Time for an update on my little wheeled slice of British quirkiness my Moulton TSR22. I’ve clocked up a pretty decent mileage on the bike over the summer and Autumn, so a few months down the line am I still loving the ride, or are the compromises in the design starting to take the initial shine of the Moulton experience?

Well the quick answer is I’m still pretty besotted with the bike. Its still the bike I’m reaching for 90% of the time for any ride that I’m not planning and all out Strava times chasing sweat fest for, which to be fair is actually most of my riding these days. The only other time its not my first choice is if the route I’m planning takes on a lot of hills, which is because as I mentioned on my previous article on the TSR – climbing is not the bikes strongest suite.

This is where the Moulton shines, your typical UK minor road. badly maintained, potholed and crumbling at the edges. Even on my fairly forgiving Ti framed 700c wheeled road bike a section of road like this would see me hoovering out of the saddle trying to skim across the broken tarmac and weaving between the potholes, the Moulton just soaks them up. Ok it’s suspension isn’t 100% effective, its not a full proof panacea which will smooth out every imperfection of the road surface, but it’s certainly a hell of a lot more comfortable than a more conventional bike. Weirdly for a bike with suspension at both ends the pin sharp handling of the TSR still brings a smile to my face every ride as well, and has in fact saved me from at least one close encounter with the bonnet of a white van who appeared on the wrong side of the road half way around a blind bend. I’m pretty sure the subsequent adrenaline induced swift correction of my arc of travel wouldn’t have been possible on my other road bike and I’d have ended up leaving some teeth embedded in his windscreen.

So what’s not to like and what changes have I made to the TSR? My biggest grip with the bike is the to my mind at least some rather stingy component choices which compromise a couple of aspects of the bikes performance. Straight of the bat from the first ride the I found the factory fitted Tekro V Brakes pretty woeful in terms of both feel and outright stopping power. I tried uprating the pads first which was a marginal improvement, but after rooting around in my spares stash I found a single set of old Shimano Deore V brake arms which transformed both the feel and power of the front brake. For the princely sum of £12 and ten minutes of search time on eBay I found a matching set for the back end which when fitted gave me the confidence in the stopping department that I’d been lacking.

The other issue I had was the lack of adjustability in the handlebar set up. As you can see from the above badly shot picture, even with the Moultons adjustable stem in its lowest position the handlebar height was considerably higher than my normal riding position when compared to my conventional roadbike, and the only way to get it lower was to remove the stem and shorten the fork steerer tube with a hacksaw. In fact I had already removed approximately 20mm off the steerer to get it to the height shown in the picture, and since lopping bits off with a hacksaw id pretty irreversible I was understandably reluctant to perform further surgery. Most of the more expensive models in the Moulton range come with more conventional and adjustable ‘A Head’ set ups and that’s what I fitted after a further dive into my spares box for a suitable stem and an aheadset top cap.

After fitting, this is what we had, with the added bonus of some serious weight reduction because the old adjustable stem weighed a serious amount, and now I’ve got the ability to fine tune the position in a conventional manner. I understand that fitting an adjustable stem is a sensible move on a bike that only comes in one size, but fitting one like that which makes vertical movement almost impossible seems like a strange move and does smack a bit of cost cutting, especially when the more expensive models in the range come with the ahead set up as standard. Yes this is the cheapest model in the Moulton range, but as I pointed out in my first post its still a £2500 (maybe more with inflation since I took delivery) so at this price point I think the choice of stem and the Tekro brakes are a bit disappointing.

So this is how the Moulton sits now, I’ve added some mudguards for the occasional winter foray, but now the brakes are stopping better and the handlebar position is where I want it I’ve no plans for any further changes. I still stand by my original impressions of the bike, if you’re curious and want to try a different take on the traditional diamond framed road bike give a Moulton a test ride, yes they’re certainly not cheap but I don’t think you’ll be disappointed.