belacqua

Hi everyone, I'm thinking about upgrading my drop-bar conversion, a 1985 Cimarron. I'd like to buy a new (135mm) 26" wheelset for it, rim brake only of course. Does anyone have a recommendation for a good, affordable new wheelset?

I also would like recommendations for good 26" tires for road use, with occasional gravel.

Here is a picture of the bike as it stood before I got the frame ready to send to the powdercoater. I'm switching to standard (Deda) drop bars and Technomic stem and probably putting Velo Orange saddle on there.

noglider 

What's wrong with the wheels you have?

HTupolev

What kind of budget are you looking at for the wheels? And are you interested in tubeless?

What's your "gravel" like? If you're mostly on pavement and you're not doing a lot of muddy-ish riding, I'd recommend probably just going with super-wide road tires. Something like a 26x1.75 Pasela, or on the high-end, a Naches Pass or Rat Trap Pass.

Hudson308 

Yeah, what Tom said. Your current wheels may just need a repack and some time on the truing stand.
Tire choice for road-going MTBs with 26" wheels is easy for me... Kenda Kiniption. I know alot of people dismiss that brand for any serious riding, but the Kiniptions get raves from every MTB owner I put them on for road duty/paved trails. They're designed to allow tire pressures from 30 to 80lbs., depending on intended use. They roll nice and grip nice, even on gravel.

Mr. 66

bcpriess

I ride my dropbar 26er on mixed surfaces (singletrack, sand, pavement, gravel, crushed limestone), and the Specialized Fast Trak 26 x 2.0 is fantastic. It has continuously overlapping center treads that make it roll fast on pavement, and it has good bite on corners and deals with loose stuff well. If you were looking for something more pavement oriented, you could try some Continental Double Fighter III 26 x 1.9's. They appear to be pretty comparable to an X'Plor MSO gravel tire, aside from requiring tubes. Pretty sure I'm going to give a pair of those a shot and see how they compare to the Fast Traks. I've also heard good things about Michelin Country Rocks, which might be more suited to the mix of road/gravel you describe.

fietsbob

My Trekking bike came with Continental Travel Contact tires,

an adventure touring tire, for paved and unpaved* roads..

they would be good..

*ie gravel (but maybe not gravel racing)..





...

toavii

HTupolev

Unless the bicycle is going to be very heavily loaded, I'd recommend against high-pressure tires like that. They need to make the tires beefier in order to withstand the higher pressures, and consequentially, the beefier casings lose more energy from deformation as the tire rolls. So the higher-pressure tires need to be pumped to higher pressures in order to roll as well as a good low-pressure tire. And they still have a hard time matching the performance of a lower-pressure tire, because the vibrations transmitted by a stiff-riding tire waste energy in and of themselves.

People often think that pressures like 40PSI sound really low to be road riding on, but wide tires need much less PSI than narrow tires do in order to be fully-inflated and well-behaved.

ThermionicScott 

+1. Are the hubs shot? Rims bent? Spokes tired and breaking?

Or if you want to upgrade, what are your criteria, @belacqua? Seems like a lot of folks end up spending money on a sideways move because they didn't really think out how they could improve what they had, they just wanted to buy something new.

wrk101

I "upgraded" my 1988 Cimarron by picking up a set of used 2002 era XT wheels at the co-op. As far as tires, I tend to go with 1.5 inch wide tires, several brands out there.

Had I not found those wheels cheap, I would have left well enough alone. Also picked up a similar era XT crankset, also at the co-op. I think this XT crankset is on the ugly side.


Ignore the saddle, I have this set up to achieve low weight (under 25 pounds). I didn't worry about saddle angle, as I took it off after this picture was taken. Also has weight weenie pedals. I prefer heavier bear traps. I think this version has 1.25 wide tires on it, a Nashbar branded tire.

FWIW: Thats the original Nitto stem that came with the bike. I think the seat post is original too, not sure (Suntour XC).



1988 Cimarron Weight Weenie by wrk101, on Flickr

Hudson308 

That all sounds very logical, HT. All I can speak to is the experience that I and a few friends have had. I've run my Kiniptions at 60-80lbs. on paved trails, and rolling resistance feels much less than it did with the original 40lb. knobbies. I run them at 50lbs. on gravel roads with great results as well. The friend with the Klein shakes his head and tells me he can't understand why his Kiniption'ed Klein is faster (on his tracking app) than his Specialized Roubaix while riding around the lakes. We both may simply be experiencing the "buzz" from an 80lb. tire on pavement, but it is a 2.3" (58mm) buzz. All I can say is they're reasonably priced and a blast to ride on.

HTupolev

I'm not surprised they'd roll better than whatever your MTB knobbies were. I'm talking about compared with suppler road tires.

belacqua

This is a profound question but the short answer is nothing.

belacqua

The wheels are Weinmann rims, Parallax hubs (Mid 90s Shimano, iirc) with (I think) an 8sp cassette. They are probably fine if I repack. Maybe I should listen to you and @noglider.

What happened is I decided to powdercoat the frame after seeing @Colnago Mixte's PDG project. The rust is pretty extensive under the paint.

Then I began to desire new, shiny wheels and tires.

belacqua

I haven't actually sent it into the powdercoater yet. Maybe I should put the whole thing up in the rafters for a while and ride my other bikes.

noglider 

I don't mean to imply there's no reason to change wheels. What I'm getting at: what do you want from a new pair of wheels? Smoother running (if, perhaps, yours are out of round or make horrible grinding sounds)? Or a lighter, nimbler ride? Or better looks? There's no reason you shouldn't want these things, but you haven't said what your goal is. I don't imagine you just want to change wheels for the sake of it pursuing some nebulous concept of "better."

belacqua

It really is a deep question though. I mean, I started thinking about the powdercoating and got excited about making the bike clean, smooth, and shiny. What it comes down to--what's "wrong" with the existing wheelset--is that it does not encourage obsessive, anticipatory thinking about how perfect the new build is going to be.

The existing wheels work fine--I just checked the bearings and the front needs some adjustment--but I think they'd be smooth if I repacked them. And yet, if I imagine building the bike back up with the existing wheels, all the enthusiasm goes out of me. I have plenty of bikes. Now that the Cimarron is down to the bare frame, if I put it away, I'd have more room for the others in the garage, and more time for them in the rotation.

Hudson308 

We understand.... believe me. Just trying to save you some cabbage.

noglider 

I'm trying to get you to think. You start with one bike and want to end up with another bike in the end, through the process of changes. But the changes should have purposes. This is like an essay. Say what you're going to say (introduction), then say it (body), then say what you said (conclusion).

The Golden Boy 

I don't know- there's nothing particularly wrong with that.

I have had a whole lot of fun swapping stuff around- seeing what I like, seeing how my opinions change based on what I use... It's interesting to see how my opinions have changed about bike stuff over the course of the past 10 years. I started out with a pretty cool bike, it needed some work- but it was a great starting point. If I had never been chasing that ever elusive concept of "better" I would not have the bikes I have now, nor would I have had the awesome ride I've had in experiencing this stuff. (Literally and figuratively)

@belacqua Just judging from the way you approached your 620 project- I'd think you'd be asking about lighter wheels- the Cimarron isn't a lightweight bike, and old ATB stuff is generally overbuilt for abuse, and generally not particularly light. The wheelset is where you save a lot on weight. I have a set of Suntour XC sealed bearing hubs on mystery rims- they're not exactly light- but then again, I'm resigned to having a 30# bike.

noglider 

OK, fair point, @The Golden Boy. Tinkering for the sake of it definitely has a value. Still, there should be parameters, otherwise, @belacqua would put on crappier wheels to see what effect they have. So what would be better? Lighter? Stronger? Expensiver? Shinier? Wider? Taller? Colorfuler?

The Golden Boy 

noglider 

I'm not recommending it. I'm saying if you embrace the idea of tinkering for the sake of learning, crappier is just as valid, because it gives you an appreciation for what you started with. @belacqua hasn't even told us what wheels we have, so what wheels are better? That's like asking you who weighs more than I do without telling you how much I weigh. Should I make you guess?

belacqua

You might be interested (or scandalized...) to see how the 620 has turned out. I'm really pleased with this 42x16 FG, dynamo front setup.





@noglider, I've never mastered the essay form, but I will try to prose out my "thinking" here. The basic problem is that not too much thinking is involved. It's a much blunter emotional process that seems to have its roots in the adolescent pastime of obsessing over bike or toy catalogs. Psychologically it resembles rumination ("the focused attention on the symptoms of one's distress, and on its possible causes and consequences, as opposed to its solutions") except that attention is focused on one's desires and their possible gratification.

As @The Golden Boy recalls, earlier I was deliberating over whether or not to remove my 1984 620's rear rack. Though it might have seemed like my goal was weight reduction, actually the motivation was to reduce a much less quantifiable factor that I might call "aesthetic drag," an effect produced by any component or configuration that fails to work right -- or, just as importantly, look right -- within the limits and aspirations of a given build. The mainstay of my C&V obsession, riding a bike with minimal aesthetic drag combines the pleasure of outdoor exercise with the pleasure of using a top-quality tool or playing a fine instrument. This is why it's hard for me to say whether the hobby is fundamentally a form of working out or a form of shopping. Like the primal hunt, it combines the thrill of the chase with the pleasure of the feast.

In the case of the 620, minimizing aesthetic drag meant running fenders, even though I already have a designated rain bike and it's not especially rainy here. For me, fenders' main job is to keep the drivetrain and bottom bracket as clean and smooth as possible, though all this stuff gets dirty anyway, so their function might be primarily symbolic or theoretical. I ended up removing and carefully storing the rack, because without it, the bike felt faster and more efficient. I bought a new freewheel to extend the gearing range, but found that it made a clicking or knocking noise under load in the middle cogs. Unable to fix it, I bought another freewheel--I think they were both Shimano Tourney. The second freewheel was nearly perfect, but after a few rides I realized that it had a much quieter version of the first freewheel's problem. At this point I hatched a counterintuitive plan to run this classic touring bike as a fixed-gear. This killed two birds with one stone--it solved the problem of all drivetrain noise, AND it allowed me to remove the clamp-on shifter mounts, achieving a "clean" downtube. I hadn't really thought of the shifters as "holding me back," so this second gain was like an aesthetic tailwind.

The 620 offers several lessons in aestheto-dynamics, but I will address the most valuable one here, in conclusion. Shortly after I brought the bike home--extremely pleased because of the purchase price--I noticed a very slight dent in the top tube. How slight? To see it, you had to line it up just so in glancing light. And yet this discovery seemed to undo all my joy and render the bike virtually unrideable. Disconsolately, I went through the motions of cleaning it up, repacking the bearings, replacing the chain. It turned out to work pretty good. Over the course of a few days, I decided that I could live with the dent. Now, it doesn't bother me at all--in fact, it functions more like a beauty mark than a ding. And this goes to show that when the bike can't be adjusted to conform to our taste, then our taste can be adjusted to conform with the bike. Nice to have what one wants--but nicer to want what one has.