2 Years & 30,000 km - Budget Touring Bike Review // Cycling Around the World

Hey everyone and welcome to our newest Bikes and Gear video and greetings from South Australia. It is absolutely unbelievable that we have been on the road for two years now already and have cycled 30,000 kilometers on these bikes since we left home. Like we have done on a regular basis in the past, we are going to celebrate this big milestone with a bike review. So let's go. So before we get started, I quickly want to point out two things. First of all, this is only going to be a half bike review, meaning we will only talk about the products and components that we have changed or updated since our last full bike review, that being the 20,000 kilometer one which you can find up here. So if you want to just find out a bit more about our bikes, please make sure to also check that one out. And second of all, some of the products we are going to talk about today have been given to us for free to test, but that doesn't mean that we will not share our honest opinion about these products in this video. All right, let's have a look. So like we've done it in our previous bike reviews, we are going to run through our bikes from the front to the back and talk about the components we have changed. As many of these components have been changed the same on my bike as on Luisa's bike, I will kind of run through both in parallel when I talk about a component on my bike, for example. So let's start with the wheels. As we briefly mentioned at the end of our 20,000 kilometer bike review, Luisa's front rim actually split open while we were still in the Peruvian Andes. As we have V-brakes, obviously the rims, the braking surface of the rims wears out over time and becomes very concave. And after 20,000 kilometers, especially on a lot of mountains in the Andes, it was just, yeah, they had reached the braking point. So we got all our four wheels rebuilt, the rims replaced, and yeah, these new 36 spoke double wall rims are really sturdy now, and we're really happy with them. Then the tires, Schweibe set us up with two sets of their tires. First of all, I have a 47 millimeter version of the 2023 edition, the new edition of the Marathon Plus Tour. Before I had the Marathon Plus Tour, the older version, and compared to that one, this one has the dual smart guard, so even better puncture protection and an updated tread pattern, which is supposed to give better performance on an off-road. And yeah, so far I'm very happy with it, and we are kind of doing a shootout between this and the 42 millimeter version of the Marathon Mondial Evo, double defense, the folding version of the Mondials, which Luisa has on her bike right now. And yeah, we're kind of comparing the puncture protection and the performance. Because we're still running these tires, and we've done about 5,000 kilometers on them now, we can't give a final verdict on them, but we'll do that in our next bike review, which will probably be at 40,000 kilometers. But so far we can say that I have had no punctures yet after 5,000 kilometers, and Luisa has had one due to a shard of glass really cutting the tire open a little bit. We can still use it, but it is quite a significant cut. Anyway, then let's move on. So after my USB charger broke a few months ago, we reached out to Busch & Müller to see what we could do about it. And because it couldn't be fixed, they actually hooked us up with two completely new electrical systems for our bikes, meaning new lights and a new USB charger for each of us. The light, our headlight, the IQX, is actually the same one we had before, but this one is just a newer version of it. So the sensor between the high and low beam has been updated and is just better calibrated now. Then we have the Dart Plus rear lights, which are pretty bright and just have a bigger illumination area than the previous lights we had. But the most notable change we have now is that we don't have the USB-AVAC USB chargers, which had an internal buffer battery and only gave out five volts for USB charging. But we now have the AVAC, which is a more high-end version of that USB charger, where you can actually separately adjust the voltage and current. So you can also directly charge cameras which, for example, need a different voltage output than just five volt USB, and which come with an external buffer battery, which we'll talk about in a second. And so far we are very happy with the AVAC as opposed to the USB-AVAC, although we just use them with five volts anyways for USB power because we don't have anything else that we need to charge with them. So like I mentioned, the AVAC USB chargers as opposed to the USB-AVAC USB chargers come with an external buffer battery, which is a lot bigger than the one installed in the USB-AVACs. So you can either mount it on your bike somewhere or we keep it in our handlebar bags. And this is it. It's a 1400 milliamp hour buffer battery. And as opposed to the smaller one inbuilt into the USB-AVAC, this is actually really good because you can just charge this up a lot more and then it also charges your phone or whatever you have connected to it via USB for a lot longer and is a proper buffer battery as opposed to the small one in the USB-AVAC. The only thing to note is I'm showing you this on Luisa's bike because the cables up here don't have a very good protection around them. So mine actually just broke off my buffer battery. Maybe a bit my fault because it was on here and something pushed on it. Maybe because it doesn't have a good cable protection on it, pinch protection on it. But yeah, generally the idea of this is really good, but I think they could definitely, Busch & Müller could definitely improve on the cable, the way the cable goes into the battery here. I have solved this problem now by having our big power bank in my handlebar bag and I am just now constantly charging that with the USB-AVAC charger. So yeah, the constant charging, because it's constantly connected to my hub dynamo, isn't going to waste and it is still charging something. So the other thing I have changed up the front here is my mudguard. I used to have a mudguard that I also kind of customized, which went on the actual wheel and was mounted to the fork. But in the strong winds of Tierra del Fuego, it actually just blew off. So I had to kind of rebuild that and now I have a mudguard attached to the frame here. As you can see, this is kind of made out of the components that I could find in Patagonia and this is actually really good. It's no longer attached to the actual fork and doesn't turn with the wheel, but as most of the time you're riding with the wheel fairly straight anyway and the spray is then somewhere in the middle here, this has worked really well also at protecting the frame, but also because it has a lot of clearance. So I'm very happy with that. And talking about mudguards, I have just also moved my rear one back a bit further, so it gives me even better spray protection as opposed to when it was still a bit further up. Luisa's mudguards we haven't changed at all, they're still the same as in the previous bike review video. So moving on to the handlebar and my cockpit, I've made a few changes here and there. First of all, front and center, I have a new bike computer. IGP Sport hooked us up with the IGS630 GPS cycling computer. This is really cool, it's a pretty sophisticated bike computer, much more sophisticated than the IGS320 which we had before, which Luisa now has. Most notably, this has a much bigger and color screen, meaning inbuilt navigation, so we can load routes onto it and then really navigate along those routes, and that works really well. In general, we're also really happy with the hardware, the battery is great, and you can read all the specs online, we're not going to talk about all the specs too much now. The only two small things I can really say or that criticize about it are that the screen could be a little bit brighter, but also it's been no problem using it so far, and that the navigation sometimes has a few glitches here and there, but again, it's still very usable, and in our opinion, especially for the price point, compared to much more expensive competitor models, yeah, it's really good. Especially the battery, we feel for something with such a big screen and so many features is pretty good. It lasts five days, depending on how long you use it per day, even longer. Then moving on, we also have new phone mounts. As you can see, I actually at the moment have two phone mounts. This is still our old quad lock phone mount, which I still use for my old iPhone, which we need for the drone, so I can mount that here and fly the drone, but for everything else, for our second phones, our navigation phones, so to say, we have a new phone mount, and this is the Peak Design out front bike mount. This is a magnetic bike mount or phone mount, but with an extra latching locking mechanism, so it really secures the phone, and in our case, because our phones, Peak Design doesn't make a case with the inbuilt mount for these phones. We have a universal mount, which we just stuck on the back, and again, we got these for free from Peak Design and have been testing them, and we are also super happy with them. It works so well, you can literally just throw the phone on there, and it's secure, and we've tested this for around 5,000 kilometers now, and a lot of off-road as well, and it just holds super well. The mount is also made out of aluminum, so it's nice and strong, and yeah, we literally don't have anything to criticize about this. You can just throw it on in any position, really, and it sticks. It's so much easier to do this with one hand than with the quad lock, and yeah, we would know we've had both for quite a long time now, and this is, yeah, a completely different world. It's so much easier to use this. Alright, then another small modification. I have a second feed bag, I actually only got this pretty recently, which I only use for storing food. Very nice for snacking on the road, and yeah, as you can see, because of the quad lock I have there as well, I couldn't even really put a bottle in it, and yeah, it was never intended for that. This is literally just for snacks and food and small things you need to keep in there and have access to really quickly. And last but not least, my Ultimate 6 handlebar bag from Ortlieb got a new lid, because this plastic screen up here had become very dry and had developed a lot of cracks because of the intense sunlight it's been in for the past few years now. Luisa actually also got a new lid, because the same thing happened with hers, but yeah, we were able to exchange this pretty quick by just opening this up, taking it off, putting a new one on. Ortlieb gave this to us for free, because the bags were still under warranty, and yeah, now the bag is holding up really well again, and yeah, that's pretty much all there is to say about the cockpit. Before we move on to the drivetrain, I'm quickly going to talk about the saddle and the seatpost. I already mentioned it in the last bike review, but yeah, before I had a leather saddle, and yeah, I wasn't too happy with it, not because it wasn't very comfortable, but because it's just a lot of hassle to keep a leather saddle well maintained, in our opinion, when you're on the road and a lot of moisture and a lot of rain and so on. So I switched to a gel saddle from Voxom. I just found it online, thought it was good, and bought this one, and so far I'm pretty happy with it. It has a big cooling vent here in the middle, and it's a lot more narrow than the leather saddle which I had before, but to be honest, I can't say it's any less comfortable than the leather saddle. It might actually even be more comfortable, especially for longer rides, and yeah, it's just completely maintenance-free, which for me is the biggest benefit of this gel saddle. Then talking about the seatpost, I also mentioned it already in the last bike review, but yeah, all these joints have become very loose, and it's just gotten even more loose to the point now that here this hinge at the bottom is really pushing through, you can kind of see. So yeah, I really am actually looking to replace this within the next couple of days, because yeah, I'm just very worried that it's going to last that much longer, but I also want to replace it with another parallelogram suspension seatpost, just because I really like the feel of these parallelogram suspension seatposts as opposed to a telescopic one. And maybe you've seen it, we've gotten some new trekking poles, our old ones which we use as a bike stand, and our old ones were a little bit worn out now, so we replaced them. The previous ones we had were screw ones, telescopic ones, so you would screw it tight. These ones are even more basic ones actually, but they work much better with just a locking pin, and it's a lot easier actually than having to screw it in. So yeah, still very happy with these, and these are so light, and it's probably one of the lightest bike stands you can have, and it just holds in every position, and no matter the wind, no matter the surface, so yeah, can definitely recommend this. All right, let's talk about the drivetrain. I have a new crankset, it's a triple again with a 22, 30, and 40 cog ratio, so the same which I had before. This is now a Holotech MT500 bottom bracket, so I've switched from square taper to Holotech, and we just want to, I just want to kind of see if these bottom brackets hold up better than the square tapered ones which we had before, where in our experience, every five to seven thousand kilometers, they would reach a point where you should probably change them out to avoid a catastrophic failure at some point, and yeah, so far this has not that much on it, maybe a thousand five hundred kilometers on it now, so yeah, still a long way to go before we can really say anything about, compare these two. Cassette is still the same as in the last review with the 34 tooth largest cog, and I also have a new derailleur, still eight speed. The main reason I got a new derailleur was actually because the lower pulley on my previous derailleur was completely worn out, the teeth were just completely blunt, and I just wanted to replace the pulley, but because it was such an old model, Dior LX model, I couldn't find the right part anymore, so I, yeah, I replaced the whole derailleur, this is from Shimano Altus line now, and I also replaced the bottom pulley with a aluminum pulley, so it's no longer plastic but it's aluminum, same with, we also replaced it on Luisa's Dior XT derailleur, just because the bottom pulley in our experience does wear out quite a bit over time, and these aluminum pulleys will hopefully hold up a lot better than the plastic ones. My front derailleur and shifter are still the original Dior LX components, which came with the bike and were already actually secondhand of course when I got the bike, and so far that's still working really well. And last but not least, talking about the drivetrain, just recently actually cycling out of Sydney on our first day cycling in Australia, the freewheel of my rear hub, previous rear hub broke, this was the Joyetech rear hub, yeah, so we think the pawls, I think they're called, of which engage the freewheel broke, so there wasn't, you couldn't put any torque on the rear hub pedaling forwards or backwards, so it would just be loose in both directions, so to say, and unfortunately it couldn't be fixed, so, because yeah, also there weren't the right components at hand, so I laced in, rebuilt my rear wheel with a new Novatech rear hub now, and so far, well, it's only done again like around 1500 kilometers, but that's holding up pretty well. This is my first rear hub with sealed bearings now, as opposed to cone bearings, so it'll also be interesting to see how well this will hold up, especially with more mud and more rain and so on, to come probably the next months cycling in winter in Australia. And you've probably noticed it already anyway, but the biggest change that we have made to our bikes in recent months is that not only is the guitar rack gone from my bike, but the guitar is now actually also gone. The guitar rack we already got rid of in Bolivia after it broke for good, so to say, on the rough Bolivian roads, on the Ruta de las Lagunas, and then we just decided not to fix it and put the guitar on the back. We actually got rid of, repacked and got rid of one rack pack altogether, so when Luisa still had this rack pack on her bike, I had the guitar on the back of my bike, but then really recently now here in Australia, we decided we wanted to continue our journey without our guitar altogether, so we left that behind and now I have Luisa's rack pack, or our shared rack pack I'm carrying now, so Luisa, as you can see, has nothing on the back anymore. And yeah, that is pretty much the biggest change. Our setup is, because we have one rack pack less now and we've just repacked a lot in general, has become a lot lighter than it was before, especially than like it was still with the guitar rack and the guitar on the back, and yeah, it's a lot more sleek now for sure. Quickly moving on to Luisa's bike, like I mentioned at the beginning, many of the components that we changed, we also changed on Luisa's bike, like the lights, the USB charger, the same phone mount, a new lid and so on, so yeah, there really is not much to talk about here. The main thing is actually that Luisa has a new rear rack. This is now an aluminum rack as compared to the steel rack, which I still have and which Luisa had before, but because also in the Peruvian Andes, the eyelet holding of the frame holding the rear rack on Luisa's bike actually snapped off and yeah, we decided against getting it welded on, even though we could have technically had that done, but instead we opted for a new rack, which actually sits on the rear axle and yeah, this has been holding up really well and in our opinion was the better solution than to get the eyelet re-welded onto her frame and yeah, so far it's holding up. I think that's all we have to say. Alright, that is already the end. Thank you for watching. Quickly to summarize, as this was a half bike review, if we haven't talked about any components which you have seen on our bikes now in this video, it's because we haven't changed them and they are still holding up really well. The next bike review, the 40,000 km bike review, which we will do in a year, who knows, will then be a full bike review again where we will talk about absolutely everything in a lot more detail, so yeah, stay tuned for that.