Buddy,

As always, there's several things to comment on here. Let me divert slightly from the forum content. We have a rule in our family that we have to keep cars ten years before buying a new one. Since our last car purchase, safety advances have grown by leaps and bounds. Jacinto's 2020 Subaru chastises him for not keeping his eyes on the road! Another feature I like is the large GPS screen. Yes, my phone will do that, but my aging eyes appreciate seeing the map in a larger format. You might remember, I am easily lost. I think the GPS is a fine feature!

Brakes - all of my bikes but the new one have rim brakes. I live in the mountains. I'm a cautious downhill rider, seldom going over 30 mph. I'm a big girl, and I have ridden with much more weight than I carry now. I guess downhilling with rim brakes part of the learning process. I have had one previous bike with disc brakes. The pads were so finely set that I had trouble getting the wheel back on properly after changing a flat.  I do agree disc brakes have more braking power, especially hydraulic brakes.  

If I were building a bike up, I'd go with an old fashioned triple in the front. I want how low can she go gearing for mountain climbing.  I'm not fast, but I get there eventually under my own power! 

I'm not so interested in electronic shifting, but Jacinto's  loves his belt drive bikes with IGHs. He went with a belt drive because he didn't want to clean the chain. What he mentions most often now is how quiet the bike is going down the road. He's not the sort of guy to carry on about things, but he has mentioned this several times. 

I'm definitely not interested in carbon fiber for any bike at all! 

Mostly, with bicycles, I'm into tried and true, and it can go a lot of miles without fussing. 

I like about everything being no fuss!

My Rodriguez has disc brakes because I ordered them.  It's my first foray into that world but based on a very brief experience I absolutely love them.  All of my tandems have the older-style Arai drum brake, which is hugely valuable for controlling and managing speed on long descents, without any worry about heat issues.

I ordered the disc brakes because of the feeling / lack of confidence I had on my Bike Friday (equipped with rim brakes) this past summer.  I too am a "plush" rider; my weight combined with the weight of my gear made me very cautious at speed, and very aware (and wary) of the huge momentum that builds so quickly in such situations.

I absolutely crawled down the long descents, paranoid about the possibility of a brake failure.  Leaving Yellowstone out the east portal, I stopped at several roadside springs and doused the rims with cold spring water to lower the heat I was generating.  And the Lamb Grade, 3+ miles at 9 to 13 percent?  I chose to walk down.

My standards for and opinion of what constitutes a "proper" touring bike were strongly shaped by what was available in the 1980s.  I too prefer a triple crank to either a compact double, an internally-geared rear hub, or the latest 1x12 fad.  

3 in the front and 9 at the back give me all the gearing options I think I need, without the narrower and more wear-prone 12 speed chain.  They also reduce the need to cross-chain to reach the extremes of the gear range, something I was taught decades ago should be avoided in order to prolong chain life.  Yes there are some combinations that I avoid in order not to cross-chain but I can reach the extremes easily and without doing so, making the full range available.

Although I doubt I'll ever actually need to have an emergency welding repair done in the field, my touring bikes will always be steel "just in case".  Carbon fiber, for all that it gives a great ride (I LOVE my carbon fiber road bike), fails catastrophically and completely, possibly without warning.  That's not the sort of material I want as I'm slugging up a long mountainside or bombing down the opposite side enjoying a well-earned rest.

Internally geared hubs are complicated.  Although they're mostly reliable, you are aware from personal observation of Jacinto's experience what happens when they do go wrong.

George Hall opined that index shifters save time and energy by providing crisp, clean shifts and eliminating the need to trim the position after shifting.  That's true, but my memory is that I quickly adapted to know how far I needed to move a lever to get a shift to happen; it rapidly became second nature and basically an unconscious action to do so.  That said, none of my current bikes has friction-only shifters.  (They're simply not a readily-available option; even if they were I'd go for indexed given the choice.)

I think you and I are in complete synch: tried-and-true, no-muss-no-fuss makes for a happy rider.

Kelly - considering your 10-year minimum replacement age for vehicles, you may find some amusement at the age of the 3 vehicles my wife and I drive. I love my 1997 Jeep Wrangler (ragtop) and will have it from now till forever - it only has 118,000 miles on it and I add about 3 - 4 thousand a year.  Our rule is that we don't consider replacing a vehicle until it has 200,000 miles, so you can see that my Jeep will outlive me.  Everywhere I go in my Jeep people come up and offer to buy it - and it's not fancy, just a stock 5-speed manual transmission. 

My other vehicle is a 2000 GMC Safari cargo van with 148,000 miles. It functions as a "pickup" truck does for most guys, hauls lumber and stuff - and I can easily transport bikes inside it. And it only gets driven about 4 - 5 thousand miles a year, so it will outlive me too.

Our newest vehicle is my wife's car, a 2003 Mercury Marquis with 202,000 miles. It's reached our replacement threshold so we are looking ahead for a new vehicle - possibly one of the new EV's from GM. 

So what does this have to do with cycling? Well, my road bike is a 1981 Raleigh Super Course with rim brakes and downtube friction shifting. It needs some serious tuneup work, but even so I occasionally take it out for a few miles - if nothing else it reminds me how nice modern technology is on my newer bikes.  I recently donated my 1979 Schwinn Super Letour road bike to a local charity that rehabs bikes for needy folks - it was hard to let it go, lots of memories.

I'm not a hoarder - and I'm not poor, I could buy a new bike and new car yearly if that's what I valued. But I get joy from using things to their max - I'm much happier driving around in my 1997 Jeep (which is now old enough to officially be an "antique" vehicle) than I would be in a newer model.  And I feel proud that my main touring bike recently rolled past 20,000 miles.  So I'm weird that way and easily relate to your 10-year minimum replacement rule. I wonder how many miles and years I'll get on my touring bike.  You're more experienced at touring than me, what's the most mileage or years you've ever rode a touring bike?

71,500 miles/114,400 km so far on my 2007 Bacchetta Giro 20 short wheelbase recumbent. As of July it's no longer my main bike for local rides, but it's still my bike for multi-day tours.

My newly acquired bike for local rides is even older, a 2005 Bacchetta Titanium Aero. I'm currently pedaling this bike about 4000 miles per year.

Both bikes are old school with 9 speeds, rim brakes, triple cranks.

My Specialized Sequoia touring bike has 69,000 miles on it. It fits me like a glove. The only thing about it that I'm not crazy about are the rim brakes. I was going to replace it about ten years ago when a local rider who knows far more about bikes and bike maintenance said, "Why? It's a perfectly good bike." And so I kept it. 

I met a guy on an early 1980s Trek in Kansas last summer. He was on his way to California via South Dakota. He loves his bike. Similarly, I met a guy riding a late 1980s Nishiki on my 2018 cross country tour. He was going cross country in the opposite direction and was perfectly happy with his old bike. 

My Tour Easy has over 40,000 miles on it. I no longer tour on it because I am not confident that I can get parts if something proprietary breaks. Last summer my fork snapped when I hit a nasty root heave near home. It took a nationwide on-line search to find a replacement.

Both my CrossCheck and BikeFriday have over 20,000 miles on them. They work fine.

Of course, all the components on these bikes have been changed over the years. Each winter I take the Sequoia and the CrossCheck to a shop and have whatever work I need done. (I'd still have to do this with a new bike because a new bike is old after a few thousand miles.)

Long story short, unless you want to upgrade to disc brakes (I've had similar problems to Keith's on tours) I recommend keeping what you have. 

My Specialized Sequoia touring bike has 69,000 miles on it. It fits me like a glove. The only thing about it that I'm not crazy about are the rim brakes. I was going to replace it about ten years ago when a local rider who knows far more about bikes and bike maintenance said, "Why? It's a perfectly good bike." And so I kept it. 

I met a guy on an early 1980s Trek in Kansas last summer. He was on his way to California via South Dakota. He loves his bike. Similarly, I met a guy riding a late 1980s Nishiki on my 2018 cross country tour. He was going cross country in the opposite direction and was perfectly happy with his old bike. 

My Tour Easy has over 40,000 miles on it. I no longer tour on it because I am not confident that I can get parts if something proprietary breaks. Last summer my fork snapped when I hit a nasty root heave near home. It took a nationwide on-line search to find a replacement.

Both my CrossCheck and BikeFriday have over 20,000 miles on them. They work fine.

Of course, all the components on these bikes have been changed over the years. Each winter I take the Sequoia and the CrossCheck to a shop and have whatever work I need done. (I'd still have to do this with a new bike because a new bike is old after a few thousand miles.)

Long story short, unless you want to upgrade to disc brakes (I've had similar problems to Keith's on tours) I recommend keeping what you have. 

Kelly, if you and Jacinto were following Vince's around Australia ride you would have noticed that he rode just under 11,000 km on his Rohloff IGH with belt drive without any incidents. That distance given the dusty conditions in the north of the  country would have worn out two or three chains and maybe a cassette. Belt plus IGH is definitely the way to go for me!

John,

Have you considered buying a donor Tour Easy to use for parts? I've seen several cheap TE's in the Tucson area recently - as low as $250. There is currently one for sale on FB Marketplace for $450., there's a Gold Rush for $900. 

Mike,

You are preaching to the choir - Jacinto now has three belt drive, IGH hub bikes. To be exact, the third is not an IGH, but a Pinion. It's a Priority brand bike. They sell only direct. The cost of the entire bike was about the same as the Pinion would be from another builder. Jacinto says the Pinion is quieter shifting than the Rohloff. What he does not like is that other riders think he is riding an E bike!

I guess Jacinto’s Priority is an ‘IGBB’. Says that fast 3 times and try not to laugh 😂! 

K and I are definitely in the Belt and IG camp/cult (Rohloff) (and it’s worth retiring an old bike to join us 👽) but the e-bike ‘side-glances’ are becoming a thing over the last couple of years.  I can see this being even more of an issue with a Pinion. We empathize with Jacinto’s pain 😉.