alternative to kaffenback

Ryder

Planned on getting a kaffenback on the BTW but my company don't deal with their shop.

Anyone know a decent alternative for commuting, round 1000e, disc brakes with clearance for 3 mm tyres (ice tyres). Ideally drop bars

Thanks

Alek

mycycle.ie > Genesis Croix de Fer.

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

Ryder

Thanks alek. Nice bike...seems a good option. Anyone got anything else?

countrykid

Ryder wrote: »

Thanks alek. Nice bike...seems a good option. Anyone got anything else?

kona rove...
2 of em for sale on adverts..
nice..

that said...the croix de fer is the one you want
725 reynolds steel beautiful

aFlabbyPanda

You should be able to get the Cdf on budget, I bought mine new for 980 after a big of haggling. I'm running 37c tyres with guards.

lennymc

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

lennymc wrote: »

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.

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

lennymc

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.

Sagi

Hi I'm looking into a similar bike at the moment. Plnet X Ireland is listed on the bike to work site but as communication with them is not going very well I'll probably not go for the Kaffenback.

So for me it will be the Genesis Croix de Fer or a Surly CrossCheck

Edit: ok looks like cyclebike and planet x ireland are not on the taxfreebike website.... Don't knownif there are other Surly dealers around. The Genesis shoilb be easy to get though and Kona rove is a nice bike as well

Ryder

Sagi wrote: »

Hi I'm looking into a similar bike at the moment. Plnet X Ireland is listed on the bike to work site but as communication with them is not going very well I'll probably not go for the Kaffenback.

So for me it will be the Genesis Croix de Fer or a Surly CrossCheck

Edit: ok looks like cyclebike and planet x ireland are not on the taxfreebike website.... Don't knownif there are other Surly dealers around. The Genesis shoilb be easy to get though and Kona rove is a nice bike as well

Nice bike, had a paddywagon before. Going for 1400 on wiggle so might be significantly more expensive here

doozerie

I would recommend against the Kona Rove. I've had mine several months now and been using it daily for commuting so I've had time to assess it. I've come to actively dislike Kona as a company (I've ranted about them here before, I won't bore you with the details, again), which doesn't help endear their products to me, but the bike has done its best to reinforce my poor opinion of the brand.

So, the negatives:
* The bike is heavy, very heavy. I don't mind that for a commute bike, in theory it equates to robustness (in theory! see below), and I've not compared its actual weight to similar bikes but I'm regularly taken by surprise when I lift the bike. I've seen reviews where people say they'd race the Rove, personally I can't get my head round that idea, I picture a field of CX racers suffering hernias at evert part of the course where they have to carry the bike.
* The bike is overpriced - or at least it was when I bought mine, as its retail price was €1,600. The components don't warrant that price for one thing, for another thing there is far better value available in other brands for less money.
* I'm sceptical about the quality of the frame manufacture. The down tube cable guide bosses are too close to the head tube, by my reckoning. And the rear disc caliper on mine is not parallel with the rotor, something that I'll continue to blame on the frame mounts until I find some other cause (might be paint on the mount points, haven't checked that yet).
* In my view the wheels are rubbish. I have snapped two non-drive side spokes on the rear wheel so far (despite me being a complete lightweight with very modest power output and I've only ever ridden the bike on the road), the first within a short few months of buying the bike. In my view the wheel is poorly built, I suspect poor quality parts too as the freehub has slipped many times and I'm just waiting for the day when it dies altogether. I'd expect far better on a bike with a €1,600 price tag.
* The chain split-link broke within a few months. Might just be bad luck, I certainly was casual about maintaining the chain (this bike gets little love from me!), might be that it was originally fitted by a poorly trained ape, whatever the reason it reflects poorly on the bike as a whole.
* The sizing is weird. I was recommended a 53cm and went with that. At 170cm in height I think this frame is borderline too big - manageable, but the stock bars on it were a joke at 42cm wide which flared to either 44cm or 46cm (can't remember which) at the drops. I had to swap the bars for 40cm, which made a huge difference, but again at this price point you don't expect to have to do something as basic as install narrower bars when buying your supposed recommended frame size.

The finish on the frame is surprisingly good though, it seems reasonably robust. And they say you can't polish a turd...

So my advice would be to steer well clear of the Kona Rove. I believe there is far better value to be had - have a look at RoseBikes, their aluminium disc bikes were great value when I last looked. The Cannondale Synapse looks really good to me too, despite my not really being a fan of Cannondale generally (purely on the fickle grounds of aesthetics and the very practical grounds of cost). Other interesting options I looked at recently were the Genesis Equilibrium and Croix de Fer (2015 versions, better spec'ed than the 2014 models), the Whyte Suffolk, and maybe Kinesis too - trouble is that the UK brands seem to be a bit pricey for the spec, particularly when compared against RoseBikes and the Synapse.

Alek

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.

aFlabbyPanda

Just one thing about the Cdf, the brakes are pants. I replaced the stock cables and bought organic pads and they made a difference but they still weren't mind blowing compared to my Trek with rim brakes.

Alek

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.

Ryder

Alek wrote: »

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.

I had this notion that discs were the business for stopping. My last commuter was a focus mares with v brakes. Despite numerous readjustment I frequently used my feet to stop

Thanks for all the advice. Likely will go with the cdf as it's available on the taxfreebike site

doozerie

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.

seamus

Ryder wrote: »

I had this notion that discs were the business for stopping. My last commuter was a focus mares with v brakes. Despite numerous readjustment I frequently used my feet to stop

Cheap V's can be notoriously bad, they're made thin of poor-quality steel, so they flex too much and so provide less stopping power, particularly in the wet.

Mechanical discs are good, when configured correctly, but about as good as decent V brakes. Hydraulic discs get their benefit from the fact that the connection from lever to pad is an incompressible fluid, so there's no flex and almost-instant reaction time; the amount of pressure applied at the lever is transferred practically 100% to the disc.

Mechanical discs don't do this.

JonDoe

seamus wrote: »

Cheap V's can be notoriously bad, they're made thin of poor-quality steel, so they flex too much and so provide less stopping power, particularly in the wet.

Mechanical discs are good, when configured correctly, but about as good as decent V brakes. Hydraulic discs get their benefit from the fact that the connection from lever to pad is an incompressible fluid, so there's no flex and almost-instant reaction time; the amount of pressure applied at the lever is transferred practically 100% to the disc.

Mechanical discs don't do this.

Haven't read the full thread but when using standard road drop levers there are only a few models (avid bb road being one) that are compatible, standard mtb disc calipers need more cable pull than a road lever can provide, hence the poor performance. If you plan on using non integrated shifting you can get disc specific levers dia compe make some and i think tektro

Alek

doozerie wrote: »

snip

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? Fitzcycles simply swapped the stock stem on my MinUte for a higher and shorter one, whitout charging extra.

Do you remember what brand/model was the chain and / or link that broke?

(Please note I'm not on the Kona side here, but rather another-bike-owner/buyer side)

doozerie

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.

doozerie

More generally, my experience of mechanical disc (road) brakes is limited to Hayes CX-Expert calipers with sintered pads, 160mm rotors, and SRAM levers, and I consider them a little less effective than well-tuned v-brakes. Adjusting v-brake pads as they wore though used to drive me mad, and although the Hayes are fiddly to adjust too they are more straight-forward and less time consuming. Having said that, I’ve not yet succeeded in getting my rear caliper parallel with its rotor so that continues to be the kind of pain that doesn’t arise with v-brakes with their pads that rotate in every direction and in every plain (usually they move in all of those directions and plains simultaneously though when you are trying to carefully adjust them!).

On balance, in my view and based on my limited experience to date, v-brakes perform better if you are willing to put in the time and effort to keep them well tuned, while mechanical discs are more consistent if you are the kind of person not willing to put such effort it. Decent organic pads might bring the discs to being on par with good v-brakes, that’s something I plan to try out soon.

One thing I would suggest is that you use good quality skewers with disc wheels. The stock skewers with many wheels, including disc wheels, are a poor quality design whereby the effects of exposure to weather is that they become harder to close over time (the cam mechanism needs re-lubing regularly) with the effect that the wheel may not be held in the dropouts as well as you believe they are - the resistance you are encountering when closing the skewers may be due entirely to the skewer “sticking” rather than due to it squeezing the dropouts effectively. This is especially an issue with disc wheels since the forces applied by the disc brake effectively try to pull the front wheel out of the dropouts so you need the front wheel in particular to be held firmly in place - lawyers tabs obviously help, but they are secondary to an effective skewer. Skewers with good internal cams (Shimano, Campag, and Mavic skewers, though not all of them, have a good rep here) or with very good external cams (I’ve been impressed by Rolf Prima and Hope skewers on my non-disc wheels) seem like a worthwhile upgrade. The skewers on my Rove wheels are muck, in this respect, I haven’t replaced them yet but plan to do so very soon.

Stephen_C

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.

aFlabbyPanda

Alek wrote: »

Only when I've changed the front to TRP HY/RD the bike started to feel reliable in the city traffic.

That's my plan for later this year.

Did you think the cost was worth the difference in performance?

Alek

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.

Trojan

doozerie wrote: »

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.

Off-topic to OP, but sounds to me like you should put that bike on Adverts, and ride something you're happier with. It makes such a massive difference to go out on a spin on a bike that you want to be on.