The Surly Pacer

I've had quite a few roadbikes over the years, starting from my Fomas Roadking in 2011. After the B'Twin Triban 3 frame broke in 2018, I got a Scott Speedster 50 frame from Cadence 90 and transferred components from the Triban onto it. The MicroShift brifters started giving trouble and I moved to a 1x10 Gevenalle CX shifters. At the end of it, it was a big mess. 

 

A mostly Sora drivetrain without an FD and a 10 speed shifter on a 9 speed RD and cassette and a double Tourney crankset. It kind of worked fine for office commutes and usual easy rides around Hussein Sagar. However, when I joined the group from The Bike Affair in mid-June 2020 for a 50km ride, the limitations became apparent. Here I just got a decent group to ride with and this setup was simply not up to the task. 

I opted to upgrade the bike to a SRAM Apex groupset. The upgraded Scott worked fine for the next two months, doing over 100km a week. At last, I decided to do one final upgrade, the frameset. I always wanted a quality Cr-Mo frame but not a tourer like a Surly LHT. I was clear I needed a roadbike, but not a racer. I was also clear that I need rim brakes, not discs. There was only one frameset that fit my requirements. The Surly Pacer. 

This story is about my Surly build. I'd like to specially thank Krish Basu, Gokul and Sampath of The Bike Affair, Arvind Ganesh of Happyearth, the team at BOTS and the best riding company I have, Aditya.

The Groupset:

 After the hotch-potch of Sora, Microshift and Gevenalle, I wanted to upgrade to something more coherent. TBA had nothing in stock at the moment. As per the folks at BOTS, Shimano components take 2-3 weeks to arrive. I opted to go for SRAM Apex instead. I purchased the SRAM Apex groupset from BOTS online store and it was delivered in a week. The build quality of the Apex was solid. The Apex spent some time on my Scott frame before being moved to the Surly.

 

I could not use the Apex calipers from the Scott build on the Surly as they were short reach calipers. I needed mid-reach. I bought Tektro R539 calipers from BOTS online store (I also got R737s as a backup). The rest of the groupset was Apex. The FD has a braze-on mount and I needed to buy a ProblemSolvers braze-on clamp for the Surly. The one I had on the Scott was too big for this frame.

I had both 11-26 and 11-32 cassettes in my stocks. The Scott had 11-26 on it. I chose to put the 11-32 on the Surly as it will give me a wider range of gears. The GXP Team bottom bracket that came with the Apex crank got damaged a bit while screwing into the Scott. So I bought a spare GXP BB from Cyclop for the Surly.

The Wheels:

The wheels I had on my Scott are home-built. I had the spectacular ABC sealed bearing front hub on a 24 spoke 2-cross wheel and a Tiagra rear hub on a 32 spoke 3-cross wheel. The freehub part of the Tiagra hub started getting stuck and I ended up in the market for a new hub. After a lot of deliberation, I chose the Velocity Road Rear hub from Happyearth. It cost me upwards of 11k INR, but comes with a fantastic build quality. I chose to build a new front wheel around a dynamo hub, the Shutter Precision PV-8. 

 

I got the Sapim leader spokes and 12mm Sapim nipples from Happyearth directly. 285mm for the front wheel and 285 and 286mm for the rear. I also purchased my own Parktool TS2 truing stand and Parktool WAG-5 dishing tool from TBA. After both the wheels are built, I borrowed the Parktool TM-1 from TBA to measure and fine tune spoke tension. Now, both the wheels have a 32 spoke 3-cross layout with around 120kgf spoke tension.

For now, I put my Scott's Schwalbe Lugano Endurance and Vittoria Zaffiro tires on this bike. I bought Rubino Pros as spare.

The Headset:

I did not realize that the headset should be bought separately from the frame till I received the frame at TBA. I checked the specifications and realized I needed an EC34 headset for the pacer. I got the Cane Creek 10 series headset via TBA, along with the home-mechanic headset press, the Parktool HHP-3. The 10 series differs from their flagship 40 series by having a plastic crown race. The 10 and the 40 series have interchangeable parts and I will one day upgrade to an aluminum crown race. I did not get to use the HHP-3 though, as I was anyway going to visit TBA to pick up the headset. I carried the frame along and fit the headset using the shop tools, with Sampath's help. He also helped cut the steerer tube to a proper length. 

 

The Saddle and Bartape:

I have two saddles in my inventory. The Specialized Toupe and Brooks Swallow. The Brooks is way more comfortable and it's been perfectly broken-in. It was a present from my dad for my second wedding anniversary. I kept the Toupe in case I rebuild the Scott as a trainer bike and decided to use the Swallow for this. 

I felt I was done alternating between the various bar tapes from the likes of lizardskin, supacaz and so on. I wanted something more permanent. Something that would be the Brooks saddle of bar tapes. The Fyxation Cahill leather bar tape. Happyearth had one in stock and I grabbed it. It's full grain leather and should last a long long time and should be very comfortable after the initial break-in.

 

I could not reuse the seatpost from the Scott here. This required a 27.2mm seatpost while the Scott had a 34mm. So I bought a 3T zero-25 seatpost from BOTS online store for this. It was 350mm long, which was more than enough for me.

Cables and Cable Stops:

I used the spare cable housing I had left from my Scott build here. All of it Jagwire. The brake cables were from Yokozuna and the gear cables from Jagwire. I didn't realize that this frame had mounts for downtube shifters and that I needed to buy cable stops to hold the gear housing. I bought ProblemSolvers downtube cable stops from Happyearth.

 

Handlebar and Stem

I wanted to try out a slightly different type of dropbars and went on to purchase the Specialized Hover Expert. This is a raised drop bar for an even more comfortable riding posture. The stem is a 80mm Element stem that I picked up at TBA. 

Pedals:

I stopped using clipless pedals about two years ago as office commutes became my only rides. I gave off my R540 clipless pedals (which I myself bought used). I used MKS platform pedals since 2018. As now the riding style shifted to riding long on weekends, I was in the market for clipless pedals yet again. I had the budget for something good. I wanted to buy Ultegra pedals but they were not in stock with TBA. So I ended up buying the 105 pedals instead. I'm still using my Shimano R088 shoes that I picked up at Chuck's store in Natick during my 2015 US trip.

 

The First Ride:

The first ride happened on 22nd August. I did a short ride from home to Hussein Sagar lake and back. The bike is super smooth. The gears and brakes are perfect. And I got the signature photo by the Hussein Sagar lake.