Specialized Tricross Sport Cyclocross Bike

Specialized Tricross Sport Cyclocross Bike

Bike Setup:

Swapped the 32c tires for 25c. Threw on some lights and ditched the reflectors. Added a bell to ward off pedestrians. All the little things that make the experience commuting in the city a little better. Otherwise, everything else that is stock is still on.

Summary:
My first bike since I was 15 (I am 27 now). I am 6’7″, 235 lbs riding on a 61 cm frame. It’s a good overall ride. This bike is my primary source for commuting, but it is also fun to take out on the trails and the open road. The stock tires are great overall and provide ample traction but are slow and tiresome to work with. Recommend throwing on smaller slicks if you plan on mainly riding on good pavement.

The bike is at a decent weight of 24lbs and is not the fastest thing to ride, but does maneuver well. I ride all the time in DC where there are plenty of hills galor. Sometimes I find myself out pacing local traffic, especially when flying downhill on Independence Avenue. Also took it for a couple of spins through Rock Creek Park where there were plenty of slopes and fast/tight turns. Steering is very good but not extremely agile (perhaps this is do to my size as well as the size of the bike itself).

The bottom line is that this is a solid bike but doesn’t really stand out of the pack. It’s great for getting around down and hitting the open road.

Strengths:
Versatile enough to take on trails with lousy pavement and do some light off road riding. Handeling is nothing special but definitely not a weakness.

Weaknesses:
Shifting is adequate, though I find myself having to sometimes readjusting because the rear derailer can get a bit chatty after awhile, even after a good cleaning and greasing. None the less, the drivetrain keeps up well enough to navigate your way in and out of traffic. This won’t be an issue in any other scenario.
The breaks are ok but not all that spectacular either.

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Kurt Kinetic Road Machine- My Exhaustive Review!

The Kurt Kinetic Road Machine shines because of magnetic coupling, medical-grade silicone, and an unconditional guarantee. There’s a good reason the Road Machine’s the official trainer of the USA Cycling Team.

When Pam from Kurt Kinetic offered to send out a Kurt Kinetic Road Machine for review, I thought it was a great idea…for several reasons.

• I’ve been pounding out mile after mile on my original Kurt Kinetic Fluid trainer for five winters now, and it’s never let me down.
• In my obsession to search for the best bike trainers to recommend to my readers, the consensus has been that the Kurt Kinetic Road Machine is at the top of the heap.
• But for some time now, I’ve been wondering how much different the Road Machine is from my ‘old’ trainer.

Well, it turns out that Kurt Kinetic hit on a winner with the original design… and except for a new ‘hair color’, the two units are nearly identical. Wisely, Kurt Kinetic decided to not fix something that isn’t broken.

There are now several new fancy Kurt Kinetic horses in the stable (namely, the Rock and Roll), but the Kurt Kinetic Road Machine is like a cowboy’s trusted quarter horse – not too flashy, but SOLID and impervious to breakdowns.

I do have an idea or two to make it even better, but I’ll get to that later…

My Scott CR1 put on his best wheels to meet the Road Machine.

1) Magnetic Coupling Makes The Kurt Kinetic Road Machine Stand Out In The Crowd

Cut away view of Resistance Unit

If you’re new to the bike trainer world you may not have heard of Kurt Kinetic’s unique magnetic coupling design. I’ll get you up to speed.

While fluid trainers are recognized as being at the top of the trainer food chain, they do suffer from a fatal flaw. They start to develop leaks when they shouldn’t, and have to be put out to pasture.

I’m just thankful that such a fate doesn’t await us older men when we start leaking inappropriately at social events. My kids assure me that I’m safe…at least for now.

Kurt Kinetic forged its place in the bike trainer world with a patent that eliminated the need for O-Rings (which predictably fail). In the Road Machine, the chamber containing the silicone fluid is completely sealed, and the roller which your bike tire is causing to spin is ‘virtually’ connected to the impeller by a magnetic coupler.

This is best understood by watching the video below.

Don’t get this confused with a mag trainer, which uses magnetic resistance to provide the workload.

The Kurt Kinetic system uses powerful magnets to couple the external roller assembly with the sealed impellers. That means that  there’s no shaft penetrating the inner sanctum of the fluid.

Check out the video later in this post for an excellent cut-away of the two chambers.

2) How Strong Are The Magnets In The Kurt Kinetic Road Machine?

There were times in the past when I’d accelerate on my Kurt Kinetic fluid trainer and feel some slippage. I wondered if the slippage was occurring inside the trainer; in the inner sanctum of the magnetic coupling.

It turns out it wasn’t the ‘innards’ that were failing. Here’s how I found out- I practically wore out my rear tire within the span of a couple of indoor rides. Like a meat head, I hadn’t put enough tension between the roller and my tire. All of that slippage was tearing the tire up.

Since those early ill-fated rides, I’ve discovered that the idea of me having enough power in my legs to disrupt the bond between the coupling magnets was wishful thinking. Kurt Kinetic’s testing demonstrated that the magnetic bond withstood an electric motor’s ability to suddenly accelerate the trainer from 0 to 50 mph without any slippage.

My abilities are somewhat less than that.

On a similar note, this trainer provides up to 3000 watts of resistance. As a point of reference, elite road cyclists may produce up to 1700 watts as an instantaneous maximum at the end of a road race. Instantaneous means for the first few seconds of their ‘jump’ as they accelerate.

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E*thirteen downhill crankset review

The downhill cranks from e*thirteen were designed and developed by their co-company, The Hive, and are constructed from 7050 aluminium which is forged then machined to make these sleek looking beauties. 

At their heart sits a heat treated chromoly spindle in either 113 or 123mm lengths depending on your bottom bracket shell width. It’s this 30mm spindle that helps keep things stiff, along with the polygon interface where the non-driveside crank arm attaches.
Fitting the e*thirteens is a fairly straightforward process but you’ll need to read the instructions to get things set up perfectly.They do actually provide the tool for the bottom bracket cup installation and that serves as a reminder that this is a unique bit of kit – well worth bearing in mind on any trips away.

Since installing our 175mm samples we did actually notice a difference in stiffness over the previous crank we were running. These are solid. They’ve really taken a beating so far and both bottom bracket and cranks are still holding up well.
Considering our sample weighed in at around 810g (without bottom bracket) and being on par price-wise with other top end units, these are certainly worth a look should you be in the market for a new downhill crankset.

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Maxxis Advantage 2.1in mountain bike tyre review

We’ve Put the Advantage tyres through the grinder for a few months now and they’ve thoroughly proved their worth. We tested the 2.1in foldable dual compound LUST but there are also 2.25in and 2.4in versions. The Advantage will suit aggressive cross-country/trail riders. 

They corner really well thanks to the big side knobs, which inspire fast riding, and they love getting loose in loamy flat turns. The LUST sidewalls are light and very tough and we’ve had no problems deflecting rocks or losing air running them at low pressures. The central diagonal tread makes for brilliant climbing and braking on everything except really wet rocky or rooty sections.The wide lug spacing also sheds most mud types quickly and they roll superbly. They work best as a front option paired with a slicker rear in slightly drier conditions.

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Giant Anthem X1 review

Steep-angled 100mm-travel full-suspension bikes are normally great for tearing up between the tapes, but Giant’s Anthem X continues to tear up the rule book. Tweaks to the frame for 2011 make it feel like it spent the whole winter down the gym building muscle exactly where it makes the most difference.

The result is a totally ripped all-terrain athlete that’s equally inspirational in terms of ego boosting efficiency and scorching speed on startline or singletrack alike. Add benchmark trail kit and you’ve got an extremely versatile, extreme velocity machine whatever you aim it at. If you're more about GPS and maps than jumping gaps, and more likely to stick a race number on than shin pads, this bike is the outstanding option.

Ride & handling: Delivers an intense and inspirational ride whatever the terrain

It’s not the solidly sorted spec that continues to make the Anthem such a fast favourite; it’s the insatiably rapid and involving ride attitude. Looking at the super-steep head angle and relatively long stem you’d think this bike is something of a dinosaur, but its default setting of devastating speed makes this an alligator of a bike that’s still got no natural predators.

The snap-reaction steering takes some getting used to, with a tendency to twist the front tyre underneath you if you’re pulling too much front brake at low speeds. The longer stem is needed to keep it manageable as you get into a big ring spin and the trail edges start to blur.

The 25lb all-up weight makes acceleration and altitude gain addictively easy too. Even if a recovery pootle rather than predatory pursuit was on the agenda at the start of your ride it won’t last long. You’ll soon find yourself snicking up through the gears, building speed in each one, then the next until you’re skimming down the singletrack and sprinting up climbs rather than dropping gears and dawdling. 

Decent side knobs and that planted cornering precision of the longer stem means there’s no question of backing off in corners either. The new bike adds very noticeable extra fork and frame stiffness for even more accurate feedback and G force fighting tenacity. We’ve lost count of the number of riders who’ve raved about how hard you can push an Anthem through turns or how many riders they’ve scalped by diving underneath them as they’ve slid out of a greasy corner.

Don’t underestimate the amount of control the Anthem wrings out of 4in of suspension movement either. While the colour-coded blue finish was the source of some love/hate debate, nobody complained about the performance of the Fox F11 fork. Up the climbs the next-to-grip lockout lever means you can stomp the pedals round as hard as you can without worrying about bounce and then open the fork for rougher stuff without even taking a thumb off the bars. 

While the FIT cartridge makes it firm over small stuff (run the tyres tubeless if you want ultimate smoothness) its ability to swallow serious hits without coughing up control is outstanding for a race fork. A through-axle and tapered steerer means there’s no slur or deviation in the steering either opening up more cornering, off camber and overtaking opportunities than most forks.

The back end is similarly sorted, with the option to run a buoyant open setting of three different levels of ProPedal low-speed compression damping giving as firm or as fluid a ride as you want. Ground clearance is an occasional issue but the Maestro suspension lets you keep the power on whatever is happening under your wheels, and traction is wonderfully consistent.

Rear end stiffness and damping composure mean no ricochet or need to ‘collect’ control even after substantial drops or sequential hits. The Maxxis CrossMark tyres are a lot tougher than most race rubber too, making rock rips less of a worry when you’re going off piste. While it’s no all-mountain cockpit setup, the little bit of lift and extra leverage from the mid-width riser compared to the traditional racer flat bar makes getting the front wheel off the ground or correcting a slide a lot easier than normal.

Frame & equipment: Newly pumped-up chassis plus sorted parts spec

The big changes for 2011 are an ‘Over Drive’ tapered head tube, ‘Mega Drive’ oversized down tube and press-fit ‘Power Drive’ bottom bracket. These mean significant steering and pedalling stiffness gains up front. A two-piece linkage replaces the previous bolted linkage while a post-style rear brake mount saves bracket weight at the far end of the swingarm. So while the actual frame is no lighter it’s a significantly stiffer proposition that builds a lighter overall bike.

In terms of kit, Giant have kept it simple. Shimano’s triple-ring XT might not be the lightest groupset – particularly compared to SRAM’s 2x10 setups – but it’s reliable and much longer lasting. The longevity theme continues with the tough XT wheels, which also add tubeless tyre running capability. Maxxis CrossMark tyres still surprise us with their combination of rolling speed and grip in all but the sloppiest conditions. 

The Fox fork and shock combo is another control enhancing benchmark and Giant’s own-brand low-riser bar is a decent width for adding steering authority. The Giant stem and seatpost are good too, while Fizik’s long, firm second generation Tundra 2 is a great saddle for mileage-hardened hindquarters.

Source:bikeradar.com 

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