Transcript
Road Test
SPECIFICATIONS TRAITOR WANDER Price: Originally $1,299 ($499 for frame and fork), 2015 stock marked down to $974/$349 as of publication Sizes available: Extra Small, Small, Medium, Large, Extra Large Size tested: Medium Weight: 27.7 pounds (without pedals) TEST BIKE MEASUREMENTS 1. Seat tube: 492mm (center to
TRAITOR WANDER
top of top tube) 2. Top tube: 555mm (virtual,
center to center; 540mm actual) 3. Head tube angle: 71° 4. Seat tube angle: 74° 5. Chainstays: 445mm 6. Bottom bracket drop: 70mm 7. Crank spindle height
BY PATRICK O'GRADY
above ground: 280mm
➺ THE OPINION COLUMN I write for
another cycling publication logs most of its miles in the left lane, if you catch my drift. So if any of my right-leaning readers happened to see me leaving the 2015 Interbike trade show with a high-vis’ bike sporting a bold black “TRAITOR” decal along its seat tube, they probably thought, “Aha! I knew it!” But the Traitor Wander is every inch the good American that I am. The O’Gradys first sailed to America from County Clare in Ireland, and the Wander got off the boat from Taiwan in Seattle, where Traitor has its headquarters. Plus I picked up my review model in Las Vegas. It just doesn’t get any more redwhite-and-blue than that. The Traitor Cycles website describes the $1,299 Wander as a “classic roadtouring machine that doesn’t mind switching it up between commuting to work, hitting a gravel road, or just banging out massive miles on the highway.” Founder Kevin Menard elaborated, “The customer for the Wander is really someone who does a little of everything with their bike and needs a jack-of-alltrades. It is not necessarily the person who only tours full time or for that matter just commutes to work. You will really appreciate this bike if you use it for a little of everything.” There was a lot of that sort of thing going around at last fall’s Interbike, which is good news for a magazine that focuses on bicycle travel.
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8. Fork offset: 47mm 9. Wheelbase: 1054mm 10. Frame: Founderland 4130
seamless butted chromoly. Two sets of bottle bosses; rack and fender mounts; disc brake mounts; downtube guides/ stops for shift/brake cables. 11. Fork: Segmented Wander Disc
Chromoly. Fender mounts at dropouts and crown; low-rider mounts; disc mounts. 12. Handlebar: Promax, 100mm
reach, 150mm drop, 31.8mm clamp area. 13. Tape: FSA black cork 14. Stem: Promax 3d forged alloy,
80mm, 31.8mm four-bolt clamp, +/- 7°. 15. Shift levers: Microshift bar-
cons, 9 speed 16. Brake levers: Promax
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17. Brakes: Promax Render R
mechanical discs with inline cable adjusters, 160mm rotors 18. Front derailer: Shimano Sora 19. Rear derailer: Shimano Alivio 20. Crankset: FSA Tempo triple,
170mm, 50/39/30T 21. Cassette: Shimano CS-HG50
11-30T 22. Bottom bracket: FSA JIS,
square taper 23. Seat post: Promax alloy,
27.2 x 300mm, one-bolt clamp
GEARING IN INCHES
30
39
50
11
73.6
95.7
122.7
12
67.5
87.8
112.5
14
57.9
75.2
96.4
16
50.6
65.8
84.4
18
45.0
58.5
75.0
20
40.5
52.7
67.5
23
35.2
45.8
58.7
26
31.2
40.5
51.9
30
27.0
35.1
45.0
24. Saddle: Brooks B-17 25. Headset: FSA TH-857 26. Chain: Shimano CN-HG53 27. H ubs: Joytech Disc, 32h, 135mm
rear 28. Rims: Jalco XCD22 29. Spokes: 14/15g, butted 30. Tires: Kenda Kwick Roller Sport,
700c x 32mm
ADVENTURECYCLING.ORG
Contact: Traitor Cycles, 122 NW 36th St., Seattle, Washington 98107, info@ traitorcycles.com, traitorcycles.com
Blinded by plenty, my Adventure Cyclist colleagues and I didn’t discover our Traitor until the final day of the show, when we visited the Ortlieb booth where a steel-blue Wander sat out front, hung about with more bags than a homeless guy’s shopping cart. Seems Traitor and Ortlieb USA are neighbors when the show isn’t in session, too, the latter being based in the Seattle suburb of Auburn. So we hunted up the Traitor booth, and after a quick chat and exchange of business cards, I was rolling their show model out of the Mandalay Bay Convention Center and into my Subaru for the long drive back to New Mexico. The Wander I brought home wears an incandescent green paint job dubbed “Limeade” that sparkles when the light hits it just right. It’s nearly as loud as my old Pearl Izumi rain jacket — a motorist can still run you down on this bike, but he can’t claim he never saw you, even on a soggy Seattle night. The guys at The Bike Coop in Albuquerque who buffed the rough spots out of the show build were taken with the Wander’s appearance, as was a cycling-mad neighbor who, like me, favors the old-school look, which includes a Brooks B-17 saddle. “The B-17 saddle, to me, is one of the most comfortable saddles on the planet,” said Menard, who should know something about staying comfy on the bike. In a previous incarnation, he cycled 25 miles each way to his gig at Advanced Transportation Products, which manufactured the Vision recumbent. Impulsively grabbing a bike off the floor at Interbike has its downsides, however. My review model was a medium and a bit short for my six-foot frame, especially with an 80mm Promax stem and 170mm FSA Tempo cranks. This was offset somewhat by the long-reach Promax bar, which had more drop than I like. No worries, though, since my hands spend most of their time on the hoods and tops. But on our first few outings, that long drop had me fumbling around for the Microshift bar-end shifters. Too, the
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bar slims down fast just past the clamp area, to 24mm with grooves on either side for cable routing, and wrapped with thin FSA cork tape it’s not exactly the acme of comfort on a rough road. If you haven’t seen Microshift’s barcons yet, you will. They encourage modern road and mountain components to play nice together, they’re inexpensive, and they work just fine. The Wander’s weight is respectable for a steel, disc-equipped all-rounder — just under 28 pounds without pedals — and the gearing is your basic road-triple standard, with a low end of 30 by 30 (27 gear inches). Happily, the nine-speed Shimano Alivio RD-T4000 rear derailer will accept a 34-tooth cog, and should your travel plans extend beyond carrying an iPad to the coffee shop, well, you can get there from here. When it comes to stopping, the Promax Render R mechanical disc brakes leave something to be desired. Inexpensive, yeah, but fiddly to adjust and short on stopping power when compared to the Avids on my own bikes. I weigh 175 pounds, though; a lighter rider (and a
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better mechanic) may find them perfectly suitable. On pavement the Wander performed as a steel bike should. Unencumbered by racks and bags, the bike’s handling felt spirited for a do-it-all chromoly machine, perhaps thanks in part to that 80mm stem and 44cm bar. Adding Tubus racks and Ortlieb panniers with a light load (16 pounds) calmed things down a bit, though the steering remained quick. I never took the Wander off the hard stuff as El Niño was in town for an extended visit to liquefy the neighborhood trails. But it should make an acceptable gravel-gobbler, too. While the Wander comes with a pair of durable 700c x 32mm Kenda Kwick Roller Sport tires, it can handle rubber of up to 40mm without fenders. With mudguards — and I used ’em during our time together — you’re limited to a maximum of 35mm. All in all, as Menard said, the Wander is a jack-of-all-trades, well suited to commuting, recreation, and bike overnights. But it’s probably not the card to draw for a long-distance, heavily laden, self-supported tourist, not
with comparably priced bikes like the Kona Sutra ($1,399), Novara Mazama ($1,099), and Masi Giramondo ($1,090) sweetening the bike-travel pot with better components, lower gears, and/or useful extras like more bottle bosses, rear racks, and fenders. However, if you’re in a betting mood, Traitor was blowing out its 2015 stock at year’s end, listing the Wander at the low, low price of $974 for the complete bike and just $349 for the frameset. With the savings, a budget-minded tourist with Wander lust could make the complete bike a little more useful for the long haul, or simply start from scratch with a bare frame and fork. Plus, there’s something to be said for exclusivity. How many of your neighbors can claim to be concealing a Traitor in the garage? Patrick O’Grady has written and cartooned about cycling since 1989 for VeloNews, Bicycle Retailer & Industry News, and a variety of other publications. To read more from Patrick, visit maddogmedia. wordpress.com.
