Thursday, October 27, 2016

Soma Stanyan RIssued

It's been a while since Soma announced any new lugged frames. Well the wait is over at last. For 2017 Soma will be producing a limited number of totally redesigned Stanyan lugged road/audax framesets in black and white color schemes.


So there are a couple of changes since the last time, most notably the steerer tube is 1" threaded. That means the lugs are a teensy bit lighter and you can use the Soma Sutro quill stem (or one of the hundreds of Nitto options).


Another new feature is the rear dropouts. We went for a medium length semi horizontal dropout with adjustment screw. We chose this for two reasons. A. because it allows you to adjust the wheel position a smidgen, which can be useful when trying to squeeze the biggest tires into 57mm brakes with optimal fender clearance. And B. because we're not bringing back the Van Ness and we know there are a lot of folks who want to use single speed or internally geared drive trains.


The forks now have a little fancier blades than before. We kept the mini rack mounts from the last generation to allow you to mount small handlebar bags, as well as light mounts or long fenders up front. We didn't do anything to the geometry, so if you're worried that we frenched up the handling, chill, we didn't. That's not to say you shouldn't use a handlebar bag, just don't go full Manny and try to carry a lawn chair or something  and it should be ok.


If you've never ridden the Stanyan before, just imagine the ES with slightly livelier tubing. If you normally ride road bikes it will feel pretty familiar. If you prefer wider tires it will probably feel a bit more nimble than your touring or CX bike.


They do have rear rack mounts, but we don't really intend to load them down too much. If you really need to do some cargo hauling somthing like the Nitto 27r with low set panniers will work well, otherwise somthing minimal like the Soma Champs Elysees will work better. Just like the original Stanyan these have fender eyelets on the brake and chainstay bridges.


If you are in the bay area and fancy taking a spin on either bike be sure to stop by American Cyclery's Halloween Basement Crypt sale before somebody snatches them up.


If you were hoping for Fogcutter info, don't worry, you should be getting good news very soon.

No comments: