Saturday, February 10, 2007

Updates on H-Bar, WeirWolf Tires, and Lube

Just a quick word on my first impressions of some of the gear I'm running on my Raleigh XXIX+G. The Titec H-Bar is wrapped in red Bontrager gel tape and has some strategically placed bits of Fizik bar gel under there too. It feels really nice, has some great, usable positions, and has good flex out at the extensions. Not as much as titanium would, no doubt, but I can feel it give a bit. I can't say more until I can get a really long ride in on these, which might be a little while yet.

The WeirWolf LT tires are really great so far. I can run these at lower pressures than I can other tires. For instance, I ran them at 22psi front and rear on my commute yesterday. The tires had higher rolling resistance, but stuck to the shiny, slick, hardpacked snow like velcro. I couldn't get them to slip! On the way home I had them running at about 32psi with far better rolling resistance and still great traction in the snowy parts. These seem to roll much better than ExiWolfs and are on par with XR's with bigger, (very slightly bigger) volume.

The Dumonde Tech lube was applied to the Raleighs cleaned chain in the prescribed manner with excellent results. The snowy, wet roads caused no dirt to stick to the chain and it looks clean. It has a bit of dirty residue that comes off when you touch the chain, but no where near the grime I usually experience. I will be putting this on the Karate Monkey next, as I'm running some fenders for testing and that means lots more slop, wet, and grime to test the lube out on.

Still cold here- below zero yet at 10:30 am as I write this- so riding is curtailed to some degree until the weather straightens out. Then I'll be out riding and reporting further.

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