Cycling UK Forum

I bought two pairs of Nutrac tyres off eBay and dirt cheap at £8ish each.
Seem very good indeed so far. Better than the Contis I tried at £20odd each. GPs and Sport Contacts ...... not worth the money at all.
The bike came with Durano which felt very sluggish to me. I've used them on and off, and eventually wore one out on the rear. The fronts seem to carry on and on and on. It's the rear that wears alarmingly.

I spent some time getting the bars and saddle EXACTLY the same as Mercian, and it I were to get on blindfold, I wouldn't be able to tell which bike was which .......... until I rode it of course!

It was difficult getting the bikes the same. You have to take into account the suspension drop especially at the front, so if you were to stand both bikes side-by-side, the bars would be an inch or so higher on the Moulton. The saddle much nearer to the same.

One of the better things I did was to fit Speedplay Frog pedals, and I liked them so much, I bought a pair for Mercian. I sold my road shoes and now have the same footware for both bikes. One good thing about the Frogs, is the stack height is very very low, maybe an inch lower than the Campag Pro Fits I used for donkeys years on Mercian. Consequently, I'm not on tippy toes when I stop now as the saddle was lowered to compensate.
http://www.speedplay.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=home.frog

Mick F wrote: ...The paint finish isn't great. It's faded and gone a bit matt since I bought it, and looking at early photos of the bike, it's sad that it's faded and "matted" off in only four years....

Not much you can do about fading but in some cases you can 'refresh' a tired paint job with a blow over using clear lacquer. There are potential problems (so try on an inconspicuous area first) and you shouldn't expect it to last for ever either, but it normally does more good than harm.

cheers

Mick F wrote:I bought two pairs of Nutrac tyres off eBay and dirt cheap at £8ish each.
Seem very good indeed so far. Better than the Contis I tried at £20odd each. GPs and Sport Contacts ...... not worth the money at all.
The bike came with Durano which felt very sluggish to me. I've used them on and off, and eventually wore one out on the rear. The fronts seem to carry on and on and on. It's the rear that wears alarmingly.

I thought you were mourning the loss of the GP 28-406 to the world?

I was. Nice tyres, and one became damaged on the side-wall.
Nice tyres, but at what cost?
£25+ per tyre.
My Nutrak were £8 each, and it was pointed out to me that I could have bought them at £6 each somewhere else.

There is no contest.
£25 a tyre, or £8/£6 a tyre?

Continental aren't worth the money considering how fast the Moulton wears out the rear.

Mick F wrote:Continental aren't worth the money considering how fast the Moulton wears out the rear.

I suspect that your liking for low cadence & rear tyre wear (as well as small sprocket wear) are not unconnected!

4400 miles on one of these

75 miles in one day on this -- ouch!

Nothing on Strava.

MikewsMITH2 wrote:Light, flexible wider tyres are in fact more efficient and more comfortable, so why don't Moulton get with the programme and fit fatter tyres and ditch the suspension, which shouldn't be needed on the road.

To this end, I am trying out this little beauty
Neutrino Park.jpg

It has 20" BMX wheels and I am using 50mm tyres. It only weighs 11Kg with mudguards. It is comfy at 30psi and rolls well on the road and on gravel trails. I haven't done enough miles yet to give a detailed appraisal, but initial reactions are that it rides well enough up hills

....That looks like an interesting machine... but may one enquire as to why there are no bosses for a front rack mounted on the head tube? One of the features which impressed me was that the moulton engineers made full use of the empty space above the front wheel, and designed a rack which would fit to the frame (rather than the forks) where by a set of 48 ltr size panniers, could be carried without any direct influence on the steering.
..a feature which appears to be missing from this design - which us a shame - with the right racks, I bet you could get a deliveroo box above the front wheel and another above the back wheel or even something like a large bicycle carrier... thus making this 20 inch wheeler suitable for loaded touring as well as use as a cargo bike... I await the mark 2 version with interest (If a bespoke rear rack is to be designed any chance of it being built so that a complete spare rear wheel can be safely stored beneath it?)

RickH wrote:

Mick F wrote:Continental aren't worth the money considering how fast the Moulton wears out the rear.

I suspect that your liking for low cadence & rear tyre wear (as well as small sprocket wear) are not unconnected!

So ................ what is the 11t small sprocket actually for?

If you want lower gears, why not have a 13t small cog?
Why not have a 13-35 ........ or whatever ............. cassette?

If I could have a 13t small sprocket and a 75t outer ring, I'd have a top gear of 75/13 = 5.38 x 18.2 = 105" which would be ok.
The 10sp cassette doesn't exist, and the outer 75t would be prohibitively expensive.
However, the longevity would be far far better than a silly 11t or even an sillier 10t.

Mick F wrote:There is no contest.
£25 a tyre, or £8/£6 a tyre?

Continental aren't worth the money considering how fast the Moulton wears out the rear.

Well, it is a £2000 bike though. Surely you want to shod it with the best tyres available?

MikewsMITH2 wrote:I managed to get him a batch of decent 17" Bridgestone tyres from my contact in Japan

I don’t suppose you have any of these left Mike?

Mick F wrote:

RickH wrote:

Mick F wrote:Continental aren't worth the money considering how fast the Moulton wears out the rear.

I suspect that your liking for low cadence & rear tyre wear (as well as small sprocket wear) are not unconnected!

So ................ what is the 11t small sprocket actually for?

For me the 10T* is for the few times where I'm doing 30mph plus & want to pedal - most times I can go faster by not pedalling & tucking into as aero as possible position so when the chain is on the 10T it is not actually being pedalled. I put a new chain on after swapping the previous 2 chains about 400 miles ago - no problems with the 10T, any slight initial roughness was at the other end of the cassette.

(*I didn't actively choose it it came on the 10-42 cassette the bike came with. But in over 3 years & approaching 7000 miles the chains are the only bit of drivetrain replaced - at ~0.5% elongation.)

The best tyres available?
Define "Best".
Just coz you pay more, doesn't necessarily mean better.
No complaints whatsoever about the Nutrak tyres. Cheap, seem to be hard wearing, fit nicely, and are nice a springy and fast.
What's not to like?

As for a 10-42 cassette, it sounds like it should be a 12-42 and a bigger chainwheel, and the fact that you don't "pedal" when in 10t, is suggests that you don't actually need it. If you do pedal in it, the losses are higher than a 11t or 12t and they wear like heck too.

I'm on a new 11-28 cassette now, but the last one wore out three 11t sprockets. You can buy they quite cheaply.
https://www.bike-discount.de/en/buy/shi ... 31?lang=en

Do they do a 10t?
Seems like they don't.
https://www.bike-discount.de/en/shop/sp ... peed-23927
Where would you buy one if you needed it?

Hi,
Have you thought about maybe building a custom 24 inch wheel bike?
It would certainly give you the extra inches you need without going for small cogs.
I mean go back to say eight speed cassette, mind you most of them are 11s now.
If you say you're a slow cadence sort of guy, then you don't really need all of those gears, you just need specific gears with maybe bigger gaps which you should be able to tolerate if you're a slow cadence guy?
Even when I'm using 16 ratios, that's 2 x 8, as I don't use the granny in training, I'm very commonly skip cogs as soon as I hit Easier gradients, E.g. I will go from 3rd to 5th then 5th to 7th.
If you were twiddling then I could understand all those gears with loads of close ratios, But you are not a twiddler.

Mick F wrote:.........I'm on a new 11-28 cassette now, but the last one wore out three 11t sprockets. You can buy they quite cheaply.
https://www.bike-discount.de/en/buy/shi ... 31?lang=en
.......

No need to Mick I've got about 5 or 6 you can have if you pm me your address