Sunday, May 22, 2011

New Wheel Review

Wow! It's either this thing weighs a ton or the 20+mph headwind really whacked me in head. This thing was super slow. I felt like it was worse than when I had the mag wheels all around and the Schwalbe Big Apples on all 3 wheels.

Do the benefits of having a rear brake and being able to climb any hill outweigh the costs? Errr, I'm still thinking about it. It undoubtedly looks amazing now with the matching black spoked rear wheel but boy is it heavy!

The shifter for the hub is now a lot more reliable than what I had on the SRAM 3x7 and looks better on the handle bar but again, I'm not sure it's worth it yet. The weight is a big drawback. I made it worse by using a Schwalbe Marathon tire rather than a Racer tire. Once I get some (hopefully) reliable Qtubes in the mail, I'll put the Racer back on and see if there's a noticeable difference. The new hub is harder to remove and put back on (sorta) so I wanted to keep the rear wheel pretty much puncture resistant. The weight penalty hurts though - big time.

I'll have to take it for another spin on a less windy day to get a more accurate assessment. Hopefully I'll have good news to share. The weight's been hurting so much on this test ride that I'm strongly considering, 85% blowing $163 on the upgraded 5lb lighter weight seat from KMX. We'll see.

2 comments:

  1. Hi! I just got a KMX tornado and am looking to upgrade the stock mag wheels. Did you buy upgraded ones from KMX directly, or Utah Trike, or somewhere else? Thanks!

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  2. @trikermn23

    The blogs way too long huh? Look in the earlier posts and you'll see that I purchased the Tornado used through Craigslist.

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