Jan Heine recently fronted me a pair of his new 26" x 2.1" road tires - the Rat Trap Pass. They are made by Panaracer in Japan on a very light casing with a folding bead. They are quite light, supposedly 300 gm. and can be mounted tubeless.
I built a "Camino Duro" frame up with S-bend chainstays to accommodate that tire. I used 3/4" x .035"craft grade chrome moly for the chainstays with bends of 11.4 and 9.5 degrees, to give me about 3/8" tire clearance.
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Packed it down to Tucson over the Holidays (it's a Breakaway) and have gotten in a few hundred miles riding. I've been running the tires at 35 psi and they just roll along. My son has a similar bike with 1.5" Paselas running at 80 psi. On a roll-off he will slowly pull ahead of me, but that's it. I may be getting some drag from the front hub dyno - in any case, the Rat Traps DO run smooth.
I thought I noticed a bit of heaviness in the steering - this particular bike has a donor fork with about 52mm trail. I think I'll try for about 45mm trail when I get home and can make up a fork for this bike.
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The tires are good on hard-pack dirt/sand and don't seem to mind rocks and roots if you take it a little easy. Only trouble so far is cactus spines.
Mostly riding pavement, but also some of the stuff in the pictures below.
This is the bike I am going to ride this year, I think. More later
Felice anno nuovo!
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