# Plug: Torker Interurban



## AndrwSwitch (May 28, 2009)

I broke my venerable Raleigh Technium the other day. Sooner or later, everything dies. In this case, the right chainstay.

So I popped into a couple of bike shops on my walk home from school on Thursday evening. I saw a couple bikes I really wasn't looking for at Performance Bike, and then I stuck my head into one of the little local shops closer to home (and, just past where I ditched my Raleigh after concluding it was broken.)

The Torker Interurban is a very stripped-down road bike that's a little bit of a throwback to before all road bikes had to be racing bikes, or at least look like racing bikes. It has a chromoly frame and hi-ten fork. (As a review elsewhere points out, hi-ten structures don't have to be weak if they're heavy. For the price of this bike, deal with it.) There's a bunch of clearance below the fork crown and behind the seatstay and chainstay bridges, and there are rack bolts on the chainstays. Also, the appropriate eyelets at the dropout, and fender eyelets on the fork.

Basic sidepull brakes. FSA compact double crank. Shimano 2300 drivetrain bits. They shifted fine when I test-rode the bike, though. The wheels looked to have de-branded Formula loose ball hubs, which is too bad, but you can spend a lot more and still get those. The saddle seemed reasonable.

I was actually really tempted to just buy the bike on the spot, without seeing if I could get something from a friend or contact.

Basically what you get with this bike is a completely modern bike with forethought in the direction of racks and fenders, stripped down to the bare essentials. It irritates me that with a lot of new bikes, a person has tight clearances and extraneous bits of carbon forced on him, and sometimes inappropriately high gearing. Lately, there's the added fun of strange standards for the headset and bottom bracket. I was tempted by this bike because it would have meant starting over with a new bike, with nothing pre-broken for me, and without the compatibility problems that can make working on even a ten-year-old bike annoying. I would have been able to move my rack and fenders right over, probably. There's always something with that kind of accessory... The bike comes in a pretty complete size run - 44, 48, 50, 52, 54, 56. All the bikes run big. It's a compact frame, and I think they measured from the center of the bottom bracket to the top of the seat tube, which yields a fairly silly number. I'd say the 48 was about comparable to my 52cm 'cross bike; on the dealer's chart, I think it had a 53cm ETT, which would be about right.

The bottom line was $600, although I was offered a little better price because '11 bikes are getting to be an annoying thing for a shop owner to have on his floor. The dealer described it as being like an affordable Surly. I think that was pretty apt, since Surly seem to keep moving upmarket in the component mixes they offer on their completes. (WTF, guys? If you're going to do that, offer a frame that's made out of a little nicer steel.)

I'd like to see this bike be successful, because I think there need to be some options that are all the way at the low end, but don't actually have some weird thing wrong with them. (7-speed freewheels, 1" threaded steer tubes, I'm looking at you. And, I get that people don't like downtube shifters.) I think it would be a great choice for someone who's trying to fit cycling into a really limited budget but doesn't want to go straight to the part of a bike's life that buying used usually implies, and doesn't want to have trouble buying parts when it comes up. I think it would be a particularly great choice for someone who might be doing some commuting, which is what this bike is marketed for anyway.

To be honest, I'm not going to be buying one unless something happens to mess up a planned purchase from a friend. But I get the impression that a lot of people thinking about new bikes on this forum are in a little bit of a vacuum in their real lives, and aren't part of a community with a pool of bikes floating around that get bought and sold.


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## SilverStar (Jan 21, 2008)

What's wrong with loose-ball Formula hubs? I have a pair and they are really smooth...smoother than their cartridge-bearing models. Sure, they're heavy, but this isn't a race bike.


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## AndrwSwitch (May 28, 2009)

My 'cross bike came with a Formula loose ball hub on the front wheel. It was fine for two seasons, but it felt a bit rough when I was giving the bike its pre-season checkup in 2010. I took it apart to clean it out and repack it. There are no seals. I think I still have it on my shelf, actually, but that discovery led me to move that wheel onto an old Shimano Parallax hub that happened to have the same flange diameter, and much better design.

IMO, an unsealed hub is a disposable hub. Doesn't need to be sealed bearing, per se - I'm quite happy with the Shimano loose-ball hubs I have.


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## Mr. Versatile (Nov 24, 2005)

Thanks for the report on the bike. Re: loose ball hubs. I have a DeRosa that I bought new in 1994. It has a little over 60,000 miles & has been ridden in all kinds of weather including snow, sleet, & sub teens temps. It has always stayed outside in an unheated garage in the winter. It has Campy Record hubs with loose balls front & rear. After all that they're just great-smooth as silk. I've replaced the bearings once because they were worn, but the races are perfect. Take reasonable care of them & they'll last many years. I rebuild mine once per year on average.


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