'Tis the season of mud and mellow slidefullness...

[Simon Brooke]

Had an excellent afternoon out reconnoitering a new route through from home to Dalbeattie. Huge fun.
I'm trying to develop a 'blue' level route which we could waymark... Found a track which I didn't
know about which joined up two sections I'd already reccied, and even had a ford (which I was too
chicken to ride through until I'd had a very careful look...)

But muddy! Amazing downhills where you just had to keep the power on and hope there wasn't
anything under the surface which was going to stop the bike suddenly, with the tyres squirming all
over the place and seeming happier to go sideways than forwards. It was the first time I'd used
disk brakes in seriously muddy conditions and I was well impressed with them, but rather less
impressed with my tyres!

--
[email protected] (Simon Brooke) http://www.jasmine.org.uk/~simon/

X-no-archive: No, I'm not *that* naive.

 

[Cupra]

Simon Brooke wrote:
>> Had an excellent afternoon out reconnoitering a new route through from home to Dalbeattie. Huge
>> fun. I'm trying to develop a 'blue' level route which we could waymark... Found a track which I
>> didn't know about which joined up two sections I'd already reccied, and even had a ford (which I
>> was too chicken to ride through until I'd had a very careful look...)
>>
>> But muddy! Amazing downhills where you just had to keep the power on and hope there wasn't
>> anything under the surface which was going to stop the bike suddenly, with the tyres squirming
>> all over the place and seeming happier to go sideways than forwards. It was the first time I'd
>> used disk brakes in seriously muddy conditions and I was well impressed with them, but rather
>> less impressed with my tyres!
>>
>> --
>> [email protected] (Simon Brooke) http://www.jasmine.org.uk/~simon/
>>
>> X-no-archive: No, I'm not *that* naive.

Sounds like you had fun! What tyres have you got - I'm still using a pair of 3 year old Continental
Traction Pro's which have excellent lateral grip (essential for the wet tree roots we get down in
the Chilterns!).

--
cupra (remove nospam please to mail)

 

[Simon Brooke]

" cupra" <[email protected]> writes:

> Simon Brooke wrote:
> >> Had an excellent afternoon out reconnoitering a new route through from home to Dalbeattie. Huge
> >> fun. I'm trying to develop a 'blue' level route which we could waymark... Found a track which I
> >> didn't know about which joined up two sections I'd already reccied, and even had a ford (which
> >> I was too chicken to ride through until I'd had a very careful look...)
> >>
> >> But muddy! Amazing downhills where you just had to keep the power on and hope there wasn't
> >> anything under the surface which was going to stop the bike suddenly, with the tyres squirming
> >> all over the place and seeming happier to go sideways than forwards. It was the first time I'd
> >> used disk brakes in seriously muddy conditions and I was well impressed with them, but rather
> >> less impressed with my tyres!
>
> Sounds like you had fun! What tyres have you got - I'm still using a pair of 3 year old
> Continental Traction Pro's which have excellent lateral grip (essential for the wet tree roots we
> get down in the Chilterns!).

My new bike came with Hutchinson Scorpion Air Lights. I'm not impressed with them - they seem to
wear quite rapidly on granite gravel and bare rock surfaces of which we have a lot around here, and
this weekend showed that they were pretty poor in soft mud. Presumably they're good for something -
they aren't cheap tyres.

I remember going through a lot of experimenting before coming up with the set up I have on my old
hill bike - cheap, no name wire bead tyres but with a 26x2.35 with a strong transverse tread on the
back and 26x1.75 with a much more linear tread on the front.

Frankly I find it hard to understand the practice of putting identical tyres on the front and back
wheels of a hill bike since the two wheels are doing such radically different jobs.

--
[email protected] (Simon Brooke) http://www.jasmine.org.uk/~simon/

;; in faecibus sapiens rheum propagabit

 

[Cupra]

Simon Brooke wrote:
>> " cupra" <[email protected]> writes:
>>
>>> Simon Brooke wrote:
>>>>> Had an excellent afternoon out reconnoitering a new route through from home to Dalbeattie.
>>>>> Huge fun. I'm trying to develop a 'blue' level route which we could waymark... Found a track
>>>>> which I didn't know about which joined up two sections I'd already reccied, and even had a
>>>>> ford (which I was too chicken to ride through until I'd had a very careful look...)
>>>>>
>>>>> But muddy! Amazing downhills where you just had to keep the power on and hope there wasn't
>>>>> anything under the surface which was going to stop the bike suddenly, with the tyres squirming
>>>>> all over the place and seeming happier to go sideways than forwards. It was the first time I'd
>>>>> used disk brakes in seriously muddy conditions and I was well impressed with them, but rather
>>>>> less impressed with my tyres!
>>>
>>> Sounds like you had fun! What tyres have you got - I'm still using a pair of 3 year old
>>> Continental Traction Pro's which have excellent lateral grip (essential for the wet tree roots
>>> we get down in the Chilterns!).
>>
>> My new bike came with Hutchinson Scorpion Air Lights. I'm not impressed with them - they seem to
>> wear quite rapidly on granite gravel and bare rock surfaces of which we have a lot around here,
>> and this weekend showed that they were pretty poor in soft mud. Presumably they're good for
>> something - they aren't cheap tyres.
>>
>> I remember going through a lot of experimenting before coming up with the set up I have on my old
>> hill bike - cheap, no name wire bead tyres but with a 26x2.35 with a strong transverse tread on
>> the back and 26x1.75 with a much more linear tread on the front.
>>
>> Frankly I find it hard to understand the practice of putting identical tyres on the front and
>> back wheels of a hill bike since the two wheels are doing such radically different jobs.
>>

The Continentals are direction dependant, rotation direction is different on front and rear, so they
do have slightly different properties - they seem to do okay for me in deep mud. I can't remember
the tyres I used before this, but they had a similar setup to the ones you describe. The
continentals don't do a worse job - they seem to be just as good.

I'm fortunate that wear isn't much of an issue when you are riding on mud and chalk, but we do have
the additional problem of leaf mould and chalky mud forming a glue that picks up more leaves and
forms a huge 'plug' at the top of the forks (don't know if that makes sense, but it acts as a huge
brake block!), so we have to choose a tyre that allows mud to fling off easily.

I still prefer biking in autumn/winter though!

--
cupra (remove nospam please to mail)