the surly straggler
W
hat if you had a bike that could be modified for whatever use you want it for? Interesting? This issue we review exactly the bike that allows you to do so. The exciting custom built Surly Straggler. If it is flexibility that you desire then this is the bike you are looking for
for a city commute. The more you spend time on the bike the more you appreciate the steel frame and it’s versatility and you start to go all out building your memories with the bike. You can modify it for touring, cyclo-cross, gravel and even road biking so you have plenty of stories to make for yourself.
The Straggler is essentially a Cross Check frame from Surly with discs. While the most obvious difference of course is that it has disc caliper mounts instead of rim brake studs (It’ll accept rotors up to 160mm), the rear dropouts are unique, too. They’re a partially closed horizontal design that accommodates single speed or geared drivetrains. It is an incredibly versatile bike more than capable of commuting, touring, load carrying and anything you can throw at it. It has all the braze-ons of the traditional Cross Check along with similar nimble geometry
The bike can handle most of the terrains in India. It can be your commuter bike during the week and a touring bike on weekends or even a sporty roadbike. To add more fun to your ride during monsoon showers you can add mudguards and there are loads of accessories you can add on like the frame bag
The heart of this bike is its frame. Made out of the best steel in the market, the 4130 Cromoly tubing, ED coated and TIG-welded with the main triangle being double-butted. The amount of eyelids on the frame allows you to go all out with your builds. As you can tell it was built for one thing in mind - “I can do it all” statement The bike we reviewed came with a set up
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CRANK with ProCycle NOVEMBER 15TH, 2016
To sum up it’s a fantastic piece of equipment to have around and it’s sure to last for a long time and for many moods So what is this Straggler anyway? The easy answer is to say that we added disc brakes to a Cross-Check and this is close to accurate. People have asked us to make a disc version of our highly versatile CrossCheck for a long time now and almost everything about the two are very similar. Straggler is slightly different, though. They feature stop screws that thread in from the rear to further secure the wheel and to position the rear wheel for optimal
shifting, plus a forward-mounted stop screw on the drive side to keep the wheel from slipping forward under the force of your gargantuan legs. The rear dropouts are spaced 135mm instead of 132.5mm like the Cross-Check simply because there are far more options for disc hubs in this spacing. Straggler shares all of the Cross-Check’s braze-ons for fenders, racks and bottle cages. The Straggler’s geometry is slightly different, with angles and tube lengths very close but not identical to the Cross-Check, but like the Cross-Check it’s ready to take you just about anywhere. It’s a day tripper and a weekender. It’s a ‘rough road’ road bike. It’s a cyclocross bike with no pretense about racing. It’s a utilitarian townie. It’s a light-duty touring bike. It’s an all-weather commuter. And when you get tired of one set up, you can swap parts around and turn it into something else. We think that’s pretty neat.