Compass Antelope Hill - short review - long ride

I have been using the Compass Antelope Hill tires for a few months now and gave them a seriously good testing a couple of weekends ago in Le Petit Brevet. There will be a post about that soon. Nominally 55 mm, but actually 53 mm wide on my rims. They are very similar to the Compass Rat Trap Pass tires I have been using for a couple of years, the main difference being that they obviously don't spin up as quickly as the smaller 26 inch variant.

They roll pretty well, similar to a Stans Raven, maybe a tad faster given their lack of any real tread. Le Petit Brevet was a pretty good test for these tires. A reasonable amount of seal, a lot of gravel, a good amount of grass. Lots of uphill, lots of down and a smattering of flat. I did 289 kms with 7900 metres climbing with no issues at all. I was very luck to get dry weather for the whole ride and only once experienced one skid while descending on some damp grass in the evening.  They coped with the gravel descents and the gravel climbs really well. On the steepest climb I could hear the knobbly tires of one of my riding buddies slipping, while the Antelope was still riding smooth. I upped my front rotor from a 160mm to a 180mm for this ride as well so there was some "spirited braking" going on.

I rode with 30 psi (with tubes) in both ends. I could have gone with a bit less but was happy to have a bit more air when I came to a complete halt after banging into a rock on one occasion.

These tires are pretty expensive by the time they get to NZ, but then a lot of tires are. If they wear as well as my Rat Trap Passes have I will be pretty happy. They have a good thick centre area. The only punctures I have ever had on my RTPs were caused by thin pieces of wire.

Reported weight is 535 grams for the standard weight and 465 grams for the light-weight.

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How fast is fat?

Comparing 38mm to 25mm tires in a Time Trial

There is a lot of loose talk of how fat tires are fast and lower pressure is better, so I thought I would do an experiment, over two weeks of Time Trials with the local Masters Club, on the course I have probably ridden on more than anyone else to date. I have a couple of sets of "fatter" tires, and my experience when riding in a bunch is that I have to work a lot harder to keep up than on my skinnier treads.

This is the same course I did the Karate Monkey World record on, cranking out over 41kmh on a steel MTB in 2015. It was running rear disc covers and tri-spoke on the front, so that tells me tires and wheels do make a bit of difference.

Having sold the Karate Monkey, the next most suitable bike I had left was my Singular Kite Cyclocross bike. It is probably a bit lighter than my Karate Monkey, but I suspect not as aero. What I was looking for was a difference in speed between my two sets of tires, the 38mm Compass Barlow Pass and the 25mm Vittoria Corsa G+ Graphene. Thats quite a jump in size I know, but it also means it should be big enough to measure given my "seat-of-the-pants" testing methodology.

Photo by Orca Whale. Fat tires corner well.

The Liverton Road time trial course is what the English Time Trialists would likely call a "Sportsmans Course". It has undulations and patches of rough seal and the odd pothole on one side, and mostly smooth seal on the other. It has two very tight corners, one at each end of the 4 x 6km laps. By tight I mean that if you were on the edge you might be lucky to get through them at 30kmh at best.

My plan was to compare from week to week, and use the times of the riders around me to create a control to cover any variables in conditions.

Event 1. 38mm Compass Barlow Pass tires on Singular Kite.

A typically crappy day for Time Trialling in Wellington, a northerly with buffeting from the side gullies that joined onto the course. The bike felt slow everywhere except when powering over the rough surfaces outside the quarry entrances. (Link for LOTR fans).Usually you get jarred to pieces in these segments on a typical TT rig. With the Barlow Passes, I just floated over the top with no scary surprises. Actually, I was also fast on the corners, I was able to lean over pretty aggressively without feeling scared. As I suspected, with my current (lack of ) form, I averaged exactly 37 kmh. This lined up with my gut feeling from mixing it up with riders with normally shod wheels. I hadn't ridden for 5 weeks over xmas, then got sick when I came back to work so I was not really expecting too much in the way of fitness. I delivered !

Singular Kite with 38mm Compass Barlow Pass tires.

Event 2. 25mm Vittoria Corsa G+ Graphene on Singular Kite.

This one didn't start well at all. I turned up at the course to find out that the TT had been cancelled 30 minutes earlier via Facebook ! I was gutted. Bugger it. I decided to do it anyway, I would have to be extra careful as there was no warning signage or marshalls to alert drivers. Pretty much as soon as I started the wind changed, a southerly squall blew in, soaking me but it was nice at the top of the course, going a good 10kmh faster than I was the week before in the northerly conditions. On the whole the conditions weren't bad. Pretty even, but I wasn't really able to lift my top speed above 43 kmh for very long at all. I have to say that the Kite does not feel very aero at all.

Singular Kite with 25mm Vittoria Corsa Graphene tires

So, not officially a race really, I didn't have prologue lungs after the ride, so I am guessing that without other riders on the course I wasn't quite able to get exactly 100% from myself, I must have been pretty close though. The wetter conditions would have cost me time on the corners, especially without marshalls at hand and on the narrow less confidence inspiring tires. On the other hand, I rode an hour earlier than normal, so I would have benefited from more draft from passing traffic, and my gut feeling is that wet courses are faster than dry ones. I think by and large things would have evened out overall.

So, I managed exactly 39 kmh, 2 kmh faster than on the fatter tires the week before. I know these speeds are nothing to write home about, but that's not the point, the point is the difference.

If you are happy to be riding 2 kmh slower than your buddy for the same power on the smooth stuff, then there could be room on your bike for a tire like the Barlow Pass. It excels on gravel, giving a really comfy ride should you decide to take the long way home. Sometimes its good to have that option.

I really like the Vittorias as a road tire, but I wouldn't be taking them off road in a hurry. The 28mm versions might be acceptable for a few patches of gravel here and there.

I rode the Barlow Passes at 48psi and the Vittorias at 85psi.
The Barlow Passes were the regular versions, not the light-weight ones.

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Rat Trap Pass Tires on all-road 26 inch hack

2 to 2.3 inches. Rat Trap Pass.

I have had the Compass Rat Trap Pass tires on my "allroad" bike (bastardised MTB) for around 6 months now so here is an update. As I said in an earlier post, I had always wanted to build a drop-barred, slick fat-tired 26er after seeing Mr Danger-pant's Firefly on a forum in 2011. Then when Firefly built Jan Heine's titanium allroader, I just had to do something with a pair of those fat supple tires and my old Litespeed Ocoee. Previous tires available for 26ers, while being fat, were heavy and slow due to their heavy sidewalls. I purchased the heavier of the two Rat Trap Pass tire options, not being sure how the more supple sidewalls of the lighter version would handle NZ's rough 3/4 chip roads and the off-roading I had in mind. The difference in weight was only 36 grams, 418 vs 454 grams, according to the Compass site. Mine weighed in at 460 grams.

The bike's build was to go through many many iterations, mostly involving cranks and forks, and it probably still has many more to go.

Iteration 1, with 98 SID.

I was excited at the promise of 2.3 inch wide tires but was a bit under-whelmed when they barely measured 2.0 inches when mounted on my old-school Rolf Dolomite rims. My dreams of PHAT-ness had fizzled. They were also a bit of a challenge to seat correctly, despite the very impressive full colour documentation that arrived with the tires. I rode around for a week hoping that they would settle in, but eventually I had to unmount them, soap the bead and generally tug and pull them into a good position. They are great now.

Mosso alloy fork

I was very impressed with the speed at which they rolled on the open road, I was able to push a much taller gear in comparison to the other slicks I had thrown on while waiting for the Compass tires to arrive. They still gave a surprising level of purchase in the rough stuff, a lot more than you would expect from a tire that is closer to a slick than a semi-slick, they climbed particularly well in the dry and were sweet in the gravel on the flat. I haven't had the pleasure of any spirited descending in the loose gravel to date, but they did cope well with the hard-pack. Actually I did some particularly brutal off-road descending last weekend which was enough to cause me to over-heat my vee-brake pads. The tires held up well but had me wishing I had a disc on as it was a very steep and sustained grade.

The front after 1000kms

Mostly I have been commuting on the open road with the Rat Trap Passes with occasional forays into the bush for about 15 minutes at the end of my commute, while running them at around 30 to 35 psi. Obviously the rear tire has worn a lot more than the front which still looks pretty good. It's certainly not due to skidding as I don't think the rear brake has a skid in it. This bike and tire combo is so much fun its pretty much been the only bike I have ridden in the last 6 months. When I say ride, I mostly mean commute. I am still amassing brownie points after my Tour Aotearoa from 2016 so my mileage is probably the weakest it has ever been at just under 1000kms on these tires. Often I commute via the Wellington CBD and this bike is great in that urban environment. It seems to accelerate away from the lights faster than my other bikes and feels very sure-footed when coping with the behaviour of random pedestrians walking into the traffic with noses in phones and the ever present puddle-duck taxi drivers halting flow.

This is the only time I have ever consciously recorded the mileage of my tires, and it was very easy to do. Because I enjoy riding this machine so much, I have hardly ridden any of my other bikes.

The rear after 1000kms

On the road, these tires, matched with a set of old Shimano XT parallel v-brakes on the front have boosted my descending confidence to a degree I never had before. Its more like riding a motorcycle.

Having the protection and comfort of the fat tires means that I can easily jump up onto a curb to make way for traffic in some of the more squirrely commuting routes I take home. I hope to log some more kms on these tires off-road when and if our summer actually arrives, and build my fitness back to a level where I am game enough to do a Friday Morning bunch road ride. At that point I should be able to see if fat really is fast.  Right now, I cant see a time when I will get my carbon road bike out again. This bike is just so comfortable.

Having never actually monitored a set of tires for wear before, I am not sure if the mileage so far is good or not. It is just the grooves that are wearing thin on the back and I am hopeful to get a lot more out of them yet. My gut feeling is that they are wearing at a similar rate to a pair of Stans Ravens which would be the next most similar tire I have used. One thing I have noticed is their puncture resistance, not one puncture in 6 months. That's pretty good compared to my road and wider 700 tires which netted me 4 unrelated punctures recently in 2 weeks.
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More about the 26er "allroad" bike build

98 SIDs with Green Michelins

The bike, a 1993 Litespeed Ocoee started out with my powder blue 1998 rock shock SID forks on it, and some very old Wildgripper Comp Michelin tires. I kept the SID on it for a while, for several reasons, It was awesome on the gravel, and it had a reasonable amount of steerer on it. I also had a cheapie Mosso alloy fork on the way from Aliexpress.

The Mosso fork has the advantage of having both disc and canti posts on it, but so far I have stuck with the canti posts as the XT vee-brakes are more than powerful enough for me in most scenarios. I use the Problem Solvers travel agent converter. The modulation feels great. I could run canti's without a converter, but I am yet to meet a canti I wanted to spend that much time with. There is a decorative one on the back, after I accidentally broke my other vee-brake's locator peg.

Light-weight steel Spinner fork.

I tried hard to source a light-weight steel Spinner fork and eventually I got one that had just enough room to run a stem, although it is way too slammed for a crusty like me to be comfortable with long term. I will probably go back to the Mosso with its longer steerer and have a play with a disc option at some point, or use a stem extender, which will add 225+ grams. I noticed that using the Spinner fork improved the handling a bit as it was not suspension corrected like the Mosso fork was. I recall back in the day how my Mag 21's made the handling a bit floppy.

My Tiagra shifters seemed to have a lot of clicks in them so I was keen to try and sort out a triple crank option. I had done a lot of number crunching and figured that a closer ratio rear cluster with a triple would give me better options than a 2x on the front with big gaps on the back that would probably be noticeable at commuting speeds.

"Shimano Deore M591
10-speed Front Road Derailleur"
I'm not sure about that description
but that is what it was advertised as.

I had read of someone making a Shimano Deore M591 front derailer work with a shimano 3x shifter so I got one cheap online, as I was having no luck with my existing stock of derailers. In the end I got much better results out of my old Shimano LX crank than I did from my Tune crank so I went with the LX. There are times when I have to "trim" the shift one way or another, but I love having the range and closer ratios that the triple gives me. I probably could have gotten by with the 46/32 on the front but for me, having the option to ride very steep off-road climbs is worth it, even if its only now and then. One thing I did notice, this rig is affected by tail-wag a lot with a rear seat-bag. I am not sure how this is, by comparison my Karate Monkey is rock solid. Maybe its to do with the wheel size, as the wheel-base is identical.  I was commuting a lot with my seat-bag but it is enough to make me wear a back-pack which I'd also rather not do.

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Some history on the bike

Looking back at the Tip-track.

This bike has done a lot of kilometres. When I got it second hand in the late 90’s, it’s previous owner had already used it as his do everything bike for 5 years. Marco used it 5 days a week for his 2 hours return commute, a bunch ride on saturday and a race on sunday, when there was one on. He did at least 5 national MTB series on it, (5-6 races in each series)  along with every other local race available during the height of the MTB racing boom in the early 90's in NZ. He rode it at the MTB worlds in Masters in 1993, (France) 1994, (Vail, Colorado), and 1996 (Cairns). He also won the masters national series on it a couple of times in NZ. He only sold it to me when he was run over one day while commuting and the frame was written off. I took it to BRANZ where they had a hydraulic press. One of the guys straightened out the rear stay and it became my new race bike.

Riding up the Tip Track.

The geometry wasn’t as good as that of my Diamondback Apex, but I was a bit of a weight weener so was happy to have a bike a good pound lighter. I campaigned it for quite a few years taking out the masters national series in 2001 on it.

I suspect that after this bike was built Litespeed tried to compete too much with the new lighter carbon bikes and their frame longevity suffered. This bike was one of the good ones, and shows no sign of giving up yet, 24 years on. Not a big deal for a steel bike, but pretty good for a titanium one.

Commuting via the wharf with my 2nd favourite saddle on.

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Some slick and fat tires for fun and performance

Firefly

The bike that inspired
my interest in fat slicks

I was intrigued by "Mr Danger Pant's" fat tired Firefly when I first saw it 5 years ago on MTBreview forum. It had some very interesting kit on it including WTB dirt drop-bars.  I always thought it would be cool to build something like this. Its a 26 incher with Schwable Super Motos.

More recently the guys at Firefly built an All-road/rando styled bike that they thought might appeal to hard-core-randonneur Jan Heine. They got mostly high praise from Jan who tested it while touring in Mexico. Its a beautiful bike, and has motivated me to convert my old titanium Litespeed 26er into a light-weight drop-barred do everything bike.

Slick and fat
While you have always been able to get big heavy fat slick tires for 26ers you can now get some more light weight ones, and also 27.5 (650b) slick tires in wider widths are  starting to appear. The Compass Rat Trap Pass 26 inch tire is listed at 2.3 inches and 418 grams in its lightest format. I will try these on my repurposed Litespeed Ocoee and see how they roll. I am not keen to try the lightest tires on our crappy roads but will settle for the 454 gram version.

See below a list of the tires I dredged up for a potential tourer or commuter. Some are heavy, some are light, some are fast and supple. Most of the 27.5 ones are not that wide but I am sure there are more coming. Some tires I haven't listed here are the Stans tires but they are verging into semi slicks and there are a whole lot more tires in that field. You might even class some of these tires below as semi-slicks. This site is pretty interesting if you believe in rolling resistance values as measured in the lab. They rate the Schwable Big one as the fastest MTB tire they have ever tested.

07/05/2018 - Some updates !

26 inch
Schwalbe Kojak: 2 inches wide.
https://www.schwalbe.com/en/tour-reader/kojak.html
Schwable Marathon Supreme: 2 inches wide.
https://www.bike-components.de/en/Schwalbe/Marathon-Supreme-Evolution-26-Folding-Tyre-p45621/
Panaracer RibMo 2 inches wide.
http://www.cycledepro.com/products/panaracer-26x2-0-ribmo.html
Michelin Country Rock: Only 1.7 inch
https://www.bike24.com/p22788.html
Tioga Power Block: 2.1 inch
http://www.bikeman.com/TR4797.html
WTB Thick Slick 2.0 inch 
https://www.wtb.com/products/thickslick
Kenda Big City Slick 1.95 inches
https://fixiecycles.com/shop/sports-and-outdoors-sports-and-outdoors/kenda-163026-big-city-slick-wire-bead-bicycle-tire-blackwall-26-x-1-95/ 

27.5 / 650B
WTB Byway: 47 mm
https://www.wtb.com/collections/road-plus/products/byway
Panaracer Pari-Moto 47mm
https://www.bike-components.de/en/Panaracer/Pacenti-Pari-Moto-27-5-Folding-Tyre-p56724/
Panaracer Gravel King 47 mm
https://www.panaracer.com/lineup/gravel.html
Donnelly Strada 50 mm
https://www.donnellycycling.com/collections/adventure/products/strada-ush-650b-folding-60-tpi
Schwalbe Super Moto
https://www.bike-components.de/en/Schwalbe/Super-Moto-X-GreenGuard-27-5-Wired-Tyre-p59906/

29 inch / 700
The rumoured 55mm Antelope Hill from Compass. (TBA)
WTB Slick 2.2 inch  https://www.wtb.com/products/slick?variant=275888354
Schwalbe Super Moto 2.35 inch
http://www.bmtbonline.com/Schwalbe-Super-Moto-29-x-235-Pace-Star

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... previously

The Fire Fly all-road rando

29 inch
Schwalbe Big Apple 2.15 - 2.35 http://www.schwalbetires.com/bike_tires/road_tires/big_apple
Scwhalbe Big One 2.35  http://www.schwalbe.com/en/tour-reader/schwalbe-big-one.html
Maxxis Grifter 2 - 2.5  http://www.maxxis.com/catalog/tire-474-grifter
Maxxis Hookworm 2.5 http://www.maxxis.com/catalog/tire-472-123-hookworm

27.5 inch /650B
Compass Switchback hill 48mm https://www.compasscycle.com/shop/components/tires/650b/compass-650bx48-switchback-hill/
WTB Horizon plus 47mm http://www.wtb.com/products/horizon
Maxxis re-fuse 2.0  http://www.maxxis.com/catalog/tire-511-re-fuse
Scwhable Big One 2.35 http://www.schwalbe.com/en/tour-reader/schwalbe-big-one.html

26 inch
Maxxis Hookworm 2.5 http://www.maxxis.com/catalog/tire-472-123-hookworm
Maxxis DTH 2.15 + 2.3 http://www.maxxis.com/catalog/tire-314-123-dth
Compass Rat-trap-pass 2.3 (52-54 mm) https://www.compasscycle.com/shop/components/tires/26-inch/compass-26-x-2-3-rat-trap-pass/
Schwalbe Big Apple 2.15 - 2.35 http://www.schwalbetires.com/bike_tires/road_tires/big_apple

A few fatter slicker tires.

First draft for the new "format". Tires and fork on the way.

Update: So far, so good. One ride in. Very fast, and beautiful on gravel at 30psi. Not sure whether to go with a period steel Spinner fork, or go with a disc or vees on an alloy Mosso.

Dropped the granny, and swapped out the 42 for a 46. with an 11-34 on the back. It should cope with most things. I have heard that a deore front deralier can work with 3 speed road shifters, this medium old XTR one is certainly not coping with it. I dont really want to go bar end.

 

Back with the 96 SID on.

Ok, now working in all three cogs with a new "Shimano Deore M591 10-speed Front Road Derailleur", whatever that means..... Heaps of clicks in the 3 speed shifters for trimming. Spinner fork on front, still need more steerer. So much fun to ride.

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