Surly Trucker DeLuxe

I am constantly searching local classifieds for bikes. I call it a hobby. I’ve been keeping my eye open of a Long Haul Trucker in my size for a few years but haven’t really seen anything come available. Until the other day. Now, technically it’s not a LHT, but it’s pretty darn close. Why not right?

Such a great looking bike

Now if you’re not familiar with what the Trucker DeLuxe is, it’s a bike that was designed for airline travel and the ability to fit into a standard-size suite case so you don’t have to pay extra for a large bicycle box. While it’s not really a folding bike, it does split in half just in front of the seat tube. The top tube and downtube have S/S couplers that thread together and make an incredibly strong and rigid joint. I can’t tell it’s different than any of my other bikes. Now, part of the ability to fit into a small-sized custom suitcase (which this bike came with) is that it requires the tire size to be capped at 26” This is a 58cm frame and as a traditional LHT, it would ride on 700C wheels.

Here you can see the S/S coupler which requires a special wrench to loosen and tighten.

Now I bought this as just a frame. Thankfully years of hoarding bicycle parts pays off in these situations. I did end up pillaging a few parts from another 26er I had set up but didn’t really ride. New parts I bought were the V-brakes, Soma Dream bar and pedals. I also ended up machining a custom steam spacer as I received two forks with the bike. One was cut quite low, and the other uncut. I’ll play around with bars and bar height for a while before I think of cutting this tall one down. Although, there is a-lot extra stem sticking up. This fork is also black where the original one was the same colour of the frame. But, this uncut fork as upper braze-ons which allowed my to install a Surly 8-pack rack I’ve had kicking around for a while. All in all I am really happy with this bike and the build. Super comfortable and upright and feels like it was made for slow relaxing miles in the country.