8bar has brought back the off-road-exploring Tflsberg as an all-new steel bikepacking bike for heavily loaded dropbar adventures. Sure you can call it a monster gravel bike if you want. But 8bar is adamant that the new Tflsberg is probably more a mountain touring bike, designed for extra long days in the saddle exploring rough, uncharted terrain.
8bar Tflsberg steel off-road bikepacking 2.0 mountain touring bike
The last Tflsberg we remember from 8bar was an alloy cyclocross racer, but the new steel Tflsberg is an entirely different monster. While your run-of-the-mill in-betweener gravel bike has settled on balanced speed on & off-road, this is a more relaxed ride with laid-back geometry that lends itself to much longer and rougher rides.
What makes an off-road mountain touring bike?
A forgiving heat-treated double-butted chromoly steel frame is a good place to start, with generously curved & flexible seatstays to eat up some of the choppy bumps. But it also is designed for loaded off-road bikepacking, so the frame is reinforced with thickened walls at every weld, plus a downtube gusset at the headtube.
Depending on how extreme you want to get, 8bar’s Tflsberg can be built up with a big suspension-corrected alloy bikepacking fork, or you can opt for a 100mm travel XC fork for an even smoother ride. There’s also internal routing for a stealth dropper post if needed.
Massive tire clearance is another good way to open up more terrain for exploration, and the Tflsberg has plenty of room for 29×2.25″ mountain bike tires, or even plus-sized 27.5×2.8″ tires. Now you understand why 8Bar calls the Tflsberg a dropbar bikepacking mountain bike.
Carrying capacity rounds out the Tflsberg’s adventure-ready capability. The rigid Tflsberg can haul up to nine water bottles! Inside the main triangle, there’s a standard pair of bosses on the seattube and a 3-pack for an anything cage above the downtube. There’s another pair of mounts under the downtube just in front of the bottom bracket, then two more pairs of cage mounts 2/3 of the way up the downtube offset to either side. Add to that a set of triple anything cage mounts on each seatstay and more angled forward on each side of the rigid fork.
There are also conventional & low-rider eyelets to mount both racks and full-coverage fenders front & rear. Plenty of ways to bolt up tons of gear to this bike – with the idea of letting you distribute weight evenly no matter what you are hauling.
Tech Details
The butted steel 8bar Tflsberg frame features a straight 44mm headtube to work with straight or tapered steerer forks, a 68mm threaded BB, a 27.2mm seatpost with a conventional 31.8mm external clamp, external cable routing, flat mount disc brakes for 140/160mm rotors, and 12mm thru-axles with non-Boost gravel 100/142mm spacing. Weight of the steel frame is claimed at 2200g, plus another 1000g if you opt for the full aluminum fork.
The entire Tflsberg setup is rated for a max system weight of 140kg/309lb, including the bike, rider, and all luggage.
8bar Tflsberg bikepacking bike – Pricing, options & availability
While gravel bikes are versatile, anyone riding the Silk Road Mountain Race right now will tell you the benefits of a proper off-road mountain bikepacking bike is more suited for longer, rougher tours. The new steel Tflsberg is available now from 8bar as a frameset with alloy fork from 800€, or with a DT Swiss F232 One suspension fork from 1500€.
Complete customizable bikepacking-ready builds of the 8bar Tflsberg start as low as 2120€ with the rigid fork, Shimano GRX 2×10 & alloy wheels.
Or flat bar urban exploration builds with GRX 1×10 from just 1700€.
But it’s easy to get builds up over 6000€ with tons of options like the DT fork, SRAM AXS drivetrain, carbon wheels, Redshift suspension stem & seatpost, not to mention racks, fenders & integrated lighting setups.
Offered in three frame sizes (S,M,L) and semi-gloss black or matte silver, you can even have it custom painted to make it one-of-a-kind like any other 8bar frame. The new steel 8bar Tflsberg bikepacking bike is available now in limited numbers depending on your chosen spec.
