Matthews dirt road road bike transmogrified

[Patrick Moore]

Well, I did tell Chauncey to “make it handle as much as possible like” my beloved 1999 fixed road custom, but of course the bikes are so different that similarity was hard to perceive; this with tires in the 48 to 61 mm range — currently 54 mm Thunderburts.

But I recently installed pre-RH Compass Snoqualimie Passes, 44.6 mm, on the second disc wheelset and man! I won’t say it handles exactly like the Roadeo, but it handles much, much more like it than before. Perfect for combined pavement and firm dirt excursions. Also, I dropped the low gear on both wheelsets to 25” instead of 28” while still keeping the close spacing in the cruising range; now 42/24 with 13-28 for the TBs and 12-27 for the SPs. 

Great fun on the SPs. Only, I stupidly poured in Orange Seal Endurance into the TPU tubes instead of OS Regular. While Endurance works splendidly in tubeless setups, it does not work well at all in tubes, so I’ll have to decant it all and start again.

PS: no, the DA 7402 rd won’t pick up all that chain slack, but I use the 24 only with the largest 4 cogs and that works fine. If I were smarter I’d simply get a long cage rd, but I’m obsessed with the “road bike for dirt” conceit — whence, for the record, the Silca Impero with Campy head (tho’ just replaced it with a Lezyne mini for the bag, as getting the Silca’s chuck on TPU valves is fraught).

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Patrick Moore

Alburquerque, Nuevo Mexico, Etats Unis d'Amerique, Orbis Terrarum

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