For everyone reading who isn’t deep in Australian cycling culture, Gemini World Randonneurs are the quintessential Great Australian Touring Bike; which means, much like the four wheeled Holden (Opel) Commodore and Ford Falcon, their DNA isn’t particularly unique OR Australian but, they’re what we had at the time and they were pretty nice, so we […]
We’ve been doing custom builds on Velo Orange frames almost as long as we’ve been open – their classic aesthetic with modern touches has always been appealing to us. Sharing both old world charm with all the modern convenience of thru axles and disc brakes makes for a really functional and beautiful bicycle.
I recently spent some time sorting though all the images I’ve taken of custom bikes we’ve built here at Commuter over the last three years.
Now here’s something we’ve been really looking forward to!
If there’s one good thing about lockdown it’s that it breeds big ideas.
If you’ve ever even mentioned the word Fargo to us on the phone or in-store you’ll understand that at Commuter we love this bike. LOVE IT!
Is tell EVERYONE about Bridge Club!
If you’ve dropped into the store, or kept an eye on our social media, over the last twelve months you’ll have noticed a growing number of Surly Bridge Clubs getting around. And with good reason. After initially being underwhelmed by it on paper prior to it’s release, the Bridge Club really has proved itself as an extremely versatile, great value and super fun option for so many different kinds of riding.
Update July 2023
We’ve just received a size run of the new Type 4.1a framesets. Its back in the OG Orange with some subtle graphics changes. The main difference is flat mount front and rear braking, bringing it inline with road groupset offerings. Get in contact if you’re keen to get a build together or read on for a bit of inspiration.
We’ll start our series of deeper introductions to our range with what is definitely the least well known member of the Commuter family, the Tumbleweed Prospector
Now that he’s back on home turf and running out of continents to ride across, he has decided to trade in the Ogre for something at bit more capable for everyday trail riding. This custom built Karate Monkey should be tough enough to take on the burliest of trails in his home state of Tasmania.
Sometimes during the process of tailoring a bike to suit a customers needs all elements come together to create something truly special. In this case Cjell Mone created one of the sweetest brazed frames known to man, then David walked in and fell in love that gold braze on raw steel. We complimented the frame with some parts from the best in the business.
We had first met Ben via email when he was gearing up to take on the inaugural Indian Pacific Wheel race in 2017. We helped deck him out with some Apidura kit and Dynamo power for the long stretches in the dark.
This new offering from Soma blends the best features of the Smoothie road bike and the Double cross disc into a versatile Road Disc package with generous tyre clearance. We recently received a frameset courtesy of Soma fabrications to build up. We’ve kept it more road centric than a lot of our Wolverine builds as the carbon fork and tighter geometry are screaming out for a build that is both fast and comfortable for all day rides.
We’ve been building tried and tested commuting, touring and adventure bikes for a while now so we have a great understanding of what people want in a bike. This had led us to creating some off the shelf custom builds. Thus allowing us to hand pick parts and QC the entire build process. Some of the bikes we love such as the Soma Wolverine, Soma Juice and Saga disc are only available as frame-sets so we wanted to give customers a feel for how great these bikes really are. We’ll be adding more bikes to the website in the coming weeks so stay tuned and in the mean time call in for a test ride!
Adam didn’t realise he needed a SOMA Wolverine, until he saw mine. “I saw an orange bike on your Instagram feed” said the man as he wandered around the workshop, “I am on the lookout for a new bike, and had been thinking about an internal gear hub town bike, but that bike looks like fun”. The seed had been sown, and a test ride of my Wolverine and six months later, Adam is the proud owner of a SRAM Rival1 Wolverine.
Albert was looking for a tough bike to take on the rough roads near his home town of Deniliquin. He was finding his cross bike just wasn’t cutting it. The Surly ECR grabbed his attention and we worked on a build that would be good for long day rides and also longer trips into the outback.
Our mate John loves a single speed. He’s got an enviable collection of bikes and had a gap between the cross bike and the SS hardtail that needed filling. Despite being the biggest frame size we’ve built, John’s is the lightest Wolverine that’s been through the shop.
This bike is a niche filler. There aren’t many options for touring bikes that can tackle the sort of trails and fire roads that you’d usually need a mountain bike for. Velo Orange has just started producing one and they’ve called it the Piolet.
Riley has been commuting on a Paconi steel road bike for years. He came to us looking for something more suited to the daily grind of poor roads, all weather conditions and emergency braking. He also wanted a bike that he would be able to take on dirt road adventures on the weekend. It had to be fast, and black too.
Belinda’s bike was a bit of an enigma. She came to us with a brief that didn’t at first make a lot of sense. She wanted a lightweight build on an old favourite of ours, the Surly Long Haul Trucker. During the build we affectionately nick-named it the Light Haul Trucker. Needless to say, by the end we were all convinced and pleasantly surprised with the result.
Erle’s M.A.P. Randonneur is one of the blingiest bikes we’ve put together. The frame and fork were custom made by Mitch Prior in Chico, California.
Mischa came to us for a dream build. After many hours of careful consideration we arrived at the custom Soma Double Cross build you see documented here.
Long-time mate of the shop JR wanted something for his partner Jacqui. We hooked them up with the nicest complete Mixte you can get – the Soma Beuna Vista – and added aluminium guards and a neat little front rack.
Jan 2015 Update – We’ve just received stock from the second production run! Most are presold, but we have a few left in sizes 52cm, 56cm, (maybe a 58cm) and a 60cm. With the deteriorating Australian dollar vs the USD the price for the frameset is now $950. This is all the stock we could get for Australia so be quick if you want one.
We have just received our second batch of SOMA Grand Randonneur framesets. These are a fantastic multi use bike, just at home on gravel as on the road. Designed around 650b wheels, the front end geometry is low trail to handle front loads, the tubing is light and supple to lend a smooth ride, and it has all the bottle mounts and braze-ons for building up a ‘proper’ randonneur. This frame was designed in conjunction with Mike Kone from Boulder Bikes who have been building fine randonneur frames for many years and still builds under the Rene Herse moniker. At $700 for the frame and fork, we think it is the best value 650b Randonneur bike available today.
We recently built a pair of custom Long Haul Truckers around Rohloffs. Rolhoffs are great for touring and commuting bikes because they offer a wide range of gears in even increments, they can shift gears while the pedals are not being turned, and because all the shifting takes place in the rear hub there are no gear combinations and so no combinations to avoid. They are unbelievably robust and reliable too, needing an infrequent oil change and not much else by way of maintenance.
This is a very blinged-out Surly Steamroller we just built some new wheels for.
We don’t do a lot of Butterfly bars, but for some people they are just what the doctor ordered. This is a Long Haul Trucker build we did using butterfly bars to shorten the cockpit to make a second-hand slightly-too-big frame work for one of customers who doesn’t like drop bars. She’s going to use it as a commuter and do some touring on it.
Commuter cycles is excited to be sponsoring Damon Rao at the Bike Polo World Championships in Berlin and the London Open Tournament. He’ll be riding a custom made polo bike, a Symes Whiskey. He’ll be heading off tonight for two weeks in Europe and then competing in the Australian Championships in Brisbane with it later […]
Surly’s Long Haul Trucker (LHT) is our reference point for touring bikes and they make excellent commuters as well. As a general rule the requirements of commuters and tourists are similar – the bike should be comfortable, should be able to carry a reasonable load, should be robust and reliable, should fit moderately wide tyres and mudguards and should be fast and efficient enough to cover large distances at a decent clip. The LHT does all of these things and is versatile enough to be set up to match the needs of a lot of cyclists. We build, and sell, more of them than any other bike. We’ve mentioned them a number of times in this blog, but we thought it was time to write more comprehensively about our thoughts on them, and where they sit in our line-up.