View Single Post
Old 01-05-11, 01:37 PM
  #18  
chucky
It's got electrolytes!
 
chucky's Avatar
 
Join Date: Aug 2009
Posts: 1,388

Bikes: Self-designed carbon fiber highracer, BikesDirect Kilo WT5, Pacific Cycles Carryme, Dahon Boardwalk with custom Sturmey Archer wheelset

Mentioned: 0 Post(s)
Tagged: 0 Thread(s)
Quoted: 1 Post(s)
Likes: 0
Liked 0 Times in 0 Posts
Originally Posted by jur
BTW I have nothing but praise for the Intense Micro Knobbies. It is light weight, very flexible sidewall and is perfect for mixed-mode riding. Connie has one of them on the front and it is lasting many 1000s of kms. She has had the odd puncture, I don't think they are very puncture resistant. But we run all our back wheels with Slime liners anyway as I have long ago lost confidence in built-in puncture protection. It has never really worked for me. I am not so sure though about its longevity when used on the back. I think the tread will wear rather quickly.
Is your praise for the regular Micro Knobby or the Micro Knobby MK2? As to tread wearing down quickly in the rear...I'd prefer a slicker center tread anyway.

After another order mishap I decided to also cancel the Powerband tires and order the Intense MK2 Micro Knobby. The reasons are:
-They're a much narrower 1.5", I believe a good deal of my tire mounting problems are due to using tires which are too wide for the rims. If they're very easy to mount then I might consider wire beads again, which would greatly increase my choices.
-Many people have been impressed with their efficiency and flexible sidewalls...someone even said the efficiency is comparable to Stelvios.
-I'd like a little more traction over unplowed/unshoveled snow. Once I wear out the Big Apples I'd also like to try the Panaracer MiniITS and the MK2 might get a second life as an easy front tire swap for snow.
-I'd like to experiment to see if built in puncture protection really complements urethane tire liners as I believe...so we'll see how the supposedly puncture prone MK2s stack up when supplemented by a Mr Tuffy. If the liner provides 99% of the protection then I'd have many more tires to choose from.
-They have a low MSRP, so if I like them I should always be able to get them cheaply, which will save me lots of $ in the future.

Originally Posted by AEO
IMO, bad tire mounting and removal technique is more of a problem than bad tolerances.
...and I used to believe this, but after many years of honing my technique and being able to change the tires without tools on my other bikes, it still takes me a good 3-4 hours, a few destroyed tire levers, and some blood to change the tires on this bike.

I'm not the only one, there's something wrong with these rims:
http://www.bikeforums.net/showthread...e-off-the-rim-!!

Perhaps they're overly narrow. Although the rims are erroneously marked "16-559", I dare not take the tire off to measure because I'm not sure if the steel bead can survive another beating. Seriously, it's a good thing small diameter wheels are so stiff because I've tacoed wheels with far less force than what it takes to remove tires from these rims.

Originally Posted by AEO
And steering around such large, puncture causing, road debris is much better than all the armour you can clad your tire up with. You can still get punctures, even with all the protection you slap on the tire.
Sure you can steer around road debris and directly into the path of that Mac truck which has decided to pass too closely, but, personally, I'd rather get puncture protection and live.

Last puncture I got was from hitting a deep pile of glass on a highway service road at night. It looked like an entire pane that fell off a truck and was swept into a pile and the only reason it managed to puncture was because the glass was deep enough to bypass the tread and tire liner.

...and it took me half the next day to repair the tire (I'm lucky I didn't have to go to work). The idea is not to eliminate punctures entirely, but to reduce the frequency of failure to that of any other bike component so that punctures are no more of an issue than cracked frames.
chucky is offline