Stuff reviews
In the spirit of keeping the post count up here are reviews of some products I’ve been using. What follows is some completely unscientific findings and opinions of some product that has been ridden since November.
Surly “New” hubs.
I’ve got five of these beauties going right now. I’ve spent the most time on the road hubs. I laced some Mavic Open Pros to silver Surlys in early November. The rear is a bolt on 135mm spaced mtn hub of the free/free variety. The front is the standard bolt on version. The hubs are called “adjustable cartridge bearing” hubs. Basically you can adjust them as you would any other cup and cone hub, but there are nice cartridge bearings inside - no loose ball bearings. Out of the box they spun super smoothly. I was kind of surprised by how nice they felt. I’ve had to adjust the front hub once since I started riding them, it was a fairly easy operation and it’s been great since. The hubs are reasonably priced, and my best guess is that the weight is in line with similarly priced hubs. Go with the QR hub and it’ll be a bit lighter.
The wheels mentioned above reside on my salvaged Fuji SS road bike. I’ve logged about 25 hours on the wheels and aside from the play issue in the front hub they’ve been great. They still spin smooth even after being exposed to copius amounts of sand and salt. I also built a new front wheel for my Homegrown using the QR variety of the Surly New Hub. It’s pretty darn light and has seen around 5 or 6 rides. No issues to report as of yet. The bolt on Disc version of these hubs is still going strong on the Karate Monkey.
Info for you weight watchers:
Front bolt on = 244g / .54 lbs
Rear bolt on = 345g / .76 lbs
Disc rear = 362g / .80 lbs
Disc front QR = 288g / .63 lbs
Non disc front QR = less than 288g
Race Face Evolve XC outboard bearings.
These came with the matching crankset on my Surly Karate Monkey and things seemed great at first. After a short while I started to notice some bearing drag, and then it all went downhill from there. Upon removing the cranks and inspecting the bearings it was clear they were toast. This led to a trip to Prov. Bicycle for some new bearings. I also had the BB shell faced, this was not done prior to the original installation at First Flight Bikes. According to the Race Face literature the frame must be faced or bearing wear will be accelerated. What’s interesting to note though is that RF instructs that plastic washers be used between the shell and the cups. The tolerances listed are very tight, so all things considered I’m willing to roll with it being an issue of a non-faced BB shell. We’ll see how the nicer Deus cups and bearings hold up over time. So far I’ve got one ride on the new cups and bearings.
Ritchey Rizer SC (severe conditions) Bar.
Aside from the poor spelling these bars are a seriously great deal. Nice rise (1.5 on my two mtbs), width and sweep. Not the lightest bar on the planet but for $23 I’ll suck it up and get a little stronger. I had one on my Chameleon, and a new one showed up on the Karate Monkey when I bought it. I liked it so much that I installed one on the Homegrown. If you want to try a new rise/sweep/width and can spare the cash give one a whirl. With a name like “severe conditions” you know it means business. Bikeman just informed me it weighs 465g, or 1.03 lbs.
That’s all I can think of for now. Remember that this is just my opinion, and if I were you I wouldn’t listen anything I said anyway.