My All-Packa
My goodness it is hot. The Japanese summer is killing me.
The workshop for Cook Paint Works is like a sauna in the summer and like a fridge in the winter.
Painting booths are often a difficult place for air conditioning, so I just have to bear with it by drinking a lot of water. Being sweaty all the time would often give people a negative feeling, but I recently try to think I’m having a warm sauna session.
Anyhow, here’s a video of us talking about our Bike Fridays
(So sorry for not having subtitles lately we seriously need some help keeping up)
I talk about my All-Packa in the video, but I figured I post some more details here.
So this is the the prototype All-Packa we saw from pics of last year’s MADE bike show.
A folding bike with diamond tubings, QR 135mm rear spacing, max tire clearance of 2.8″, eyelets for bikepacking and dropper post compatible.
You see, this is a perfect bike for people that have many bikes. A perfect bike to make an excuse to buy, since it’s a bike that most of us don’t have due to the very unique features.
I had been fantasizing about this bike ever since I saw it the first time and I’m very happy that I own one now.
BIKE FRIDAY ALL PACKA
The All-Packa is the latest bike that Bike Friday has released. A bike that fits fat tires and is able to pack tons of gear for off-road touring.
I chose the powder stone finish, which was a limited color they offered at the time.
The reason I chose this finish is because we are not able to do this kind of paint at Cook Paint Works.
Rohloff drive train!
C’mon, it’s a touring bike!
Fun fact, the founder of Rohloff used to be a engineer for Mercedes Benz. I’m pretty sure that there are some Benz technology in their hubs.
I love this grip shift.
For the longest time, I have been riding 700c or 650b bikes, so it was quite difficult for me to figure out the gearing for this 20 incher. The first set up I went with was 40T x 16T, but this was too easy of a gearing and I couldn’t even ride it. I swapped the chain ring to 48T, making the gear ratio to be 3.0. This was perfect.
I chose Jones Bars, cause you know, bikepacking reasons!
These sweepy bars are pretty nice riding on and off road.
Here are some pics I went with this bike.
Tani riding his La Cabra (29er x 2.25″), Isshu riding his MonsterCross (700 x 48C) and I rode my All-Packa (20″ x 2.35″)
This was my first time riding off-road with 20″ wheels, so I wasn’t so sure if I could keep up, so I wore my SPD shoes.
It turned out that I could easily keep up with the rest of the crew! What an interesting bike it is.
Trail riding in 20 inch wheels was very new and felt super fun.
There are some down sides of not being able to ride over big rocks, but it’s not that big of a deal tbh.
Going down hills felt a bit sketchy, but the disc brakes definitely helps.
Splish splash!
2.35″ tires with low PSI felt good, but if I’m going to ride through trail with this bike, I would definitely go up to 2.8.
I loaded my bike to a car to the trail for this ride. As it’s a folding bike, it’s super easy to load it to the trunk.
My current goal is to fly out to somewhere with this bike for an adventure.
I still don’t know a whole lot about this bike, but I could say that it’s got potential for sure. I am very happy that I got this bike so far and I am very excited of all the places I will be traveling with this bike.
See ya!