The Meriwether Cycles Klunkpacker

Today, I am going to share my thoughts and experiences on my favorite bicycle, my Meriwether Klunkpacker. Before I do, let’s acknowledge something. No one really cares what I am riding. No one likely cares about my opinion. The reason I am sharing is that I think Meriwether Cycles deserves some time, credit and interest if you are at all interested in a truly custom, one of a kind bicycle.

My friend and I have a quote about getting a custom bike; “Custom not perfect!”. In each of our personal experiences, rarely does a custom bike truly come perfect and 100% to plan or as expected. Often they are 99% accurate but rarely are the 100% accurate to plan. I know a lot of folks will challenge me on that statement, but I will offer that is my personal experience. Your results may vary.

The purpose and vision I had for this bike was to get a custom, steel, rigid bike to use as a dirt touring bike. I never intended, or intend, to ride the roughest trails with this bike. I have a suspension bike for that. Nope, this bike is meant to be endlessly ridden on pavement, gravel, single track, double track, etc with an ever changing array of custom bags, racks and bottles. Through the city, through the country and through the woods, this bike is ready for all I can throw at it. I can honestly say that this Klunker is perfect and Whit nailed every single design detail….And there were a lot of asks and details on this bike. So with that out of the way, let’s take a closer look at a few o the details.

I spent a lot of time thinking about every component. Truthfully, I am still saving pennies and designing custom sewn bags to finish this build. But I did pull together some really nice components. I also have sewn some of the custom bags for this bike.

After sitting on this frame set for a few months, I rushed to build it in the above configuration for a short trip to California for a friends wedding. I stole the wheels from my Tumbleweed Stargazer and assembled a 10 speed drivetrain from my parts bins and off I went. Here are a few pics from that first trip.

This first trip cemented in my mind just how good this rig is. It has amazing handling, is super comfortable and with the rocker style drop outs I can adjust the chain stay length both for tire clearance as well as ride characteristics. This first trip gave me pavement, bike path, city cruising, & dirt roads along with a lot climbing and descending. It was the perfect break in trip for a new stead.

I also took this bike to Mid South along with a special, handlebar camera bag. My intent here was to use it to cruise around town and if it ended up being a mud year at Mid South, I fully intended to ride it as it has the tire clearance needed for this event along with drop outs to convert to single speed if I blew my derailleur out in the mud. Mid South race day turned out to be perfect conditions and I chose to ride my gravel bike, but it was ready and more than capable.

Here’s a closer look at some of the key features of this bike. Instead of a bolt on gas tank bag, this rig has a real gas tank bag! I love to fill it with food and snacks. It has bottle mounts everywhere for lots of water and attachment points. It has swinging drop outs allowing adjustable chainstay length as well as SS option. I can run big tires front and rear. I like to run a 2.6 front and 2.4 or 2.5 29er rear for dirt and they fit easily. It is suspension corrected for 100mm suspension forks. I know folks will tell me I am stupid for not having this built for longer forks, but I had both a very specific visual in mind and didn’t want the long fork and the resulting even smaller for my size frame triangle space. The fork has drilling for dynamo wiring and the seat post is also set up for an internal dropper if desired. Lastly, I also put a dreamy Meriwether, double bend titanium bar on this rig.

After Mid South, it was time to get this rig ready for some dirt touring out west. Ben at Heath Creek Cycles built me some sweet new premium wheels with White Industries rear hub and a SON dynamo front hub. I sewed a lower frame bag.

These two images reflect how you will see this bike set up and used for a majority of its life. The left shows full bike packing capability and the right shows my dirt road exploration version without framebag and with custom, bar mounted camera bag.

I really could not be happier with this build. As I mentioned, it is still a work in progress. Right now I am upgrading to 11 speed with a longer range cassette and I have acquired a headlight, wiring and charging port from my good friend Steve Fuller. I also have a new Tumbleweed Pannier Rack I purchased for which I am designing and sewing some mini pannier bags for it. It truly is a chameleon and I don’t think I will ever tire of tweaking it.

Lastly, here are a few pics from my first few months of riding this beautiful rig. Thank you Whit for making me my dream bike and putting up with my endless emails filled with details. You absolutely killed it.