Rat Trap Pass tires

[jon_norstog]

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.




rat_trap_b.jpg

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!

[jon_norstog]

Riding Tucson the 52-mile loop.

http://dot.pima.gov/urbanloop/pdfs/T...p%20081810.pdf


A few photos including the "fantasy island" trail system:

Attachment 105857 Attachment 105858 Attachment 105859 Attachment 105860Attachment 105861 Attachment 105862 Attachment 105863 this last picture is a shrine to bicyclists who have been killed in Tucson, made with lots of bicycle parts and colored glass.

This is a trail you can ride in a single day easily. I goofed around a lot and took two days. There are some stretches of no water ... if you go in summer take plenty of H2O.

jn


"Thursday"

[Too Tall]

Kick @ss J.N. They certainly have enough volume eh?

Did you set them up tubeless?

[jon_norstog]

Kick @ss J.N. They certainly have enough volume eh?

Did you set them up tubeless?

I thought about it, decided to run tubes. They are not all that easy to mount - you have to be very careful to get the bead seated evenly. The tires come with an instruction sheet for mounting! You may have to inflate/deflate a few times to get them concentric with the axle. Add tubeless goop to the situation and you can really have fun!

One of my tubes, I had filled with orange stuff in preparation for a trip to Mexico - I picked up ONE cactus spine and the tire went down. If I do any tubeless mounts with this tire I'd be inclined to use Slime, and plenty of it.

As for volume, they have plenty, and you get a noticeably cushier ride. Also they stick just fine in a corner. Although I bent my own stays, the bends you need, on a touring bike at least, are right there in most tailor-made S-bend stays.

jn

[jon_norstog]

Here's Compass Cycles' instructions on mounting the tires.

https://www.compasscycle.com/wp-cont..._08_01_web.pdf

It's pretty easy to get this tire mounted eccentric, at least on some rims. For pressure I went by sense of smell. The squeeze test felt OK at 30+ psi, so that's what I ran. I'm pretty big, but I think I could run the tires at 20+ and they would ride fine.

jn

[Too Tall]

Here's Compass Cycles' instructions on mounting the tires.

https://www.compasscycle.com/wp-cont..._08_01_web.pdf

It's pretty easy to get this tire mounted eccentric, at least on some rims. For pressure I went by sense of smell. The squeeze test felt OK at 30+ psi, so that's what I ran. I'm pretty big, but I think I could run the tires at 20+ and they would ride fine.

jn

For an easy win try windex to lube the beads prior to mounting. I'm a Stan's sealant believer.

[jon_norstog]

Well, back in Portland! I've been riding the 26" BMX bike last 3 weeks, but yesterday I took the Rat Trap bike out of the breakaway suitcase and put it back together. I also put on a set of fenders off my old, smaller-tired breakaway, the Italy bike. I put the tires up to 30 pounds and rode all over NE Portland. The ride was noticeably cushier even than the BMX bike over the broken pavement. It definitely gives your body a break!

One thing, I did get some fender drag on the front. The donor fork had 368mm axle-crown over a Pacenti Paris-Roubaix crown. I have a fork in-build for this bike and I think I'll give it 175mm and set the front rack mounts up a little to get clearance for both the fender under the rack mounting strap, and the V-brake cables over it. It's gonna be a close thing, the way the upper mount strap on the VO "Constructeur" rack is set up.

While I'm at it I increased the fork rake to see how a 42-45mm trail works out.

jn

PS I think I will try the Windex trick.

[jon_norstog]

Well, Josh, I did use Windex to remount the tires and it did help. Plus the Windex helped clean up the tires' sidewalls when I wiped them down. Perhaps it is because of the old, NOS WTB "Speed" 23mm rims with their aggressive bead hook? The tires are not perfect, but good enough for now.

Fenders! The Planet Bike 26" fenders are a close fit, especially in the front where they have to dodge the rack mount AND the V-brake cable. The ideal fender would have a greater circumferential dimension, perhaps another 5 - 10mm radius. Mounting the front rack differently so as to eliminate the metal strap from the rack to the fork crown's brake mount hole would get some metal out of the way of the fender. The other limiting factor is the V-brake cable ... maybe it's time to go disc.

That's about it for me on the Rat Trap Pass tires, at least for now. Let's see what a few hundred miles of loaded touring brings out.

jn

[jon_norstog]

So how do these tires work in the snow? Got a chance to find out last night. Portland's first and probably last snowfall of the winter, it wasn't much compared with some places I've lived/ridden. three to seven inches, wet and soft.

The tires had really good grip in the snow. I rode in the tire tracks and in the new snow, both were good and it was easy to stay up. It was night, I rode by a recycler, pulling a trailer on his road bike and really struggling for traction. Take it easy and don't overdo it and these tires stay hooked up. Which is what put and end to the ride - they dragged snow into the fenders and loaded things up pretty good.

I dropped off the bike and went out again on a 26" cruiser with 2" plus hardpack dirt tires. It didn't load up, but it didn't get any better traction than the touring bike with the Rat Traps.

snow_ride_2018 (5).jpg snow_ride_2018 (3).jpg snow_ride_2018 (1).jpg


jn

[jon_norstog]

How LOW can you GO? (remember the "Limbo Rock"?)

I was curious. The tires really ran nice at 30-35 psi as measured on my Joe Blow pump gauge. That was back in mid-january. Both tires were slowly leaking down (tubes) and I just let them. So yesterday it seemed that the rear tire was starting to roll under just a bit in turns. The front was tracking just fine. Squeeze test: the front was sfifteenoft and the rear was almost squishy. I stopped at Velo Cult to see if they had a presta gauge but no luck. On the Joe Blow gauge both tires read over ten and well under twenty psi, with the front somewhat higher, maybe fifteen.

I pumped them both up to 20 psi, rode off, and realized that at the lower pressure the tires had finally gotten a little draggy. Twenty is plenty for me, at least on an unloaded bike. I weigh a little over 200.

A second thought: if you take these tires on a road trip, be prepared to fix your own flats. It takes some practice to get them on right and your chances of running into a shop rat who has had that practice are variable.

jn

[jon_norstog]

Well, I got an accurate presta-valve pressure gauge... First I set the tires at 30 psi and rode. It was like riding high-pressure road tires. Last week I put it down to 22 psi front and rear.

At that pressure, the rear tire is starting to roll under my 200+ pound bod in dive corners. The front tracks like a dream. The tires track on broken asphalt and on pea gravel. Taking to the grass when the bike/foot path gets crowded is no problem. I figure I've got 4-5 K miles on the tires now aND NO PROBLEMS. They hook up good and corner like crazy.

This may be the end of my posts on these tires. I'm going to Italy tomorrow with my wife who won't ride, so I'm leaving the bike behind. I can heartily recommend these tires.

jn

[jon_norstog]

OK, this is a wrap. It's the end of summer and I have had 9-10 months riding on the Rat Traps. I would guess 3-5K miles. maybe more. Those were mostly "pavement" miles. The quotes are because a lot of the stuff I rode in Portland was on a par with your average BLM or USFS road. Some pictures are below. By Labor Day the rib tread was gone from the rear tire, but was almost pristine on the front. I was planning to rotate the tires ... I wsa planning to take the bike to Baja California Sur in November.

Alas, my band had a gig playing 3X a day at the Oregon State Fair in Salem. I decided to camp down there for the duration in the "Oak Grove" with all the other carneys and performers. The bike got stolen! Crap! So this is pretty much the end of the narrative, for now. My plan is to build another breakaway bike that will take the Rat Traps. Until then, I'll probably put the Italy bike back together and maybe salvage the Baja trip.

I hope this has been informative. I think these tires are great and would ride them anywhere. But I would definitely take a spare tire and tube with me on trips over los caminos duros.

Portland Streets I ride regularly.

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jn

"Thursday"