Wanted: Tiny Touring Bike - 40cm-44cm Terry-40cm-46cm Novara Randonee - LHT - Soma

[Sylvia]

Yes, best I can tell after several tries, it's also 25", and I'm only 4'8". . . . I guess that means I'm long-legged! Hmm . . . I started this quest looking for a good, small mixte from the mid eighties. I even found a 40cm Miyata two ten in excellent shape with swing back arms, but was then convinced that a mixte both that it would not be as good a quality as a Terry or an MTB conversion and that it would be too big. This is turning out to be quite a labyrinth.

I thought I had found my match yesterday when someone on the BikeForums gave me a referral to an ad for a KHS Montana Team bike converted to an expedition bike. The owners had found it at a thrift-store for $14 and then upgraded it to a nice touring bike with mega range gears, trekking handlebars, Schwalbe Marathon tires and expedition and low-rider panniers before riding all over two or three continents and then writing a book about it. They were sound like very nice people, but they were steadfast in their decision to sell it locally. They were selling it because they were going to replace it with a Bike Friday and suggested that I consider looking for a used one. I haven't looked at them, but I think they have tiny wheels. I guess I don't know enough about bikes to understand how I could keep up with the grown ups on 700c wheels if I have munchkin wheels. Also, I think it would only accentuate the height anomaly to the point of absurdity . . . but I'll start keeping my eye out for one of those as well. A used one must be rare indeed, and I think the new ones would be out of my price range.

I did call customer service at Georgina Terry, and the transferred me to her voice mail, but she has not called back. That was a few days ago.

Thank you all for the help and support.

Actually, I have very short legs, but I figured given your height, you probably had an inseam similar to mine. I understand how difficult it is to find a bike with that short an inseam. As for Bike Friday's bikes, the size of the wheels is not what makes you go faster. It really has more to do with the gearing. Smaller wheels will lower your overall gearing as you indicated, but there are components that can be used to compensate. Here is an article from Bike Friday's website on gearing.

Small wheel bikes are very popular in Asia (google mini velo). And Shimano has created a component group named Capreo designed for small wheeled bikes. Using the Capreo rear hub and cassette, you can get gearing on a small wheeled bike that is similar to larger wheeled bikes. Most larger wheeled bikes only go down to an 11T cog, but a Capreo cassette has a 9T cog. So if you have concerns about not getting high enough gears on a Bike Friday, I'd suggest looking for one with a Capreo cassette. But I would suggest you try one out first and see if you think you will really need the higher gears, particularly if you plan to do any loaded touring with it.

As for Georgena, I'll ping her and see if she got your message (she is a friend of mine), but I did notice that she got back to you on the Terry forum.


I was just thinking, one other option would be to look for a youth road bike with 24" wheels. You might see if any of them could be fitted with racks.