alternative to kaffenback

mycycle.ie > Genesis Croix de Fer.

Takes 35mm+ tyres with mudguards, slightly over the budget though.

you should be able to build up something like a surly crosscheck for that budget. Full shimano 105, reasonable wheels, frameset and finishing kit. I love mine.

Ryder wrote: »

That would be first choice, but I'm limited by my employer...tax free bike is who they work with.

i got my surly in cyclebike if that's any good to you. Dunno if they deal with tax free bike, but if they do they may be able to do something for you.

To me, most of your points against Kona Rove seem to be due to you not checking things before buying (weight, size, price) or completely unrelated to the manufacturer of the bike (chain).

I have a Kona myself (not Rove but semi-cargo MinUte) and also some gripes with it i.e. rear disc brake tab is too far out and requires stupidly thick washer to get it right, hubs were too loose originally and before I've noticed I had pitted cones on both, mechanical disc brakes were utter shoite... But I would rather not advice so generally against the bike or the manufacturer based on my own experience only. Pointing out the possible pitfalls is much more constructive, even if I decided not to buy another Kona myself.

Which is true.:rolleyes:

Also, I have Croix de Fer as my main bike and I can wholeheartedly recommend the frameset. I've built it myself so I cannot speak of the manufacturer's build though.

I am afraid that all mechanical discs are. I installed TRP Spyres and jagwire compressionless housing - still no match to good rim brakes, not to mention mtb hydraulics. Only when I've changed the front to TRP HY/RD the bike started to feel reliable in the city traffic.

Alek wrote:

To me, most of your points against Kona Rove seem to be due to you not checking things before buying (weight, size, price) or completely unrelated to the manufacturer of the bike (chain).

You are obviously free to take my assessment of this bike in any way that you like. That includes dismissing my views as biased, misguided, or just plain nonsense, but you are incorrect when you suggest that I could have avoided some of these issues by checking the weight, size, and price before I bought it.

When I researched this bike before I bought it I could find no official source which gave its weight. I found one unofficial/user review of it which cited a weight, which was significant, but that was it. The prospective weight didn’t bother me much, this bike is a commuter/beater bike for me, I even reckoned that a tank might be more robust than some of the lighter alternatives, which would be a good thing as I lock my bike at work in space shared by some (semi-)shaven apes that have no regard for other peoples’ bikes. It’s one thing seeing a weight on paper though, another thing again to be hefting that weight around regularly. I referred to the weight as a negative because this bike is a pig to heft around - that’s a very minor negative for me, as I mentioned in my post, but it may be a bigger issue for others, at the very least it’s something you should be aware of before opting for this bike.

As for Kona themselves not listing the weight in the spec, that reflects poorly on them, they are certainly not alone amongst bike manufacturers in not providing such valuable info to prospective buyers but that was a conscious decision on their part, they can suck up the negative press they get as a result of it (there is my bias against them showing again, I consider them as a company to have little respect for customers, current or prospective).

Re size, the Kona website gives a general size guide, but it gives no extra detail such as what width of bars you get with each size of bike (or reach, or drop, not even stem length). On the basis of their minimal info, I reckoned I should go for a 49cm. The LBS where I bought this strongly recommended a 53cm and I reasoned that they deal with these bikes all the time, they’ll know best. They never mentioned the width of the bars and I neglected to ask because I assumed that, having had me sit on a Kona in the store (they didn’t have the current model of Rove in stock or an older model in either of those 2 sizes so I sat on a 53cm Kona in another model) they could see that I’m small and that wide bars would be a poor choice for me. Turns out I was overly optimistic about their skills/experience. Kona should provide such info in the spec of the bike, they don’t, I provided it here so that others might avoid that same pitfall, and it is a significant pitfall. This is what user reviews are really good for, filling in the gaps in the info provided by manufacturers and retailers, but I found no review of the Rove that mentioned the bar sizing at all.

Re price, the price is obvious, it’s even stated on the Kona website. What is not obvious is whether it represents value for money. You can check third party online reviews for certain parts of the bike ahead of time such as the SRAM Apex groupset or the Hayes CX-Expert disc callipers, but I could not find any review at all for the wheelset. Having use them, I consider the wheelset rubbish, and that plus a few other aspects of the bike which I mention in my post leave me ranking this bike overall as very poor value for money. Incidentally, I didn’t pay €1,600 for mine (a ridiculous asking price for the paper spec, in my opinion), for reasons that reflect poorly on Kona (their “lifetime warranty” isn’t worth the paper it’s written on, assuming you can even find a piece of paper which commits them to anything at all!), I got a 20% discount on mine but even at the discounted price it does not represent good value for money when compared against the paper spec of various alternative bikes.

As for the chain, I utterly disagree that this is completely unrelated to the manufacturer of the bike. When you are buying a complete bike you are paying for choices that the manufacturer has made. This includes not just the design, weight, etc. of the frameset but also the individual components they kit the bike out with. If they choose cheap/unreliable components, that’s a decision they have to stand over (plus it should obviously be reflected in the price but in the case of the Rove, I believe it’s not). It’s entirely debatable whether the chain on mine is cheap or unreliable but a broken split-link raises some serious questions about its quality and/or the standard of its install. Kona are selling a finished product here, at what I consider to be a significant premium, they are responsible for the install of the components as much as for the choice of which components to use, so I consider it entirely fair to assess the bike overall based on relatively extreme issues with individual components.

Take or leave my assessment of the bike, but ignore some of the very real and very specific problems I’ve had with bike at your peril. If I’d read of anyone else having had such issues before I bought mine it would have made me seriously reconsider. I don’t expect anyone to simply accept my assessment of the bike as definitive/gospel but I hope that it will make people look more critically at the spec of the bike and compare it against some of the alternatives. That could save people some money, and might well save them future hassle and grief.

Alek wrote:

Fair enough. But I still don't understand why didn't you return the bike, or at least asked the LBS to swap some parts, after discovering it is wasn't a good fit for you?

Fair question, although to me it’s a little separate from the issue of whether the Rove is a good option for someone to consider. Anyway, the answer is kinda convoluted as it conflates a bunch of things, which mostly boil down to my quaint morals as applied to the choices I made and what I’d expect to receive as a paying customer.

When I initially rode the bike away I was trying to assess a number of things. Was the saddle too low (…yes), were the handlebars too high (…yes), did I like SRAM double tap (…hmm, on balance, no but I can live with it), did it handle well (…ish), etc. The handling was weird at first and although I reckoned the bars were a bit wide I wasn’t sure how much, if anything, that extra width was contributing to that weird feel. I made a conscious decision there and then to tackle any fit issues myself. Within the first few minutes it was obvious that the fit was at the outer range of manageable but I have an overactive conscience and it told me that I’d accepted the original size recommendation of the LBS against my better judgement and in doing so I’d to some extent morally committed myself to sticking with that, and this was reinforced by willingly walking the bike out of the shop. Legally I’d obviously have been perfectly entitled to take it back, but what can I say, I’m a bit weird when it comes to such stuff. I’m happy to live with that decision but am also keen to help other people avoid falling prey to a bad combination of the scant info from Kona themselves and the potentially dubious advice of a local dealer.

There was another factor though. The LBS had enthusiastically demonstrated that their standards fell very far short of what I would consider acceptable. I simply wouldn’t trust them with working on any bike of mine, not even my Rove (the red-headed stepchild amongst my bikes). They’d swapped the brakes before I collected the bike at my request but did a shockingly poor job of re-wrapping the handlebar tape, the adjustment of the brakes was rubbish, there were glaringly obvious (to me, but I’m fussy) scratches on the black bottom bracket cups, etc. These are all fundamental, easy to avoid, and very visible things - the thing that immediately caught my eye when I first saw the bike was the badly wrapped tape, the second was the b/b cups, when I pulled the brakes as the bike stood there I could see the rotors bend. If they couldn’t be arsed to get these things even close to “right” I didn’t trust them to get anything right.

I’ve not used an LBS for bike maintenance in many years, if I ever choose to get any work done on one of my bikes in the future it certainly won’t be at this LBS, they’ve clearly painted a picture of themselves as at best unprofessional and at worst incompetent. That’s a rant for another thread really though, suffice it to say I wasn’t keen at all to go back to them (not even for the free service I’m entitled to on the Rove), I just resolved to deal with any and all issues with the Rove myself. I don’t regret that choice, if I have any regret at all it was that I opted for a Rove in the first place but there is no point in fretting over that so I just use the bike each day and highlight my experiences of it where I think it may be useful info for others as I wish I’d read more user experience of it before I bought.

As an alternative to the Kaffenback have a look at the Norco Indie Drop, sorry can't post links yet, add www. to this: norco.com/bikes/city/urban/indie-drop/indie-drop-2/

They do three versions 1, 2 and a di2 Alfine 11. I got my Indie drop 2 from Evancycles for €720 I'm not sure if they still stock them or not or if they can get them. Maybe one of the shops on your list could order one for you. I absolutely love mine. It comes with 28mm tyres, disc brakes can take full mudgaurds and has every possible pannier attachment lug.

They are built to last too with very solid wheels.

Yes, compared to TRP Spyres.

If I bought the HYRDs straight away I'd go for both, but Spyre is more than enough for the rear. They take the same pad, too.

Just make sure you get Jagwire compressionless XL or similar cables - with standard ones they barely work.