Well, I haven't been out in the country yet, and I am loathe to remove the studded tires, but I have several shorter rides now on this bike. I thought I would share how it turned out with you all.
First, I added some fenders and this brought up an issue with the fork I wanted to highlight. The carbon fork I went with has a radius curvature inside the crown which isn't very compatible with fenders. It slopes inward too much and prevents one from "tucking" the fender up as high as needs be to clearance 700c rubber, at least in larger sizes like the 38mm tires I have.
So, instead of using the full-metal fender on the front as I have in the rear, I grabbed an old metal-core, plastic Hard Core model from Planet Bike and truncated the fender just behind where it would have passed under the fork crown. A simple hacksaw job and a bit of file work later and I had all the protection I really need and tire clearance for me 38mm Gravdal studded tires. There were no issues whatsoever with mounting the rear fender.
Okay, but the ride. How does it do as a fixed gear bike? Well, I think I was spot on with my feelings concerning the frame being stiff enough to handle the high-torque riding fixed gear riding can dole out to a frame. It does not flex in a perceptible way. It feels very solid, and rides like it always had, which is to say not the greatest in smoothness! I'm super happy I went with a ShockStop stem! Of course, studded tires are not known as "great riding tires" either.
The gearing.... Ooof! At first I was really worried this was a mistake 39T x 16T is around a 68" gear. However; I was riding the T-6 home from work on Monday evening and it is almost all uphill. Some at a fair steep grade. I found keeping the speed up and cranking smoothly and strongly worked out okay for me. It is a different beast riding fixed and climbing is one area where you'll notice this. I think fixed gear makes climbs a bit easier, in a way, since you have zero dead spots. The bike carries you through the usual dead spot in your cadence with momentum, and there is little "pulsing". Those little micro-coast moments right after you push the pedal through a power stroke. It's hard to explain, but to my mind, it is a difference between single speed (coaster) and fixed (no-coast) style bikes.
I mentioned in my posts late in the year last year I wasn't really very happy about how the Schwalbe G-One Overland tires rode. They felt oddly harsh, no matter what pressure I decided to run them at.
I ran my SOMA Cazedero 700 x 50mm tires for the tail end of the season. I used TPU tubes in them and it was......okay. I still thought the ride quality could have been better.
After the post-Thanksgiving Winter blast we got here I decided to swap out tires again to some older Pirelli Cinturato H tires I had tested for review back in 2022. I knew these tires rode well from the time I spent on them, and I remember being a bit sad to have to remove them for another tire review.
Of course, with this colder weather and a different bicycle, there was a question as to whether or not this would be worth trying. My thoughts were if these tires can even show promise over the Schwalbe and SOMA's it would be a win of sorts.
Well, I was rewarded with a better ride feel. Only slightly so, but again, it was 40°F and the pathways were odd in that I was running over a lot of really frozen ground. On one hand the vibration damping was better, but I also wasn't getting a rolling resistance I was happy with. It wasn't 'bad', but it wasn't great either. Again, I am attributing this to the colder air. I'll keep trying and when warmer weather comes we will see how it goes.
But for now, these tires are staying on this bicycle. I've a feeling these are going to work out just fine.
4 comments:
Like you, I tend to like the feel of tires better in warm weather... was just thinking that on a ride Monday night. As the temperature dropped from 50 into the 30s, bumps started to feel just a bit sharper and less damped.
Tires definitely get stiffer and harsher in the cold. I think most of us already knew it, and the recently released real-world testing from the Escape Collective confirmed it. Ronan spent six months, mostly at night, working on the procedure
Fixie Dave style with the flat pedals!
I need to try that. I have a fixed wheel for my Matt Chester hardtail.
A suspension fork can make unweighting the rear wheel fun and easy
I can hear the difference in the noise tires make when rolling when its cold.
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