Friday, May 27, 2011

Getting The Horse Ready

 
My trip to El Paso, Texas is fast approaching, and I need to tweak out this rig to take with me. Of course, I'm talking about the Big Mama.

This is a bike I've wanted to take down there for quite awhile now. It is very rough, rocky, and the down hill parts can be quite technical. The bikes I have taken down there before were just barely passable as trail bikes there.

A couple of great additions recently to the rig are these Geax Gato 2.3"ers that are TNT which means they are tubeless compatible, but more importantly than that, they have a sidewall reinforcement that protects the casing, and it will allow for some (hopefully) waaaay low pressures so I can rock crawl my way through the Franklin Mountains.

The other nice addition is the Specialized Blacklite Command Post, which is a "dropper post" that will make going down a couple of the switch backs a much easier thing to do now. One thing that won't be easy- The heat! It already is getting upwards of 100 degrees during the day down there. Of course, that's a different kind of heat, but all the same, I'll be pushed pretty hard just by that.

I've got to get a bash guard in place of that big ring though. No sense in having a big ring down there. It won't be about going fast! That's for sure. I've got a 36T ring on that rear cassette though, and I'm hoping to finally slay that beast of a climb exiting the trails from the west in the Tom May's Unit.

Last time I was there, I did the Upper and Lower Sunset loop on a Specialized Stumpjumper Carbon Expert hard tail. It was fairly brutal riding a hard tail for that loop for me. I know this bike, albeit heavier, will be easier on me, and hopefully, a faster loop time will result. We'll see.

I've got some tweaking to do, and hopefully that will get done this weekend. I hope you all have a great Memorial Day Weekend!


5 comments:

Ari said...

What bars will you be using?
ari

Guitar Ted said...

@Ari: I'll be using the Carnegie's Bar that is on it now.

Ari said...

Thanks, and by the way I am fascinated by the Luxy bars. They are great for going up steep hills as you can get so much torque out of them. The position on the hoods is great.
Ari

Shona & Rich said...

Salsa say their rims aren't tubeless compatible, how are you running them? Cheers for any help...

Guitar Ted said...

@rich: Round of Velocity Velotape and Bontrager TLR valve stems with the very tight fitting Geax Gato and Geax sealant.