TheRadioGuyUK
Dirt Disciple
Sticking purely to bicycle specific parts :-
Fibrax Surestopper Black/Red v-brake shoes & Continental Sprinter 26x22 tyres.
Actually the specific Continent Sprinters I used are not in production anymore, mine were barely semi-treaded slicks but the Sprinters still made are about as close as you’ll get.
Run with some oddball high pressure tubes I bought as a consignment as unknown grade items at 50p per tube (Schrader valved but rated for 200psi, personally tested on a safe test in workshop to nearly 600 psi failure that literally destroyed the tube catastrophic fashion) and before application I added a few latex/waxed paperx2/latex layers too as sacrificial anti punctures protection - with a gel filler between paper layers, as a puncture indicator and a sort of deformable barrier. Two in use, two spares carried, enough hung up spares in my garage for workshop, since it was more sane to prep the tubes as a batch.
These were literally perfect for my very fast road use (put it this way, they withstood the high side of 70MPH without damage), off-road use where my DH runs often exceeded 60 MPH at the fastest stage, pretty much excelled at every scenario including Ice/Snow conditions that enduro/Mx quads and motorcycles struggled with.
Traction was leech like in the wet and ice, yet were low friction enough to feel like extreme road specific slicks. What this indicates is a very good footprint that easily adequate but low friction enough for fast use without being energy sapping friction heat sinks, ie what you ideally want in a mixed extreme road and trail tyres.
I ran those, with my modded coated tubes at 200 psi, never suffered a puncture and a year of hard use barely impacted the rubber - given the Univega Alpina 500 SE ‘PRB1’ radio bike (phase 1, phase 2 was with different wheel/tyre/brake setup) was in no way a lightweight that had to handle my weight, all the ancillary power and radio gear, and a rucksack that was close to carrying my body weight in lock gear, spares, my portable reference manuals collection and a Zenith MiniSport laptop.
They were worth the cost. Run with tube pressures of 200 psi, in the winter, at the stage where roads are fully iced (and even black iced), you could literally ride like it was just a wet road, you could literally hear the ice cracking under the hard tyres.
Brake Shoes (used in the phase 1 v-braked bike) were Fibrax SureStopper items F&R. Bought as a mixed consignment of the Red & Black types.
Reds were the softer compound that, in use, had a less harsh feel, felt more progressive when used in anger or moderately. The two sets I used (one of each grade) each were barely worn one year on.
The Black compound was the ultimate stopper compound (actually the hardest compound shoes then on the market). Literal heart stopper hard stoppers. When you used them in anger, you were gorilla gripping the bars, and I say that without any ‘semblance of a joke.
But the biggest factor was they hardly got hot or even noticeably warm unless you really hammered them frequently and in anger. So notably, fading was notable by it’s virtual absence.
As a pairing, either compound paired with the Conti tyres was confidence inspiring to say the least. If you employed proper ‘perceive/assess/act’ due caution as you should employ with any vehicle, you could hammer the bicycle well over the urban road speed limit (UK referenced), and still stop on a literal ten pence coin sized point/patch and hit zero velocity that easily and safely using rolling freewheel deceleration and finally manual cadence braking.
Cadence braking was more critical necessary (essentially not optional) with the black compound especially with a heavily loaded ride.
But either grade, paired with the mentioned tyres, were about as good as it could be, could easily out-stop any single disc F or F&R equipped MTB, all bar the ultra light comp road bikes - and god only knows, once you got comfortable with the combination - it was only a real near miss (or die trying) situation that was the cause of bowel movement.
A semi-visualised way to picture the effect - where when you hard accelerated to the point where your vision tunnels, braking hard generated a similar vision effect. Notable on a full rigid setup.
Ultimately an all weather setup pairing where the breaking point to what conditions you could endure and safely ride was your tolerance for riding in those conditions.
Total cost, noting I bought in bulk to ensure a ready supply of spares (which I mostly sold on at cost to other riders I knew) was about 30 UKP for a complete set back in the 90’s. So essentially, if you replaced everything each year, 30 UKP for a fully refreshed boots and brake setup - not that it was even close to necessary.
Miscellaneous consumables:- GT85 spray can (two carried), a small pots of some industrial grade machine lubricant grease (various compounds) and a pot of Teflon grease. Rolls of duct type (various kinds) and plumber’s PTFE tape.
Bucking conversion I used those miscellaneous consumable for many Maintenance jobs roadside/trailside, mostly getting others out of trouble. All the compounds etc, cycling purists would scoff at, crap on and best case disregard, but they were all lubricant greases I had used on machinery and associated transmission/transfer/gearbox assemblies that were much more lubricant sensitive, that routinely ran at much higher rpm than any bicycle component and had far higher factors of sustained and extreme startup load loads.
Overkill, but given I never had a bearing or pivot or cable failure resulting from corrosion or excess friction or misalignment due to bad wear of bushes, bolts, studs or bearings - maybe not even remotely overkill to chose to use high quality consumables you know work. I used to obtain the lubricant grease though work (bought from the firm, not swiped) and GT85 from high street outlets (a regular can of GT85 was a year worth of use).
In fact, consumables wise, I only ever bought bicycle market tyres and brake shoes and later chains. Everything else consumables wise was not the sh*t (be it overpriced sh*tty or just plain sh*t) peddled by most cycle shops. Most of what I did use were cheaper one the whole than cycle shops sh*t, so that alone plus typical pot/can sizes at what people paid for shop sh*t made retail quantity items comparable in value to those tiddly paint pots we used as kids for painting model kits (which we didn’t know were horrendous cases of exploitative pricing). Chains, not that I used and wore out many, were actually industrial stuff that happened to be the right pitch and link sizes used on index geared industrial grade transfer/transmission usage that used cogs profiled such they were a gnats eyelash close to the profiles used on 21/24 speed gear sets. I only used shop grade chains when I moved to Campag rings and ratios for 27 speed upgrade as I couldn’t find suitable industrial substitutes.
It helps to have toes and fingers in industrial circles, or a least good friends in those circles.
Fibrax Surestopper Black/Red v-brake shoes & Continental Sprinter 26x22 tyres.
Actually the specific Continent Sprinters I used are not in production anymore, mine were barely semi-treaded slicks but the Sprinters still made are about as close as you’ll get.
Run with some oddball high pressure tubes I bought as a consignment as unknown grade items at 50p per tube (Schrader valved but rated for 200psi, personally tested on a safe test in workshop to nearly 600 psi failure that literally destroyed the tube catastrophic fashion) and before application I added a few latex/waxed paperx2/latex layers too as sacrificial anti punctures protection - with a gel filler between paper layers, as a puncture indicator and a sort of deformable barrier. Two in use, two spares carried, enough hung up spares in my garage for workshop, since it was more sane to prep the tubes as a batch.
These were literally perfect for my very fast road use (put it this way, they withstood the high side of 70MPH without damage), off-road use where my DH runs often exceeded 60 MPH at the fastest stage, pretty much excelled at every scenario including Ice/Snow conditions that enduro/Mx quads and motorcycles struggled with.
Traction was leech like in the wet and ice, yet were low friction enough to feel like extreme road specific slicks. What this indicates is a very good footprint that easily adequate but low friction enough for fast use without being energy sapping friction heat sinks, ie what you ideally want in a mixed extreme road and trail tyres.
I ran those, with my modded coated tubes at 200 psi, never suffered a puncture and a year of hard use barely impacted the rubber - given the Univega Alpina 500 SE ‘PRB1’ radio bike (phase 1, phase 2 was with different wheel/tyre/brake setup) was in no way a lightweight that had to handle my weight, all the ancillary power and radio gear, and a rucksack that was close to carrying my body weight in lock gear, spares, my portable reference manuals collection and a Zenith MiniSport laptop.
They were worth the cost. Run with tube pressures of 200 psi, in the winter, at the stage where roads are fully iced (and even black iced), you could literally ride like it was just a wet road, you could literally hear the ice cracking under the hard tyres.
Brake Shoes (used in the phase 1 v-braked bike) were Fibrax SureStopper items F&R. Bought as a mixed consignment of the Red & Black types.
Reds were the softer compound that, in use, had a less harsh feel, felt more progressive when used in anger or moderately. The two sets I used (one of each grade) each were barely worn one year on.
The Black compound was the ultimate stopper compound (actually the hardest compound shoes then on the market). Literal heart stopper hard stoppers. When you used them in anger, you were gorilla gripping the bars, and I say that without any ‘semblance of a joke.
But the biggest factor was they hardly got hot or even noticeably warm unless you really hammered them frequently and in anger. So notably, fading was notable by it’s virtual absence.
As a pairing, either compound paired with the Conti tyres was confidence inspiring to say the least. If you employed proper ‘perceive/assess/act’ due caution as you should employ with any vehicle, you could hammer the bicycle well over the urban road speed limit (UK referenced), and still stop on a literal ten pence coin sized point/patch and hit zero velocity that easily and safely using rolling freewheel deceleration and finally manual cadence braking.
Cadence braking was more critical necessary (essentially not optional) with the black compound especially with a heavily loaded ride.
But either grade, paired with the mentioned tyres, were about as good as it could be, could easily out-stop any single disc F or F&R equipped MTB, all bar the ultra light comp road bikes - and god only knows, once you got comfortable with the combination - it was only a real near miss (or die trying) situation that was the cause of bowel movement.
A semi-visualised way to picture the effect - where when you hard accelerated to the point where your vision tunnels, braking hard generated a similar vision effect. Notable on a full rigid setup.
Ultimately an all weather setup pairing where the breaking point to what conditions you could endure and safely ride was your tolerance for riding in those conditions.
Total cost, noting I bought in bulk to ensure a ready supply of spares (which I mostly sold on at cost to other riders I knew) was about 30 UKP for a complete set back in the 90’s. So essentially, if you replaced everything each year, 30 UKP for a fully refreshed boots and brake setup - not that it was even close to necessary.
Miscellaneous consumables:- GT85 spray can (two carried), a small pots of some industrial grade machine lubricant grease (various compounds) and a pot of Teflon grease. Rolls of duct type (various kinds) and plumber’s PTFE tape.
Bucking conversion I used those miscellaneous consumable for many Maintenance jobs roadside/trailside, mostly getting others out of trouble. All the compounds etc, cycling purists would scoff at, crap on and best case disregard, but they were all lubricant greases I had used on machinery and associated transmission/transfer/gearbox assemblies that were much more lubricant sensitive, that routinely ran at much higher rpm than any bicycle component and had far higher factors of sustained and extreme startup load loads.
Overkill, but given I never had a bearing or pivot or cable failure resulting from corrosion or excess friction or misalignment due to bad wear of bushes, bolts, studs or bearings - maybe not even remotely overkill to chose to use high quality consumables you know work. I used to obtain the lubricant grease though work (bought from the firm, not swiped) and GT85 from high street outlets (a regular can of GT85 was a year worth of use).
In fact, consumables wise, I only ever bought bicycle market tyres and brake shoes and later chains. Everything else consumables wise was not the sh*t (be it overpriced sh*tty or just plain sh*t) peddled by most cycle shops. Most of what I did use were cheaper one the whole than cycle shops sh*t, so that alone plus typical pot/can sizes at what people paid for shop sh*t made retail quantity items comparable in value to those tiddly paint pots we used as kids for painting model kits (which we didn’t know were horrendous cases of exploitative pricing). Chains, not that I used and wore out many, were actually industrial stuff that happened to be the right pitch and link sizes used on index geared industrial grade transfer/transmission usage that used cogs profiled such they were a gnats eyelash close to the profiles used on 21/24 speed gear sets. I only used shop grade chains when I moved to Campag rings and ratios for 27 speed upgrade as I couldn’t find suitable industrial substitutes.
It helps to have toes and fingers in industrial circles, or a least good friends in those circles.
