My Trolls Had …

My Trolls Had Surgery
As you may of seen a little further down this blog im off on a bike packing adventure in Australia in about 6 weeks now. Over the last few months ive been planning collecting kit ready for this trip. I decided for weight and off road cycling ability that Im going to pack light and try to carry all my kit on the bike without the use of racks and panniers. The main bonus with this approach is the amount of weight it saves. All the bike packing bags weigh in about the same as a pair of front panniers. So you save all the weight of front and rear racks plus rear panniers. Also it eliminates the magic ability everyone has to always fill pannier bags no matter what.
I had a few problems to get over. The main being as i have a frame bag i cannot fit bottles to the main frame triangle and as the troll frame didnt come with a cage mount on the underside i would be missing a lot of water carrying capacity that i would need when cycling down under in the run up to peak summer. Also getting 3 months worth of gear and all my camping kit into this space was going to be tight so i also wanted some cage mounts on the forks for anything cages. These allow me to carry bulky things strapped to the front forks.
To solve these problems i spoke to the guys at Argos cycles in Bristol who added the extra bottle mount and the cage mounts onto the forks ( i actually think the 2012/13 trolls now come with these). I also got the frame repainted at the same time. I kinda miss the bright orange colour now though.
For the luggage carrying part ive been in contact with scott at porcelain rocket. This guy can create anything. The bags are made by hand to order. They are perfect. Just cant wait to spend some time living out of them and then i will do a write up. But if you need custom storage solutions on any bike look up his website.
And that’s about it the rest of the build has remained the same as before. But obviously back to a rigid fork now. The only other change is ive now got the new XT touring dual side SPD pedal.