Tout Terrain Streamliner Review

A trail-a-bike with suspension

Guest Poster: Jeffrey Jantos

As I was suffering up another climb, chasing my 11-year-old while hauling my 4.5-year-old son as dead weight on the back of my mtb tandem, he asks “When can I pedal DAD???”   Not.   Soon.   Enough.

Tout Terrain’s Streamliner has been on my radar for several years now, and if you’ve been following The Bike Dads, you’ve probably seen reposts of Roger Essig ripping flow trails in Switzerland with one in tow. If you haven’t, find him on Instagram and watch a few of his videos—you’ll be inspired and you’ll want one bad.

The Streamliner is a trail-a-bike with 9 speeds, a brake, and 6” of travel. It’s meant for real trail riding with kids ages 4-7. While not a cheap solution, it’s the only solution available that allows me to take at least 2, or even 3 of my kids (#MacRide) on trails I want to ride. It allows me to get a solid effort in for myself, and gives mom a break from at least half of the brood.

Since I have 2 preschoolers, I knew I could maximize my use of the Streamliner because there’s almost always an argument over who gets to go on a ride with dad. My kids love bikes and have already spent countless hours out on the trails and on the road. I hardly even need to bribe them with mid-ride treats anymore!

So, what does the Streamliner do well and what could be better thought out?

The Great

Any trail-a-bike capable of black diamond singletrack needs suspension, gears, and a well-designed universal joint and seatpost mount. The Streamliner scores very well here. Before I got into mtb tandems with my older son, we started on a trail-a-bike with no gears, no suspension, and a sloppy universal joint with a poorly fitting seatpost mount. Needless to say, the ride was less than ideal, and the Streamliner couldn’t be more different.

The Streamliner’s suspension geometry is a high pivot design, which is well known to be the best for absorbing trail obstacles with its rearward moving wheel trajectory. This is especially important with such a small wheel. The air shock is easily adjustable, not overdamped, and has usable range within its adjustable rebound damper. On our first ride, I was initially taking it easy over rocks and roots. My son kept responding to my warnings about upcoming obstacles with “What bumps?”  Very quickly, we were plowing through rock gardens with a simple command of “Level your pedals like daddy!!”

I can still remember grinding up climbs pedaling a fixed-gear trail-a-bike when my 11-year-old was 6, and how incredible it felt every 3 pedal revolutions when his power stroke synched up with mine. The experience left me wishing he had gears.

Enter the Streamliner which comes with a 36t front cog and an 11-36 spread in the rear. Because it’s on a 20” wheel, this gear ratio matches up to a 28×42 or a 33×50 low gear on a 27.5˝ wheel. Depending on your local terrain, fitness, length of climbs, and desired use, this gear ratio might work just fine for you.

Personally, I plan to downsize the Streamliner to a 32t cog to better match the Streamliner’s low gear with my current fitness and the need to haul kids on hour-plus climbs. But WOW, the difference of hauling a preschooler as dead weight on the MacRide versus carrying his own weight on the Streamliner was like riding an e-bike for the first time. On our second ride, we went out with a group of older boys aged 10-13, and he motored along nearly weight-neutral on a 90-minute, 5-mile, 1000-foot climb. It was like he’d been pedaling for years, and it was PHENOMENAL.

5 miles from the bus and 1000 ft higher than the ocean

Our old trail-a-bike had a sloppy universal joint and a seatpost clamp with poor tolerances that would rotate around the seatpost no matter how much I tightened it using the supplied plastic shims. This would result in the trail-a-bike leaning dangerously, and clunkiness in the joint when changing directions. The Streamliner’s universal joint is made with sealed cartridge bearings that are slop-free and rotate smoothly on both axes. You’ll specify your seatpost diameter when you order yours so that Tout Terrain can include a clamp that’s a precise fit. If you plan to use the Streamliner on multiple bikes with different seatpost sizes, you’ll want to order a separately-sized seatpost clamp. Either way, the Streamliner is firmly secured to your bike and it smoothly and quietly articulates when transitioning from corner to corner and up and over obstacles.

Dropper-Post Compatibility

So, the Streamliner has the fundamentals covered, but with its premium pricing, Tout Terrain needs to have every detail nailed, and there remains room for improvement. As far as I can tell, the current version of the Streamliner has been around since at least 2009. Bike design, geometry, and expectations have evolved tremendously in the past 10 years. It’s time for Tout Terrain to update the Streamliner to match these new realities.

There was no such thing as a dropper post when the Streamliner was designed, so you mounted the clamp near the top of your fixed seatpost which provided you plenty of clearance for the boom tube over your 26” wheel. In contrast, on my 27.5” wheeled size-large frame there is just barely enough clearance to use the majority of travel and allow full articulation at the joint. With the industry trend towards shorter and steeper seat-tubes and 29” wheels, you’ll need to use a fixed seatpost. The same is true if you or mom rides a smaller sized frame.

Tout Terrain should redesign the clamp and boom tube curvature to maximize the likeliness of dropper post and 29er wheel compatibility. Making installation easier for stealth-routed droppers would be an added bonus.

My old-school set-up, circa 2015. Note the location of the pivot just in front of the rear axle.

Tracking

My old crappy trail-a-bike was easier to get around corners than my tandem, so I hoped the Streamliner would be similar or even an improvement. Unexpectedly, I found the Streamliner tracking farther than I would like to the inside of corners.  Such handling isn’t a problem on wide open flow trails, but on tighter trails with sharper turns, it was difficult to keep my passenger from being drug through the brush, or worse, potentially clipping a handlebar on a tree. This lack of agility also made it more challenging to put the rear wheel where I wanted when threading rock gardens to keep the derailleur out of harms way.

Considering the placement of the universal joint so close to the seatpost and the low and forward mounting position required by use of a dropper post, it makes sense that the Streamliner follows the center of the pilot bike versus the position of the rear wheel. Moving the pivot rearward so the Streamliner more closely follows the position of the rear wheel would help alleviate this issue, as well as decreasing the distance between the pilot’s rear wheel and the Streamliner’s splash guard to shorten the overall wheelbase. See the pivot location on the Burley Piccolo for an extreme example. I suspect there is a sweet spot somewhere in the middle.

Size L frame with a 430mm seat tube shown with improved frame shape and pivot location

Crank Length and Bottom Bracket Height

The 135mm cranks Tout Terrain specs on the Streamliner are too long for 4-7 year old cyclists. Mounting the seatpost clamp to clear a dropper also lowers the bottom bracket from its ideal height, further increasing pedal strikes and chainring impacts. The chainring comes protected with a bash guard/chainguide, but that doesn’t change the fact that impacts are scary and potentially dangerous for both riders.

The vast majority of 20˝ wheel bikes for 7-8 year olds use 110-120mm cranks. I replaced the 135’s with 115’s which vastly improved our pedal strike issues and the pedaling ergonomics for little legs. Given the target age range, the ideal set-up would be cranks with pedal holes drilled at 95 & 115 (similar to Trek’s dialed system) or single drilled around 105mm.

Cockpit Ergonomics

I trimmed the 600mm bars down to 500mm, which was as narrow as I could get them given the bend in the riser bar. I’ll probably swap them for a flat bar so I can get closer to 450mm—I’d prefer my children’s appendages be safely tucked behind me and as ergonomically correct as possible. The tiny clamp-on grips are cute, but thicker than what I use on my bikes. I tossed them, put a small strip of road bike cork tape on top of the bar, and wrapped it with cloth athletic tape to make it as easy as possible for little hands to hold on.

For the same reason, all my children have always struggled to operate Gripshift. It’s just too big for them to get their hand around and reliably move in both directions, so I swapped to a trigger shifter I had in the parts bin. I miss having the numbers found on the grip shifter to tell them where to shift, but hopefully in the long run they develop a more intuitive understanding of shifting “harder or easier” to match my cadence and maximize their power output.

This one barks orders to go faster but generally refuses to contribute to the effort.

Derailleur Hanger & Rear Disc

The derailleur is quite exposed so close to the ground. Given the tracking issues mentioned above I expect somewhat regular impacts with trail obstacles. I’ve already had to straighten the hanger once. Time will tell, but the lack of a replaceable derailleur hanger seems like an oversight to the design. Finally, a rear disc brake would be a nice addition, ensuring you won’t need to worry about keeping the wheel perfectly true to prevent brake drag when the reach on the lever is screwed all the way in to accommodate a child’s hands.

Final Thoughts

Tout Terrain has a GREAT chassis that makes riding rugged black diamond trail with children fun and possible. It makes multi-day (or week) off-pavement bike packing routes with your kids possible. It’s a great hall-pass extender and a much cheaper investment than a tandem. There’s nothing else even close to as capable on the market and given my circumstances, I fully expect to get 2-3 years of solid use from it. If this sounds like you and you live in the US, get a hold of Cycle Monkey or contact Tout Terrain directly for your country’s distributor. That said, it’s time for Tout Terrain to update the Streamliner with greater consideration of current bike design and better thought out ergonomics specific to children. Doing so would make it easier to justify the premium product price tag.

Proud Dad: The 5th grader hung with the 7th & 8th graders and team Streamliner kept them in view.