Man cannot survive by bread alone – he needs Fresh Goods too. The weekend is almost here and the snow is thawing, up here at least. We’re looking forward to some plain old winter filth riding and getting trenchfoot rather than falling over on ice and losing digits to frostbite. Anyway, lets get on with it, so you lot can have a good look at the shiny goods we’ve received for test and either list after them or be mean.
Also to do with the snow but nothing to do with mountain bikes, we have some Fireproof glass. Matt’s woodburning stove had a couple of cracked panes and the soot it was pumping out was turning anyone that came into the house into a grim looking coal miner. Matt’s cat has got consumption now. We should point out this isn’t the first time Matt’s ordered the glass – the smaller pane in the picture came a few weeks ago. It was precisely 2.54 times too small. Something to do with inches and millimetres…
See – they’re exactly the same size, kind of…
Silliness over, the charming Andy from MMA Sports has sent us a care package of 661 clothing. Benji is modelling the new 661 Comp gloves. They’ve got a stretchy backing with plenty of neoprene and TPR padding and a synthetic leather palm. We’re liking the colour and design a lot.
Price: £19.99
From: MMA Sports
“It’s cold outside” sang Welsh crooner Tom Jones, but we’re alright. These are the 661 Transition winter gloves and they’re amongst the most welcome kit to drop through the door recently, thanks to a cold stopping neoprene and Spandura backing, fleece lining and micro fibre suede palm. They’re keenly priced and aren’t massively bulky – no point having warm fingers if you can’t feel anything with them. They’ve already been whisked away and put to use…
Price: £29.99
From: MMA Sports
Varying the amount of insulation and heading more towards the summer climate, the 661 Raji Inspiral glove has a super thin palm for maximum feel and a ventilated mesh backing to keep you cool – not that it’s been a problem lately. We like our summer riding gloves to be nice and thin so we’re keen to see how these fair – maybe we can go somewhere warm to test them – please?
Price: £26.99
From: MMA Sports
Extremely thin palm gets silicon grips on the braking fingers and reinforcement over the joints. Cuff is a pull on type so they’re nicely minimalistic.
Coloured like a nu-rave zebra, the 666 401 gloves are designed as an all rounder, with a durable, perforated Clarino synthetic leather palm, stretchy backing and pull on design. We like the doubled up thumb/forefinger junction and the Terry snot wipe too…
Price: £24.99
From: MMA Sports
Of all the soft covered knee pads out there, the 661 Kyle Strait pads are amongst our favourites. They’re now available in this more understated matte black finish if you don’t like big, obvious logos on the front. They still use the soft foam padding with a harder insert and neoprene cover. Purple detailing is rather nice too…
Price: £44.99
From: MMA Sports
Custom trick bits are always welcome at Singletrack and we like these tidy little Alpkit stem caps. They’ve got some cute designs and a range of colours from gold to pink.
Price: £7.50
From: Alpkit
Kicks can be good for you – you may have seen us pour one of these into work ex boy Dom John HERE, but these are the new Mule Kicks Cherry Bomb energy gels. It’s got all the antioxidant power of cherry juice and will keep you going due to the high and medium GI sugars from the brown rice syrup and natural Agave Nectar. It’s also got Himalayan crystal salt in there to stop you cramping up…
Price: £1.50 per gel
From: Extra UK
We’ve also got a box of the new Mule Kicks Lemon Zinger gels. As well as being all lemony (Sicilian lemons no less) and full of energy, they contain a load of guarana for a caffeine kick. We tried one out on hardened caffeine-ista Chipps and his face went all funny.
Price: £1.50 per gel
From: Extra UK
What’s this little fella? It’s a Bionicon C/guide chain guide! It’ll fit all Bionicons and some other brands and it mounts to your chainstay using the gear cable and guide. You chain then runs through the black plastic bit and it’ll keep tension in your chain – a bit like a DCD if anyone remembers them. It’ll work with triple rings up front too…
Price: £30ish
From: Bionicon
Rubber, rubber, we love rubber! These are the Maxxis Medusa 2.1 Kevlar tyres (in a 60a, compound fans) and they’re going to be ideal for all the slop on the ground once everything is back to normal. They’re like a faster rolling and shorter spiked version of the awesome Wet Scream downhill tyre, but they have a normal thickness sidewall with a 120 TPI casing and won’t make you cry when you pedal them uphill like the former do.
Price: £32.99
From: MMA Sports
We’ve also got some big wheeler tyres. These are Maxxis Ignitor 29 EXO tyres in a 2.1 width. The open tread pattern of the Ignitor should clear mud well and dig down to find grip. The most interesting bit about these tyres is the new EXO sidewall. It’s thinner and lighter than a UST or Dual Ply sidewall but has much improved puncture and cut resistance than the regular Single Ply tyre. A hard riding 29er tyre – is this the future?
Price: £39.99
From: MMA Sports
That EXO sidewall up close…
Our Jon almost soiled himself with excitement when these turned up. It’s the classic hard riding, fast rolling and beautifully square edged Maxxis Minion DHF, now with 3C compound and EXO sidewall. We’ve got some nicely chunky 2.5″ tyres for burly riding and they have 60TPI casing with an Aramid bead. The EXO sidewall should mean they get almost all of the puncture and pinch resistance of the DH casing but in something that weighs much, much less. 3C stands for triple compound and the tyres have a base layer of rubber over which the soft shoulders and harder centre tread sit. Hopefully they’ll pull off the magic trick of being puncture proof, predictable, grippy and fast rolling. We don’t ask for much…
Price: £52.99
From: MMA Sports
More wagon wheeler rubber with the Maxxis Ardent 29 2.25 tyre. The Ardent has been popular as a fast rolling tyre that retains decent braking and cornering ability – a trail centre biased do-it-all tyre if you will. Using a 60a compound, these folding versions will be going into a test of agressive 29er rubber coming to the site soon…
Price: £32.99
From: MMA Sports
Right, we’ll stop obsessing about rubber now and tell you about the Topeak Aero Wedge saddle pack. It’s got a quick release fitting and enough space to chuck in an inner tube and some tools if you don’t fancy taking a full pack or you’re off racing. It’s made from a tough 1,200 Dernier polyester fabric with Teflon coating, so it should be quite happy being covered in grit, crap and water all day.
Price: £10.99
From: Extra UK
More lights to brighten the eternal darkness we seem to be living in. The Exposure Six Pack kicks out a blinding 1,800 Lumens and will make you incredibly unpopular with anyone in front of you on night rides. As the name suggests there are six Cree XPG LEDS and the battery is built in, so there’s no faffing with cables. Thanks to the Smart Port at the back you can extend the battery life or add in accessories such as a rear light. Battery life is claimed at 3 hours on full but there is a 10 hour and 24 hour setting as well as a flash.
Price: £450
From: Exposure Lights
These cute little lights are the Exposure Flare and Flash commuter lights. They both weigh bugger all at around 46g and are small enough to chuck in a rucksack in case you get caught out but powerful enough to keep you safe on the road. They use one Cree LED each and a cunning stretchy rubber mount so you can fit them to bars or post.
Price: £40 each, £75 for pair, £85 for pair with recharge pack
From: Exposure Lights
Rocking all over the world – with two chords. Chipps dug out this old bit of film is from an Bike Show at the NEC many years past when the mighty Quo played. Jon is glad he’s too young for that sort of thing.
What’s this? Why, it’s officially the best bike mag out there, you fool! Singletrack Issue 62 has landed and it’s so good it’ll make you put down what you’re doing, even if it involves a supermodel and a bottle of baby oil. There’s even a free calendar with it. You’ve left a bit late to subscribe but don’t worry – if you buy a new Sub In A Box we can put Issue 62 in with it for few quid extra. More details soon…
Price: £priceless (although a sub for 8 print issues is a very reasonable £27.99)
From: Singletrack Shop
The endless train of time is speeding toward the horizon of infinity and if you can tear yourself away from the ennui that though brings then you’ll probably need to have a think about how best to control that time. If you’re not one of the lucky people that got a Singletrack 2011 calender then you might need a Fort William World Cup calendar instead. It’s celebrating 10 years of the Fort Bill downhill and it’s packed with lovely pictures as well as a convenient date layout using the Gregorian system.
Price: £9.50
From: Rare
Woo! Life Cycles has landed in our shop. You can get your greasy paws on this eagerly anticipated bike-film-thats-not-just-about-biking film right now if you haven’t been lucky enough to see it at one of the many showings up and down the country. Singletrack will be present at this evening’s Leeds screening with lots of prizes and goodies to raffle – more details on that HERE.
Price: £20 for subscribers, £24.99 to everyone else
From: Singletrack Shop
Bearded bad man Ed Oxley Has been given a selection of foot warmers, toe warmers and hand warmers which are designed for snow sports users. They are ideal for mountain bikers who are planning to be out in the freeze for a while. They activate on contact with the air and contain no harmful chemicals. They work really well from testing so far and keep kicking out the heat for 5 hours +.
From: www.anatom.co.uk
Price: £TBA
This e.thirteen LG1+ chain device is for fitting on ISCG-O5 mounts as found on a multitude of modern bikes and will adjust to fit chainring sizes from 32 to 36 teeth.
Price: £129
From: Silverfish
This is the e.thirteen Guide Ring, available in a multitude of funky colours and single tooth increments from 32 to 40 and ideal for singlespeed or chain device set up.
Price: £34.95
From: Silverfish
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“The open tread pattern of the Ignitor should clear mud well and dig down to find grip” Maybe they should, but they don’t.
The Medusas are gooduns for winter clag tho, second only to Trailrakers imo.
Freshgoodstastic.
Either those knee pads are really small and double up as stem caps…. or someone has put the wrong picky up? ;o)
might have to save my pennies and go for some of those 2.5 DHFs, bit pricey but should be worth it.
£40 for the 3C DHFs is expensive for Maxxis, but cheap compared to Conti or Schwalbe.
Didn;t they used to be about £60?
Agree about Medusa but it is not so good on rocks and tree roots.. I swapped to Ignitor. It is the trail trail center tyre of choice at 2.35 for me 🙂 If they did a LUST 2.35 Advanatge I would run that.
on the rear with ye oldie 2.35 High roller up front.
I hate those stupid bits of bike jewellery. Ridiculous decadent gewgaws pandering to people’s egos
…just bought an Alpkit cap.
Easily swayed then Steve? 😉
How coincidental. I was telling someone about the time I saw the Quo a couple of days ago.
the little bionicon dcd style chain thingy, it’s a clever little widget, ’til you have seat-stay routed gear cable…
I can confirm that although very good, the Maxxis EXO sidewalls are definitely not pinch puncture proof. I was using them at the ST Weekender earlier this year and they resulted in a big hissy fit due to a rear pinch in the DH
How does that Bionicon chain guide work then?
a bit like a DCD I’d guess
eeee, remember them?
http://www.bionicon.com/images/stories/bionicon/News/0910_ebn2_cguide.jpg
Cherry bomb:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMDn6V7ZLhE&feature=related
Ta for the pic Ben.
Hmmm, DCD was cheaper, more robust and easier to fit (bit heavier though) not sure 20 years of technological advance has worked there.
Those EXO tyres are pretty damned good I have to say.. got a pair on my bike and dropped a kilo of weight over my dual ply tyres. I’ve had a couple of pinch flats since, but not a deal breaker. I wish they did them in the 2.35 version as well – here’s hoping.
(i’m referring to the 2.5 minions by the way..)
My fingers are crossed for a 2.25 Advantage with EXO. That would be a mint tyre
£106 for a pair of tyres is quite a lot. I’m sure there’s a shed load of research in there but that’s too much for me.
I agree with the first fella about the tyres. I took my ignitors off as they were sliding all over the place. I use medusas instead and they seem to do the job. The ignitors will be back when the dust is.
I’ll have to give those 3C EXO minions a try. They work out roughly the same as the Der kiasers I have been using but should come out at half the weight.
For those worried about the price, I can tell you 3C’s last a lot lot long than 42a’s and provide more grip were you need it than 60a’s so they are the best of both worlds, you just have to stump up the cash.
Is the guide ring available in 10 speed yet?