rack snapped the aluminum snapped but we were actually able to get it welded and it did hold for a long time but now the Peruvian roads have snapped it again at the weld but this time we've been we fixed it with the cable ties and it's holding for now at least and what we're probably going to do is when we get to La Paz in Bolivia in yeah about a month's time we're going to rebuild replace this aluminum part with the steel part if we can get the steel rack in La Paz so it's hopefully then built for more sturdy for these rougher roads here in South America so 20,000 kilometers on this bike and it's still holding up really well like I said we've had hard or I have had hardly any problems no broken spokes nothing on this bike I'm super happy with it super happy with the fact that it's a very basic bike and I can fix it either myself or get it fixed anywhere in the world and yeah now Luisa is gonna talk about her bike so there's not that much left to talk about for me because we do have a lot of similar components but of course some of my stuff on my bike is different it also has gotten a little bit windy now so I hope the sound is still all right so as you can see I do have a different frame than Tobi and I also got it second hand off ebay it was a bit more expensive it cost about I think 550 euros and it's also a steel frame and also maybe 15 to 20 years old I'm not quite sure about that my frame is from the German brand Hercules and it's also chromoly steel and double butted just as Tobi's as you can see it has a low entry and those frames do have the reputation of not being as stable but so far it's holding up quite well and I really like this as I said it's quite old so the frame doesn't have that much space for bigger tires so I'm only able to fit 42 millimeters it would be nicer to have a bit more space for wider tires so we could also run with lower pressure so it would be more comfortable off-road and speaking of the tires let's go to the rims we have 28 inch 622 rims or also known as 700c I also have 36 spokes and I do have different rims though from a different brand both from Mavic but they are different my front one is also a double walled rim and it's holding up very well also the spokes but recently I started to have some issues with my back rim it's not double walled also has 36 spokes though and yeah a few I don't know maybe a thousand kilometers ago some rim started to some spokes started to break and in the end we ended up changing the whole side behind the cassette of the spokes well Tobi changed it and we actually do have all the tools and spokes to do that ourselves just on the road with us we also have a separate video about that which you can find up there so if I'm able to get a new rim a double walled rim also with 36 spokes then I would definitely get that because yeah I'm fearing that at some point also this rim might break yeah as I said we changed out the whole side but it was actually only two spokes that actually broke but many of them were also a bit bent so we thought it's better to change the whole side and speaking about broken stuff actually only about a week ago the eyelet of my frame on the back broke which is holding the the rack so essentially the whole rack broke down and we had to find a solution for that and we did find one which is holding up so far we just fixed the the rack to the axle and we're not so sure if that's the best to do but as I said so far it's holding up well and if it continues like that we're just gonna buy a second axle just to spare one to be able to change that change that out in case it breaks of course as I mentioned it is a steel frame so we also could consider just to weld the eyelet back on the frame yeah we'll just have to see how it goes so I have a different saddle than Toby it's not leather but it's the Terry Physio gel saddle for women and I am very happy with it it's quite comfortable it has some a small hole in here for some air and also I don't have to wax it or anything it doesn't matter if it gets wet so I don't have to care about it at all and I have a suspension seat post as well but unlike Toby it's a telescopic one so far I'm quite happy with that as well my drivetrain is also different from Toby's my derailleur and the shifters are from the Shimano DR-XT series so a bit newer but to be honest we haven't noticed a big difference between those two series I also have a 3x9 speed 24x36 so far I've run through two bottom brackets this is the second crank and the third cassette but I guess in maybe a month I'm gonna change all of that again and finally let's go to the front once more to talk about my cockpit which is slightly different from Toby's as you can see I can I also have the same GoPro mount as he does the grips are the same but the horns are a bit bigger they're from the brand Ergotech and I really like that I'm able to grip here and also here it's very nice for climbing and I also I do have two feedbacks because my frame doesn't fit two bottles as Toby's does so I have two bottles here and yeah I really like this because as Toby said already you have very fast access to the bottles and that's really good I have the same bungee here for holding the brake and I have a different foam mount than Toby has I don't have the quad lock it's just some rubber bands it's not that great one rubber already broke and I'm looking for a different one but so far I haven't found anything also I do have a mirror as well it's a different one than Toby's but yeah in the end it does the same thing rapid change of scenery we are in a hotel in Lima and there is a lot of traffic outside so please excuse the noises actually one week after we recorded the video I'm still on the Peru Great Divide Trail my front rim broke ironically the front rim because that was the newest one and as I said I actually just wanted to replace my rear rim well the rim broke a few kilometers before a town so we could push there and then we took a bus here to Lima to get some replacement parts and yeah it actually looks like the 20,000 kilometers and rough roads and the v-brakes really took their toll on our rims and yeah we checked all the rims now and because they also showed a lot of wear already we decided to replace all four rims just to prevent them breaking within the next thousand kilometers yeah just to be on the safe side we actually found a dealer that has rims with 36 spokes and they're now yeah the our hubs are getting based in right now so yeah this is now the end of this video thank you so much for watching we hope you could take something with you some information about our philosophy and our bikes um yeah please don't forget to like subscribe and if you have any comments for us just leave them below see you in the next video