Tuesday, August 21, 2012

Mountain Bike Tubulars

 If you have read this blog much, you haven't seen much tech talk on bike and ski gear, my two favorite activities. I rather spend any available time biking or skiing versus waxing skis or tinkering and getting tricked out with parts and blogging about it. Going on the same hard tail frame for four years and have no reason to change until it breaks. I started riding rigid and after trying full sus for a few years and cranking out a few miles on a 29er, a hardtail 26 is the bike for me. 

Two years ago I picked up a pair of Ritchey carbon rims for mountain bike tubulars. It was a big splurge for me but I have 100% confidence in anything Ritchey puts out, having great success with a pair of Ritchey rims that I still roll and probably pushing 10,000 miles the last 10 years. Anways, I had the GEAX Seguno tires mounted on. I had trouble holding air and getting them dialed in but I really liked how they performed. The biggest feature of running tubular, imo, is the super low tire pressure you can run like tubeless which provides great traction and suspension like benefits. However, on tubular, from my experience, tubulars track a little bit tighter and you can get away folding a tire without having it "burp" or lose air.  This spring, Craig at Paramount got a good deal on two pair of Racing Ralphs by Schwalbe. I have had fantastic luck with them, riding all types of conditions and terrain with no flats...knock on wood!



Turning the meter over 1k. I didn't really notice the mileage until I noticed I was at 900 earlier this month.


Despite rolling the pavement for about 250 miles or so, the tread is holding out well and plan on rolling them as long as I can...2000??!!
Most of the off road riding has been on the Maplelag course which is laced with rocks and lots of roots. I run the pressure as low as I can and will hit the rim and never any problems, again,.....knock on wood!! It is almost like having a inch or so of rear travel suspension.




Slicing through a rock garden on the Maplelag course.



 Grinding gravel on a freshly graded forest road in the White Earth State Forest.



 Pounding the pavement...and keeping the wheels moving!

1 comment:

Mountain bike wheels said...

Good work…unique site and interesting too… keep it up…looking forward for more updates.