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Friday 21 September 2012

REVIEW: Dugast Rhino cross tubs

REVIEW: Dugast Rhino tubular cyclo-cross tyres, Condor Cycles, £79.99 EACH

Cotton sidewalls: crazy but lovely
I'm already two races into the Elmy Eastern Cross League, plus two crashes and a running incident that left me sprawled face first on Hackney Marsh having sprinted into a rabbit hole.
So it seems quite correct to make an early report on my current set-up, at the heart of which lies a big change from clinchers to tubs.
This big change follows five seasons of racing clinchers -Specialized Houffalize before it was discontinued, then Michelin MudPlugger 2, which is a very robust, excellent mud tyre but not the lightest.
I was talked into tubs because whereas on the road scene the advantages are quite slender, in Cross, so the theory goes, the ability to run a tub at 30 psi without getting an immediate snakebite the minute you hit a stone or ridge, is a huge advantage. This advantage gets better the muddier it gets, which is why I will have to revisit this review later in the season - the first two races have been 50 psi affairs and virtually grass crits. Very fast, very hot, and very pumped up, in all senses.
But it's not too early to say that I really love these tyres. OK, OK, so you can see my whole rig here: this is the culmination of a terrible ownership experience of a succession of not-quite-right cross bikes, where fork judder was always terrible, the braking sub-standard and so on and so on. I went from an adapted Dawes Audax bike to a Condor with terrible brake judder; to an Alan that was stolen; to a Focus Mares that served also as a commuter; and finally to what you see here, a top-of-the-tree Ridley X-Night. Even this has not been trouble free. There are several hex-key bolts that hold the derailleur hanger in place. Beautiful little things, but they wear lose at the first sight of a rough track. This caused funny creaks and ticks in the frame that nobody could locate or understand. Finally, I spent £300 changing the entire chainset and BB to a dedicated BB30 set-up, SRAM Force. The noises continued unabated and only then did the bike shop locate the noise to the hex-key bolts.

This all goes to show that like cars, the tricky problems can be really horribly tricky. And expensive.

So was it crazy to add another whole layer of experiment, ripping my time trialling Ultremos off the Zipps and re-purposing these carbon wheels to the derby demolition scene called 'Cross?

And was it not even crazier to mount tyres with cotton sidewalls so delicate you have to waterproof them yourself with Aqua Seal to stop them rotting in the rain? This, for the single discipline in cycling where you are guaranteed to get wet and muddy?

And they're £80 a pop, which until oil went up, was more than most people paid for car tyres.

And, because I have V-Brakes, I had to buy Swiss Stop yellow pads for V-Brakes, which are quite unusual, had to be special ordered, and cost £39.99 - for four pads no shoes. That's a lot of money.

But the first results are worth it all - so far. They're incredible lithe and light and feelsome, and mounted on Zipp 303s, the front one being the Cross specific build that Zipp did, with 24 spokes instead of 20 (adds almost nothing in weight but some in stiffness and strength), the whole bike is transformed.

I'll add to this blog as the mud rises and the tyre pressures fall.

All sorted: Ridley X-Night 2012 model, with Zipp 303 Cross wheels and Dugast Rhino tubs



REVIEW: Pearson fixie: A fine addition to your urban armoury
Salmon guards go 'clonk' on big holes
REVIEW: Pearson Touche (AKA: Once More Unto The Breach)

Guy and Will Pearson preside over the oldest continuously open, family-owned bike shop in the UK, and have recently opened a smashing new road shop on the northern edge of Richmond Park.
When I took my 'Cross bike down for a service, they kindly lent me one of their fixies. Not being able to part company with their main, current model demo bike, Guy kindly gave me his very own - older and a tad dustier, but the same frame as the 2012-13 model. In keeping with the rest of the range the current model has a quirky, English name drawing a curious parallel between the battleground and London traffic - quite apt when you think about it, especially in Richmond where despite millions of cyclists, the provision of bike lanes is way behind other boroughs, and certain magazine editors think cyclists are best off dead.

(** Richard Nye, The Richmond Magazine, Sept. 2012) see:
http://www.freespeed.co.uk/2012/09/the-only-good-cyclist-is-a-dead-one/)

My immediate impression was that this is racier than your average commuter. It was a lovely fit for me, with a nice, stretched-out position, but it was much closer to my road set up than my daily donkey. Accordingly, it felt really fast, straightaway. Admittedly, I'd just ridden right across London 24kms from N16, against the prevailing SW breeze, so with the wind at my back I was right on top of the gear. I whizzed along the horrible Upper Richmond Road, where cyclists are pinned like flies against the edge of the highway by huge SUVs being driven by crazy public school types. The other immediate impression was how lovely and tight and stiff the alloy frame felt. It might not have pencil thin stays and all the other aesthetic accountrements of high end carbon, but then no street machine should be trying to do that. It's strong, it's lean enough, and it goes better than well.

I enjoyed every minute on the Touche, and I particularly liked the special mudguard eyelets, but have reservations about the alloy guards fitted, so-called salmon guards. At first glance they are very rigid, durable, well fitted and kinda cool. Yes, they are all those things. But they go clonk on big holes, and to prove the point I rode the bike as fast as I could up a cobbled mews I've discovered in N3. Clonkety clonk. Initially this was actually just the front top guard kissing the Conti Gatorskin tyre, but having adjusted it, I think the noise was from the actual mudguard fittings. This is a small detail and it might have been fixable - these things usually are. As for tyre choice, Gatorskins are well known to me. They have a limp, feelsome quality which is great but not the greatest. In my view they fall between race tyres and real commuter tyres. They're not good enough to withstand London glass, especially in the wet. I'd instead fit Schwalbe Duranos, or maybe a combo of Durano front, and Durano Plus at the back.

Summary thoughts: there is nothing to compare with the thrum of the tightened chain on a fixie sounding through the frame, with none of the drivetrain noises from a derailleur and a chain that can hit the chainstay on bit potholes. It's a magical way of riding the town and the Pearson is among the best I've ridden.

Richard Lofthouse

Richard Lofthouse