Originally Posted by
RiddleOfSteel
Dude, Jacco, those Somas look GREAT!! Perfect color complementing with the tan walls. What PSI/bar did you set them at? I'm presently at about 40-42 PSI in front and 45 PSI in the rear, with these 16.7mm internal width rims. No flats yet, though I'll need more miles. Since the EX stands for Extra Wear, the tread portion is thicker (over the SL / Super Light). Saving nearly 1.5 kg in rotational mass should do wonders for ride quality and response compared to the battleships you had on there before! Excited to see how you like them as you ride them more, and I definitely saved the whole-bike side view photo you took.
Thanks! I was a bit hesitant because I really liked the look of the cream Schwalbe's but it turned out really well.
I'm running them at 3 bar (
~43 psi) but we'll see if I like them higher or lower once I put some distance into them. The weight savings should be closer to 630 grams (
1.39 lbs) overall but the wheels feel noticably lighter. Plenty of grip on gravel and grass too so far, more info on that next week.
Yesterday I took the front fender off to see how much room I had to work with and to figure out where the rubbing was coming from. Turns out it was the tiny screws of the Honjo fender XXX but it does comfirm my hunch that the giant bolts Velo Orange offers with these fenders would have never worked.
Still, I wanted to see if I could run fenders on here and then I remembered that I had lots of rivets lying around. So a quick pass with a round file to open up the hole a little bit and the rivets popped into place and the fender was fitted again. Perfect.
There is probably just 1.5mm (
¹/₁₆ inch) between the fender and the tyre at that point but let's hope that never becomes a problem.
And if it does... it looks like I could take a large round file to the underside of the fork crown and gain another 1-2mm of room.
