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Over the past few of years, French tire maker Hutchinson has been pushing its way into the North American mountain bike market. I’ve run a couple of different sets of Hutchinson tires that were designed for different applications and, to be honest, I wasn’t particularly impressed with them. For the type of terrain that I deal with regularly (rocky, rooty, slippery), the tires didn’t fare too well over the long term.
My first encounter with Hutchinsons was on my cross country bike. Spec’d with Spider Lights, the bike rolled fairly well in hard pack and dry conditions but, as soon as the weather turned, the tires were less than capable. I found the wheels slipped and slid all over the trail in a way that other tires didn’t and I quickly swapped them out.
The second go-around with Hutchinsons was on my all mountain bike. It came equipped with the Hutchinson Octopus (2.3″). While these tires performed better than their cross country cousins in less than optimal conditions, I sent them to an early retirement when a few of the lugs on the tires were ripped off during regular riding.
With all of that being written, the main point of this entry is to send you towards a review of the Hutchinson Bulldog by Bike Magaziine. The reviewer had better luck than I with his tires’ durability and overall performance. At the same time, it’s recognized that no tire is perfect, and the Bulldogs have some of the same failings as its product line siblings.
Source: Bike Magazine
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I’ll state up front that I’m a fan of the Giant Bicycles lineup, especially the bikes in the Maestro range. Every Maestro-equipped bike that I’ve seen pedals amazingly well and the company, at least in Canada, provides excellent customer support.
NSMB.com has an excellent preview of the 2006 Giant bike lineup. The writeup has some great photos of each of the Maestro-equipped bikes and provides some decent technical info.
Related entries:
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Banshee Bikes made a splash during its first year on the freeride scene, offering a big hit bike with a 10 year warranty (and one of the biggest head tubes that I’ve ever seen). Along with solid local marketing, the Banshee Scream did a great job giving the company access to a hard-core niche market in southwestern British Columbia. Aside from a few blips, Banshee continued to build its product line in the next few years, and now has a good range of bikes for riders interested in a bunch of different disciplines.
Banshee has posted up the latest version of its website, featuring all of the bikes in the company’s 2006 product lineup. I’m going to focus on a couple of particular models in this writeup but keep in mind that Banshee introduced a bunch of other bikes for 2006, including a full range of all mountain bikes.
The Pyre is Banshee’s entry into the burgeoning all mountain category and looks pretty interesting. The RAD-tubed frame uses a new linkage — the Virtual 4-Bar (V4B) — that is designed to limit negative feedback while pedalling. Ready to take a 6″ travel single crown fork and featuring great geometry for “do-everything riders” the Pyre looks set to make some inroads into the non-freeride marketplace.
For 2006, the Chapparal receives an overhaul including a longer stroke shock and increased travel looks set to make further inroads into the freeride scene. Lighter than it’s full-on freeride sibling (the Scream) is a good choice for riders who make regular visits to lift-acessed places like the Whistler Bike Park, but are still willing to ride places where shuttling isn’t an option. Personally, I wouldn’t have chosen a Fox 40 to demonstrate the versatility of the bike — a 36 would have been a more fitting option — but the rest of the spec on the fully-built bike looks good to go.
Note: Banshee Bikes is marketed under the brand “Mythic” in the United Kingdom because of trademark issues. Mythic is distributed by Freeborn.
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Back on the day when I purchased my first mountain bike, steel was the only real way to go. Unfortunately for me, the steel mountain bikes of the lates 80s were heavy, relatively expensive, and fully rigid (don’t get me started). When aluminum bikes started to make serious inroads into the marketplace a few years later, I remember making some rather unpleasant comments to my non-steel colleagues. Little did I know that, ten years later, I’d be the proud owner of a number of aluminum frames, and they’re doing quite well for me.
Reynolds Cycles has been around for over 100 years but, in the mid-1990s, the company introduced their proprietary 853 tubing, which has remained the primo choice for manufacturers looking to put together a quality steel frameset for a good part of the next decade. At Interbike, one of the writers for Bike Magazine noticed that Independent Fabrication was quietly promoting a bike using Reynolds 953 tubing.
I’m betting that most frames using 953 tubing will remain on the road but for mountain bikers looking for a custom or high-end frameset, there likely will be a number of smaller manufacturers who are quick on the uptake. Most of us will continue on our merry way without 953-based framesets, but it’s good to see that options remain for the “Steel is Real” crowd.
Sources: Bike Magazine | Reynolds Cycles
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I’m not really comfortable writing that RockShox redid their fork lineup for 2006, but there certainly was some serious product refining going on over the past year. Popular forks like the Pike and the Reba received new model numbers and minor casting changes to address “issues” that some riders had with the product’s lowers. Refinements to the venerable Boxxer lineup has the fork set to challenge for a podium at every race.
With the “higher end” forks taken care of for the short term (there are snapshots of a new, long travel single crown floating around), RockShox focused a bunch of attention on their “lower end” product. The results — the Tora and the Recon — replace the Pilot and the Duke, respectively.
BikeMagic wrote up a preliminary “review” of the 2006 RockShox Tora 318, an entry level fork that will likely crop up on bikes in the $500 to $700 range (this is an estimate so don’t hold me to that number). I must say that the Tora has a whole bunch of features crammed into its value-priced body; the fork includes U-Turn travel adjust (85mm - 130mm), an external compression dial, Motion Control damping, and a rebound adjustment. The fork does weigh a bit more than its higher-priced colleagues, but that’s to be expected given that the Tora 318 U-Turn retails for about $270 usd.
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Headsets are funny things. On one hand, they either work or they don’t and it’s tough to think of much to write about them beyond that. On the other, there are a couple of headset manufacturers whose product is head and shoulders above their competition — Chris King being one — and the quality of these components make purchasing decisions for cyclists with discerning tastes easy.
Bike Magazine reviewer Vernon Felton wrote up a review on a well-loved Ritchey WCS Logic headset and, from the sounds of it, Ritchey is pining for a spot for the WCS Logic alongside the Chris King. Affordably-priced for a component with its pedigree, utilizing quality bearings, and carrying a lifetime warranty on the bearings, the Ritchey Logic WCS headset looks to be a solid buy for those of you who can’t eat the cost on a King.
Source: Bike Magazine
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As many of you know, I crashed a couple of weeks ago. I’m still dealing with some of the side effects of the bail — my neck is sore, one of my shoulders has a low-grade separation, and my confidence has taken a bit of a beating — but I’m able to perform regular tasks without a tonne of discomfort.
So what does that mean for this site? For one, and most importantly to most of you, I’m going to move slowly back into the swing of things with this site. In addition to providing my regular batch of updates, I have a couple of products that have been reviewed and are waiting for a full-scale writeup.
Also, I have a couple of paths to follow that could lead to interesting things for this website. I’ll unveil this master plan in layers, so I must remind everyone out there that patience is a virtue. Thanks to everyone who offered their words of support — they helped me through an uncomfortable week.
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