This seatpost by DaBomb comes in the following seat tube diameters: 27.2, 30.0, 31.4, 31.6. I was forced into buying the 30.0mm size because of a recent Viper frame I bought. Nevertheless, I was very suprised by the simplicity of the clamp mechanism. If you swap saddles regularly or get easily peeved doing so, this is the one post for you. [Read more →]
First a brief word about 650c wheels – it’s no secret that I’m a big fan of 650c wheels. They fit smaller riders better. There is no toe overlap. And of course they can be built lighter and stronger than 700c wheels (or else with fewer spokes). So it’s disappointing to see Mavic, Shimano, Campagnolo, Easton, Reynolds, LEW racing, X-Treme, among others, all abandon the idea of 650c. Even zipp has all but halted their 650c rim production (only applying their latest technologies to their 700c lineup). So if you’re looking to buy a factory-built 650c wheelset, that basically leaves Spinergy, HED, Nimble and Corima (full carbon rims only). Zipp make two models, while American Classic and Rolf each make just one model of 650c wheel. Otherwise you will need to go the handbuilt route – or else there’s ebay. It seems the worst thing going for 650c wheels at the moment is lack of choice… Kudos to Spinergy for continuing to manufacture 650c rims and complete wheels.
Spinergy also supply their factory-built wheelsets in both 700 and 650c and with either shimano or campagnolo compatible freehub bodies. I doubt that the latter combination exceeds 0.1% of the market. Even so, they cater for it. [Read more →]
Just when life seems too oppressing to continue, along comes this nifty little invention. In 15 years of perusing bike products, this is the first bike rack I’ve ever seen that made me want to voluntarily attach it to my own personal bike; most of them all look like identical taiwanese copies with equal ‘functions’ (normally you’d have to pay me to mount one). One look at the Pletscher ORION however makes me want to mount a set of slicks, slap on a rigid fork & embrace the life of a commuter! [Read more →]
I’ve tried and tested many seatposts over the years in all price ranges. The only purpose of a seatpost is provide support for the saddle & to offer simple adjustments of the saddle (vertical & horizontal seat position plus saddle angle). Some seatposts costing hundreds of dollars do not even meet these simple requirements! [Read more →]
This budget model fork can be had for as little as €120, so it is not intended for downhill or competition use. The model we tested boasted 120mm of travel, although at the softest setting, only about half of that was effectively utilised (even after a substantial break-in period). [Read more →]
Most motor vehicle accidents involving cyclists happen at dawn and dusk. The reason for this is that there are more commuters out there on the road at these times. At the same time, the road visibility is far less than during the day, so the chances of being hit are relatively high. I’ve taken the opportunity to gather together some very interesting products aimed at increasing your safety while riding at night.
I recently bought a set of braided stainless steel brake lines made by Goodridge. I’m using Hayes Nine HFX HD disc brakes with the more recent G2 calipers. Unfortunately, one part was missing from the new kit that I bought online from chain reaction cycles in the UK, so I had to go down to the local bike shop (Gofis Bici) and get a suitable replacement part (luckily they had the Goodridge spare parts kit handy). [Read more →]
For me, the ITM forged Lite Luxe stem is as close to perfection as I could want. It’s forged and therefore has smooth lines. It has reversible graphics, meaning you can flip the stem around to get a higher reach. It uses a face plate with a 4 bolt clamp; the socket head bolts require a 4mm allen key. By using M5 bolts with 4mm heads instead of 5mm sockets, the tendency to over-torque the stem at the handlebar clamp is reduced. The M6 bolts at the steerer clamp use 5mm heads to prevent slippage on carbon fibre fork steerer tubes. These two bolts oppose each other to help distribute the clamping force & they don’t stick out and cut your knees like some other stems. It’s available in the most common sizes: 90, 100, 110, 120 and 130mm lengths with either a 26.0mm clamp or a 31.6mm clamp for oversized handlebars. The finish of the stem is also very durable. It’s available from as little as 25 or ‚¬30.
It’s nice to be able to use the same bar/stem/seatpost combination. Cyclists consider consistency a nice bonus, especially when they are Italian bicycle parts. Therefore, I’ve reviewed the bar and stem together as siblings. Unfortunately I can’t say too many good things about the ITM Lite Luxe wing shape bar. It’s a budget-priced semi-ergonomic aluminium alloy bar. Or rather, it’s a standard bar with flat tops. As most of you know, in recent years, the number of handlebars available on the market has exploded. Try a few and you realise that the shape of your handlebars becomes a very personal choice, just like saddles. Unlike saddles however, your hands can’t really adjust to a handlebar like your arse can adjust to a saddle. If a handlebar doesn’t feel right to begin with, it never will.
With that in mind, in comparison to several other bars that I have tried, the flat tops do not extend far enough outward where the bar curves forward towards the brake shift-levers. I really like to use flat tops, I think they’re a natural step in the evolution (or refinement) of a traditional round bar. Flat tops encourage you to place your hands on them. But because the bars are essentially round where I normally place my hands, I found myself wanting to hold the bar quite a bit closer to the centre position than what I am accustomed to. The flats extend almost all the way up to the stem – but I’ve never seen a cyclist hold their bars with their hands adjacent to the stem (you can’t get enough control of the bike). The double grooves underneath are pretty shallow also. If you’re still keen on buying this bar, remember that the width of ITM bars are measured outside to outside. I’d reccomend the FSA wing pro handlebar instead, which is in a similar price point.
This 9 inch beast is the biggest and baddest disc brake rotor out there at the moment. Yes of course it’s «grabbier» than smaller 7″ and 8″ rotors, but it does provide stronger braking no matter what brakes you’re using. It’s a simple upgrade although technically not compatible with many of today’s suspension forks. It only offers a marginal brake power improvement over standard 8″ front discs used for downhill mountainbiking.
The main benefit of the Hayes V9 rotor is the increased cooling capacity. [Read more →]
Bikes these days are all about fashion. The fashion changes just like anything else. Just look at sloping geometry. Carbon seat stays. Ergo bars. Compact cranks. White carbon and painted white carbon. Integrated seatposts. If you want to be a fashion victim, go with the flow. Mrazek aim to be different. To not follow fashion. I think they’ve achieved that.
Mrazek is art. And like art, whether it pleases you or not is very subjective. It’s your choice, and there are thousands of other «cookie-cutter» frames to choose from.  Some people say that they ride as well as they look. On the other hand, if you don’t like the way they look, you might not like the way they ride. And vice versa. [Read more →]
For the most part, shimano bicycle components work extremely well. Even so, after working on my fleet of road rental bikes for the past year or more I have come to despise certain maintenance tasks. What follows is a list of all the little niggly things which I dislike about shimano road componentry (5600/Ultegra level). Neither is this a simple comparison between shimano, campagnolo and sram:
One of the major tasks here at www.Tenerife-Training.net is swapping pedals. There are more pedal systems out there than CO2 molecules at the moment, and I know people are finding it all a bit too confusing. Judging by the perplexed customer responses as they inevitably bend down and spin another hitherto unknown pedal on its axis and say «they’re the wrong pedals!», by far the biggest misunderstanding lies with the Shimano Pedalling Dynamics (SPD) system. [Read more →]
This a great tasting refreshing drink commonly available here in Spain. It’s almost identical in flavour to Staminade, another refreshing (Australian) drink that has been popular since the 1970’s.
It’s really good because it’s not only cheap, but it actually quenches your thirst, unlike those hyper-sweetened gatorade & powerade sports drinks available on the market. It is sold «flat», i.e. it’s not a bubbly drink and contains no CO2 gases. For the first time in history, the citrus orange flavour tastes superior to the lemon version. Although this product is not specifically aimed at athletes, it should be…
Anyway, I started drinking this a few weeks ago whenever I feel dehydrated; on a particularly hot day, I recall that one of my local relatives here in Tenerife ordered it in a traditional spanish bar. Judging purely by the label, it’s not something I would have ordered, especially knowing what some drinks taste like. Next time you’re at a roadside bar on a hot day in Tenerife, you might like to try it!
These days we have an infatuation with bike components when we should be more concerned about accurate bike fit. If you want the best peformance, you need the right-sized parts; you simply can’t win on a bike that’s the wrong size. But what if one side of your body is different to the other? If your body is not 100% symmetrical, then your bike shouldn’t be either…
After nearly a year in development, at last it’s here:
 
 VÉRTEBRÆ CERAMIC GEAR LINES: US$140
Available for MTBs & road bikes
(Shimano / SRAM or Campagnolo).
Housing colours available:
CLEAR/X-RAY WHITE GREY BLACK
BLUE PURPLE RED ORANGE YELLOW GREEN
(please specify when ordering)
  
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True “Compressionless†housing: High Purity Alumina is FIVE TO SIX TIMES STIFFER than aluminium alloys, and even 50 to 80 % stiffer than steel. OK, so theoretically it compresses a bit. But you won’t notice it. Honest. It is also FIVE TO SIX TIMES STRONGER in compression than both aluminium & steel.
Effortless Gear Changes:Less force required to actuate gears + brakes, creating a “light-action†feel at the levers.
Less Maintenance: Due to the compressionless housing and protective Spinal Wrap, derailleurs are not only easier to fine tune during setup (they’ll work over a wider range of cable tension), but that they also don’t need to be re-adjusted as often as other systems.
Totally corrosion free!! High Purity Alumina is an extremely inert material. No coatings to peel off, no chipping and spalling paint. Zero corrosion for life!
Lightweight: The density of alumina is only 3.65 to 3.85 g/cm3. This results in outstanding stiffness-to-weight and strength-weight ratios. Total weight of vértebræ ceramic housing is only 46 to 52 g/m.
Enhanced Flexibility: The special segmented design is more flexible compared to traditional bowden cables; this design allows shorter cable routing using tighter-radius bends, resulting in less overall weight. Despite this, there is also reduced friction between the cable and liner, since the outer segments do not squash the inner cables like conventional housing.
Low Friction: Ceramic materials have an inherently lower frction than metals. Combined with our stainless steel cables and teflon liner, this results in considerably less friction and practically zero wear.
Extremely hard & durable: In fact, most engineering ceramics are so hard, they normally require different testing procedures to metals as it is not practical to make the same economical test specimens! In comparison with all metals, hardness is best described as “off the chart!â€.
I’ve been using the speedplay X-series pedals for a full decade now, essentially since I started road biking. After reading about speedplay in the infamous bikepro catalogue, I browsed their website & I was already sold on them after reading about their special advantageous features (dual sided entry plus free float). They instantly received many rave reviews and I was 100% convinced to get a set.
My first road bike, a Shogun Ultegra, came equipped with some nasty pedals which were essentially a cheap copy of the look system. Although I can’t remember the name, they were a veritable deathtraps. Clipping into these particular pedals was never truly an autonomic experience. They were top heavy, weighted so that they remained in the awkward upside-down position! When starting off from a set of traffic lights, you had to fumble about and flip the pedal over with the tip of your shoe. Wobbling around in dense traffic, looking down at my shoes instead of the road, I soon realised that was an accident waiting to happen…
I began with the X2 pedals, which I had to special-order from Clarence St. cyclery, as no one in Australia stocked them in 1997 / 1998. I then moved up to the X1 titanium version, and have since bought the cheaper X5 version which work equally as well. Possibly their best feature for a road pedal is the double engaging mechanism. They feel intuitive to use. «Just stomp down and go» was the expression people were throwing about.
Les has just purchased 6 new aero framesets from Leader bikes for the new road rental bicycle fleet here in Tenerife. These bikes are available in a wide range of sizes from a tiny 46cm (50cm centre-top) all the way through to a whopping 61cm (50cm centre-top)! While they look like a time trial frame, they have traditional road racing bicycle geometry.
We’re very proud to partner with Leader bikes in 2008.
I’ve been a cyclist for 15 years now and used a lot of different tyre levers that are available on the market. Several years ago, I encountered these rather strange yellow tyre levers embossed with the single word «michelin». Of course, they’re not really embossed, they’re injection moulded, but that’s beside the point.
They’re manufactured from some sort of special polymeric material. I have a doctorate in Materials Science and I still don’t know what it is. It looks like polypropylene or nylon, but I don’t have an infrared spectrometer handy, so I couldn’t tell you exactly what they’re made from. Let’s just say that they’re way better-than-average in quality.
You get three of them, but most of the time you can get away with using only two. The other good thing is that they are just the right size and shape. The end that hooks onto the rim sidewall fits all rims perfectly. The other end will never bruise your hand. They’re not too narrow, otherwise they’d break; neither are they too wide, else they wouldn’t work as well. They’re also just the right length. Not too long, so you can’t more leverage than necessary -but not too short either! They are also flat and don’t take up any more space than needed.
Some French product engineer deserves a medal for this under-appreciated little bike tool. They’re like the «chris king of tyre levers» and for the price (€3), this is possibly the best thing you can buy for any bicycle rider as a christmas present!
Every time I go to decathlon, I buy a set. They’re the only tire levers I can whole-heartedly reccommend to cyclists. They’re the ones that I supply in every tool kit with all the road and MTBs I rent out here in Tenerife. No one has ever complained. They never break, although I hope Michelin never stops making them.
On the other hand, the worst ones you can get are the thin steel ones available from Kmart, and other supermarkets; they’d rather dent your aluminium rim (or crack your latest carbon fibre wheelset) sooner than flip that kevlar tyre bead over the edge.
There have been many funky pedal designs in the last decade, and the original «eggbeaters» by Crank Bros often draw some strange looks. What could be better than 4 sided entry and terrific mud clearance? Nothing, except whenever I ride with standard eggbeater pedals, IÂ feel like I am riding on the tiny little spindles, nothing more. They just don’t feel right because they don’t provide any solid pedalling platform at all.
Enter the Candy:
Although they look like they word work better than the original eggbeater, the platflorm can interfere with the souls of some shoes. I was forced to use a plastic spacer to raise the cleat height. On several occasions I felt the cleat twisting dramatically on the soul of the shoe, and I was unable to release my feet from the pedals. Despite over-tightening the two cleat bolts, the problem persisted. Since this is a potentially dangerous situation, I now refrain from using these pedals. Perhaps they work with other shoes, but not with mine (Decathlon rockrider 8). Other people I lent them to complained about the very same problem with different shoes. With the addition of the platform they are also no longer quadruple sided, but double sided.
Swapping pedals on our rental bikes is the most common chore here at www.Tenerife-Training.net. In my business, I have tried and tested many types of pedals on the market.
I’ve tried a number of road & MTB pedals over the years, and I was pretty impressed with these, considering the price was only ‚¬40 per pair. Although they are heavy, they have the most positive retention of any pedal I have tried. You hear a single, well-defined «snap» upon each entry and exit. The feeling of security they provide is second to none, and I noticed it from the outset. The only down side is that this model doesn’t come with an adjustable float, so your knees are locked into place the entire time.
The zone where the cleat engages with the pedal is larger than with SPD pedals, so you never have to fumble about trying to find the entry point. Although I haven’t tested these in muddy conditions, they release whenever the need arises. All in all, I’d reccomend these to anyone who wants a fixed-float MTB pedal.
