BIKES FOR BIKEPACKING - how I set up my bike after 75,000 kilometres
[Music] hey guys how's it going in this video I'm going to go through my bike setup for bike packing and bike touring I'm going to talk about why I chose this particular bike and why I chose all the components to make it up this video is not going to be exactly a review of this particular bike but more of a general Roundup on what I think is important in choosing a bike for bike packing and bike touring which I think will be more useful to most of you if you are looking for a review of this particular bike I have written one on my website and you can find the link in the description this is actually the third bike that I've had for bike packing and by far my favorite when I first started cycling around the world 8 years ago I rode a surly Long haul trucker which is a very conventional touring bike that bike I rode for about 25,000 km from New Zealand back to England and then all throughout northern Europe for about 2 years my second bike was a surly ECR 29+ which I rode from northern Europe all the way down to the Middle East and then the entire length of Africa throughout South America and then all around Europe over the course of the pandemic and finally I switched over to this bike which I've had now for about 2 years this bike is seen action in Europe Africa and North America and most recently I cycled it from Alaska down to Canada the last thing I will say before I get started is that this is a very expensive bike and there are a lot of expensive components on it for me it's totally worth spending the money because this is what I do for a living this is my life now so it's worth my while to spend a bit more money for extra Comfort but it's very important I think to say that you absolutely don't need a bike this good to go bike packing if you would like to try bike packing and bike touring you'd want to go out on a bike Adventure but you're limited by funds you've got a limited budget and so you don't want to go spending thousands of dollars on a really high level bike that is absolutely fine you by no means need something like this the great thing about bike travel is that you can get by on virtually anything even a very cheap secondhand mountain bike that you bought off some guy at the pub is going to work out just fine it's not going to be as comfortable you're probably going to have more mechanical issues but you absolutely can get around the world on it if you just want to try bike packing my best suggestion would be just use what whatever you've got most of you probably have an old bike lying around in your garage somewhere give it a service get it running and that will probably do you just fine at least to start off with and then if you decide it's something you want to commit to further then getting something like this is definitely worth thinking about it is going to make life a lot more comfortable for you okay with that said let's dive straight into the bike the first thing I'm going to talk about with the bike is going to be the big elephant in the room which is why a mountain bike the question that I get asked most often by people looking at choosing a bike for bike packing or bike touring is what kind of bike to go for and why I have chosen something like this which is a mountain bike frame a lot of people ask if they can go bike packing on gravel bikes gravel bikes are super popular these days and a lot of people already have gravel bikes so they want to know whether they can go out bike touring on them the answer is absolutely yes you can go bike touring on just about any bike really it all depends on what kind of riding you want to do and one is not necessarily better than the other universally it just depends on what you're doing with it basically there's not going to always be a best solution generally you're looking at compromise especially on longer tours where you're going to do a lot of different types of riding you're going to have to find something that works best for you the majority of the time you're not going to have a bike that works best for you all the time that's just not how it goes so the main types of bikes that you could go for there's a million different labels for these cuz bike companies love to make up new labels for their bikes cuz it helps sell them but generally speaking you've got road bikes you've got gravel bikes you've got touring bikes you've got mountain bikes like this and then you've got things like fat bikes there's obviously a lot more than that but those are the main I would say five categories that most people are going to usually fall under when they're looking at bikes so starting with a road bike I would personally never Tour on a road bike just because I like to ride Offroad and road bikes aren't very good Offroad so that's pretty straightforward obviously if you are looking at riding only on road and you want to go fast and far then a road bike could be a good option for you not going to talk too much about that today because that's not really what I do a Touring bike is a great option as well the limitation there is that they tend to be a little bit less capable for the off-road stuff they tend to be a little bit heavier a little bit overbuilt but they are very comfortable able so General a Touring bike can be a good option too a gravel bike is a really good option if you want to ride light off-road and you want to go fairly fast especially if you're pretty comfortable and married to the road bike sort of geometry and setup with drop bars the limitation I find with gravel bikes is generally that they are a little bit less capable for riding the rowdiest stuff than a mountain bike especially if you want to ride single track you'll pretty quickly hit the limitations with gravel bikes you can still do the same stuff probably it's just going to be pretty rough and at a certain point it's just not really fun anymore because you're getting really beaten up you're taking a lot of vibration and so it's not really as fun then you have something like this a mountain bike which is obviously designed for single track so if you're going to be riding more single track rougher roads rougher Terrain in general I would say a mountain bike is the way to go the other option you could go with which is sort of the far extreme end of the Comfort roughness spectrum is going to be something like a fat bike or even a mid-fat bike like my cly UCR that I was running which runs 3 in or so tires as opposed to a fat bike which would be close to four or even five personally having ridden a 3-in tire for a really long time and having looked into fat bikes extensively I don't think it's worth it for long-term touring for most people the number of times when you really need the extra plush of the Fat Tire is fairly minimal generally speaking a thin at tire is going to do just fine unless you're riding a lot of sand loose gravel snow that kind of thing then obviously you want a wider tire but that kind of stuff tends to be fairly rare on a longer Tour on a longer tour you're probably going to find that you spend most of your time riding on either pavement or hard pack generally better gravel and and dirt roads so I find for most of the time that a fat bike is overkill for most people's needs obviously if you're going on a specific trip where that's necessary that's a different story and that might well be the best bike for you under those circumstances so again why the mountain bike for me the mountain bike is the best compromise with the exception of very deep sand or snow something you're probably not going to hit very often if at all on a longer tour I find that a mountain bike like this is more than capable for any kind of terrain that I encounter it's going to be comfortable on really rough ground really rough trails and it's also plenty fast enough when I need to cover ground on pavement or smoother gravel a lot of people assume that mountain bikes can't go fast but if you set your bike up with fast Rolling Tires and a fairly aerodynamic riding position you can absolutely Cruise along at not much less than you would on a gravel bike on a mountain bike on flat ground without wind being a problem on relatively smooth roads I can comt average about 25 km an hour and I can sustain that basically all day in those circumstances which isn't really that much slower than what I would be doing on a gravel bike the difference is that where a mountain bike is ever so slightly slower than gravel bikes on smooth nice gravel surfaces which are the kind of thing that a gravel bike excels on when it comes to the really rough stuff a gravel bike is going to be nowhere near as comfortable nowhere near as capable as something like this so for me I'm happy to sacrifice that tiny bit of speed for the smoother stuff because it gives me a vast amount more capability when it comes to the rougher stuff in terms of this specific bike this is a two terrain Outback explore running 29x 2.25in tires this is a steel frame a lot of people ask about frame material personally I don't think it actually matters that much steel is nice because it's super durable and you have the added benefit of knowing that if you do break or crack your frame you can get it welded you can get it repaired in the field just about anywhere in the world which is nice the other frame materials you might be looking at are likely going to be carbon aluminium or titanium they're all perfectly feasible a lot of people don't like the ride quality for aluminium bikes but I haven't ridden any high-end aluminium bikes so I can't really comment on that titanium is really nice in that it's very strong and it's lighter than steel but it also does tend to have a higher fail rate so although in theory titanium is stronger in practice titanium bikes seem to crack slightly more often than steel equivalent and carbon is obviously the lightest of the lot which is great if you're going light but as a downside carbon is also much more likely to break you have to be a lot more careful with it you do have to baby it a little bit so on a very long tour I would be a little bit skeptical riding carbon just because I know that I tend to throw my bike around quite a lot it's likely to end up on the roof of a bus somewhere in South America and it could easily get damaged so for me steel is probably my material of choice for frames terms of the geometry of the bike you want to find something that strikes a balance between Comfort over long distances and capability when it comes to technical riding this for me hits The Sweet Spot it's incredibly capable on the more technical off-road single track that I like to ride but it's also incredibly comfortable for just grinding out miles day after day so I absolutely love the geometry on this bike again this is not really a review of this particular bike but for what it's worth two terrain absolutely nailed it with this Frame okay let's talk about the drivet Trin because I think this is probably the most important thing you can think about when choosing your bike so on this bike I run a pinion gearbox which is a gearbox built into the bottom bracket here a lot of people do ask if it's electronic it's not it's fully mechanical all of the gears are sealed in oil here in the bottom bracket this is the pinion c1.12 gear box which gives me 12 gears a gear range of 600% which is more than you get on a Shram Eagle a ram 1x2 Eagle Drive train has only 500% gear range whereas this is 600 so it's really nice to have that huge range the other benefit of running a pinion is that you can get away with using a Gates carbon belt drive like this one instead of a chain the benefit of that is you don't have to worry about cleaning it you don't have to worry about oiling it and it should also last a lot longer on a long tour I think it's worth carrying a spare belt somewhere they only weigh about 80 g and they F down pretty small so it's worth carrying out tape to your frame somewhere my first belt lasted nearly 2 years before finally snapping on me while I was mountain biking fully loaded in Canada and it was a 10-minute job by the trail side to just get out the new belt and attach it change it over and this one's running fine so this should hopefully be good for another couple of years the benefit of using something like this is that there's no maintenance to do with the gearbox you have to change the oil once a year which is a 10-minute job and other than that it works flawlessly all the time every time doesn't wear out you can use it for years on end and the shifting is incredibly smooth as well the downside to using something like this is that it is going to be a little bit heavier than an equivalent system it probably adds just under a kilo compared to the absolute lightest possible 1x12 drivetrain for me that's well worth it for the no maintenance no fuss aspect and also because it gives me a much higher gear range than I would have on a 1x2 I will just say that I think this thing is absolutely incredible so if you are considering purchasing a bike with a pinion gearbox I would massively recommend it I would really struggle I think at this point to go back to a non- gearbox bicycle just for the fact that everything works perfectly all the time there's no maintenance the gear range is incredible the shifting is incredible and it just takes a lot of the stress out of the whole travel by bike thing regardless of whether you run a gearbox like this or a conventional drivetrain I think the important thing for bike packing and bike touring is to make sure that you get your gear range range correct it's very easy to work out what gear range you're going to have with a given setup you just have to plug the numbers into a calculator again I'm going to post a link in the description to a gear range calculator if you put into the calculator what wheel size you're running what tire size you're running and what specific cogs you're running in terms of the number of teeth that's something you can easily work out just by counting the number of teeth on the cogs that you've got on your bicycle so that's easy to work out if you plug those numbers into a gear ratio calculator it will give you num in terms of your maximum and minimum gears the number that I find most useful personally is to go with gear inches it doesn't matter if you're on the metric or imperial system it's just a unit of measurement that you can use as a guide on how low or high your gear is going to be personally I think the more important number is the bottom number because I think it's really important to have a super low granny gear really low bottom gear for getting up the really steep hills and especially if you're someone like me that spends a lot of time in the mountains it's really really key that you have a very low gear that you can just click down into and just sit there in that low gear spin up the hill and make sure that you get there without knackering your legs too much personally I think it's really important to have a bottom gear that has a range of something like 18 gear Ines or less 20 gear Ines is doable but you're going to find that on the very steep hills it's probably not quite enough this bike has a bottom Gear with a range of 15 gear Ines which is super super low basically on this bike I can pedal up almost anything as long as I'm not losing traction or tipping over backwards so having something with as low 15 gear inches for your bottom gear is incredibly beneficial and it makes life so much easier so if you can go as low as that then that's fantastic if not I would say aim for at least 18 if not 20 if you can't manage 18 on the top end it really depends on how fast you spin your legs I have quite a high pedal Cadence so I generally don't need quite as high of a gear as maybe someone else might this bike has a Top Gear of something like 96 gear in I believe which is enough for me to Pedal up to about 45 km an hour without spinning out and that's more than enough for me I'm very rarely paddling faster than that the only time I'm going to be doing that really is downhill and then I can happily just sit there and enjoy the free distance okay let's talk a little bit about wheel sizes this is a 29er bicycle these are 29x 2.25 in tires the question of what wheel size to go with has been around for a long time and ultimately I don't really think there's necessarily a right answer for everybody the three wheel sizes that are generally available are going to be 26 in 27.5 in and 29 in like this one my suggestion would be to avoid 26 in at this point it used to be conventional wisdom that 26 in was the best wheel size to go around the world with just because it was likely to be the most widely available in my experience that's definitely not the case anymore it's very hard to find parts for 26 in especially in the modern world even in more remote parts of the world like Africa you're going to find it's actually quite difficult to find parts of 26 in especially good quality parts so I would say for most of you 27.5 or 29 is going to be the way to go between 27 .5
and 29 I think a lot of it is going to come down to your height if you're a shorter Rider then it makes much more sense to go with 27.5 because you going to have less issues with clearance between the handlebars and the wheel and also between the saddle and the back wheel when you're carrying luggage on the bike if you're a total Rider you're going to have the choice of going with either the 29 or the 27.5 I'm about 6t so I could go with either but I do prefer the 29 I just find it has slightly better rollover and it's a little bit faster on smoother surfaces the 7.5 does have the advantage of having more different tire options available it's a little bit easier to pack up if you need to put your bike onto a bus or in a box cuz it's a little smaller and you also have the advantage of it turning faster and being a little bit lighter as well in general I don't think it's a big deal I think you'd be happy with either so just go with whatever works for you in terms of the tire width I've gone with 2.25 in wide tires for me that's a good sweet spot I've ridden both
narrower tires and wider tires and I find that this for me is a good compromise between Comfort TR fraction and speed personally I don't think I would go below a 2-in tie for the kind of riding that I do just cuz I know I'm likely to end up on some rougher off-road and I don't think that anything less than 2 in is quite enough really for the kind of stuff I like to do as for going wider as I say I've ridden 3-in tires for quite a long time and I do really like the extra float that it provides but for the most part I find it's Overkill and it does add a lot of weight and rolling resistance if you have wider tires on there so for me something like 2.25 2.35 something like that is a good compromise gives you plenty of float for the rougher stuff but it's also pretty fast once you Pump It Up On Pavement and smooth the gravel while I'm talking about the tires I think it's also worth pointing out that I run my tires tubeless I've been running tubless tires for at least the last 5 years and I honestly would never go back to running tubes in my tires for me it just makes a lot more sense to run tubeless once you set it up they're incredibly reliable it makes life far easier you just never have to worry about punctures the reliability is so good with these days that honestly I have no worries whatsoever for a long tour I would still carry an inner tube and there's nothing stopping you from putting an inner tube in a tubless tire if needed but in practice that's only happened to me I think twice over the last 5 years I've had to run a tube so I say the reliability is really that good these days that I don't think there's any reason not to be running tubless there's a bit of a learning curve with the setup but it's nowhere near as complicated as you think so if you can run tubless on your tires I would say that's one of the single biggest upgrades you can make to your bike it really does make a huge difference and I think there's no reason not to run chupis if you can I would say though that the only reason I'm running 2.25-in tires is that I do have a front suspension on this bike I find that without front suspension if I'm running a rigid Fork without any kind of front suspension I find 2.25 is probably a little
bit too thin I don't have quite enough cushion on it for riding rigid so I would say if you're running a suspension Fork like this you can get away with something like 2.25 or in that range if you're running rigid though I would probably want a slightly wider tire for most things if I were running this bike in rigid I would probably be running something like 2.6 or 2.8 in just so that I still have the extra Comfort I need for the rougher roads that I like to ride and without the suspension Fork it's just not quite enough plush 2.6 for me is probably the minimum I would want to go with if I were riding a rigid bike with the suspension though it's plenty comfortable with 2.25 I guess that brings me pretty neatly to the fork I'm running a fox fact three step cast 34 Fork this is running 100 mm of travel which for me is plenty for bike packing it's mainly there just to provide added Comfort on the rougher stuff and it does make things a lot more fun when I get onto the single track for me the big decision in terms of Tire widths and forks is deciding between something like this 100 mm of travel and 29x 2.25 in Tire or going with a rigid fork and a wider plus Tire if I wasn't running this I'd be running a rigid fork and something like a 2.28 in tire for
now I am still using the suspension Fork because I do really like having the extra capability when it comes to single track the suspension Fork is not really needed most of the time and to be honest when I'm riding it does spend a lot of it time in lockout so I would say if you're looking at suspension fork for bike packing getting something that has the option to have lockout is definitely worthwhile but when it does come to more technical single track that is when I noticed the biggest difference the capability of a bike with a good suspension for compared to a rigid fork and a plus tire for me this is far more capable and more importantly it's just a lot more fun I can push this bike a lot harder on the single track than I could if I were riding a rigid plus bike so for me it's actually worth having suspension just for the fun Factor alone that said unless you're riding a lot of single track it may not be worth it I think I'd be quite happy on either there may come a time in the next year or two when I switch from running a suspension fork and 29x 2.25 to running a rigid fork and 27.5 by 2.8 in tires at 27.5 plus the reason to switch would probably be just if I knew I was going to be riding some routes that had looser surfaces there are some in South America where a plus Tire can be handy so it may be that I do switch over at some point in the next few years for now though I've been really happy with this setup in terms of suspension forks for long-term bike packing not a lot of people have actually tested this in terms of how much maintenance needs to be done to a suspension Fork every year especially when riding it as much as you do when you're bike touring I actually have haven't had any problems with this I've basically just serviced my Fork once a year which would probably horrify a lot of bike mechanics but I've not actually had any problems I've taken good care to keep it mostly clean except right now because I've just come up a fairly muddy ride but in general I haven't had any problems it's still working pretty well after nearly a year without any kind of service and I will be getting it serviced in the next couple of months before I get back on tour in terms of the brakes I run mura mt5 hydraulic disc brakes I switched over from mechanical to hydraulic disc brakes about 2 years ago when I got this bike and I haven't had a single problem hydraulic for me is definitely a lot better especially on longer descents mainly because I don't find the same hand fatigue that I do with mechanical disc brakes having gone now to hydraulic disc brakes I don't think I could ever go back to Mechanical it just works a lot better it's a lot more comfortable the main difference between hydraulic and mechanical disc brakes in my experience is not actually the stopping power I always found mechanical disc brakes had more than enough stopping power the difference is mainly hand fatigue on very long rough descents with the mechanical disc brakes I'd find I'd often come away from me with a lot of pain and fatigue in my hands so I'd have to stop sometimes to actually just give my hands a bit of a rest that never really happens with hydraulic disc brakes so I'd say it's definitely worth switching over if you know you're going to be riding a lot of rough stuff in terms of the reliability as I say I've got these brakes blared about once a gear and that's all I've done to them I've not really worried about it beyond that and I've never had a single problem hydraulic disc brakes are very reliable these days so I wouldn't have too many concerns about taking hydraulic disc brakes out on a world tour handlebars next obviously this is something that comes down to personal preference so I've tried a lot of different handlebar types my first bike had drop bars on it personally I'm not such a huge fan of drop bars cuz I don't find them very good for technical riding and I find that they put a lot of your weight forward onto your wrists when you're going down steep rough down Hills so I find a wide flat bar to be the way to go I would definitely suggest getting a bar with a bit of sweep in terms of the curvature of the bar that it sweeps back towards you I find it much more comfortable for long distances I rode for more than a year with the Jones Loop H bar which has a 45° site for me that was just a little bit too much I didn't find it too comfortable I tried various bars at various different angles various different degrees of sweep and after a lot of trial and error this is what I found works for me this is the SQ lab 30X bar which has a 16° sweep 780 mm wide which is a pretty Wide Bar that doesn't mean it's necessarily going to work for you this works for my body my proportions But ultimately I think it's a case of trial and error for figuring out what you find most comfortable I run ergon grips which I find to be absolutely brilliant the key for me with this bike with hand positions and making this handlebar comfortable is the additional grips which I've added onto the bike these are little additional clip-on inner bar ends that are incredibly comfortable they essentially mimic the position of being on the hoods if you're riding drop bars and I find them to be by far the most comfortable hand position I've ever encountered I absolutely love these and I'd highly recommend them from this position I can also still access the brakes and the shifters which means that I can sit that position still have full control and be in extreme comfort you can put these onto virtually any flat bar and they'll work just fine once you start getting to very sweat back bars anything over about 30° I don't think these will work as well just because the position is going to be a little bit wrong for your hands but if you are running a flat bar I would totally recommend giving these a go I do have a discount code for the spear grips so if you'd like to try them check the description and you'll find the discount code there the default shifter that comes with the pinion gearbox is a grip shifter I actually thought I'd really hate the grip shifter because I've always run trigger shifters before on my mountain bikes but in fact I found I absolutely love it it's super convenient and it gives me the ability to dump all of my gears at once with the gearbox you can actually shift gears without pedaling which means that if I come to a stationary I can shift from bottom gear to Top Gear in the space of a couple of seconds I've also got a lot of questions about how I wrap my bars because I have somewhat of an unusual position the reason I've set my bike up this way with the handlebar tape is that with the pinion grip shifter there's a bit of a drop off that comes from the edge of the shifter down to the handle bar which isn't really comfortable with the spear grips so I wrapped it with bar tape to make it more comfortable and then did the same on the opposite end just to mirror the same position I've also extended the bar tape slightly into the center so that I have another hand position on the inside of the bars there one last thing to note about my handlebar setup is that I have used Arrow bars in the past and I do really like them for certain situations I don't have Arrow bars on my bike at the moment because I won't be taking them for my next few trips although I do really like Arab bars and I find them very comfortable I find that most of the time they aren't necessary and they do add quite a substantial amount of weight to the bike generally the only time I'm going to bring Arrow bars or if I know I'm going to be covering vast distances on relatively flat open terrain where I'm going to just have to cover lots of big miles on the bike the next major trip I'm going to be doing from Canada down through the US and into Mexico I've decided not to bring the aerob bars we'll see whether I end up missing them but anyway I won't be bringing them on the next trip which is why they're not on the bike at the moment okay so almost done if we talk about the saddle the saddle that I'm running is a Brooks B17 narrow carved leather saddle I tried so many Saddles over the last few years and I still haven't found anything that's more comfortable than this in a way I'd prefer not to be running a leather saddle but having tried probably 10 different Saddles over the last few years to try and find a non-leather saddle that worked for me I just haven't been able to find anything that's even close to as comfortable as this so even though I don't love that it's leather I still use the saddle just because it's so damn comfortable Saddles are notoriously personal so what works for me might well not work for you leather saddles have an advantage in that once you've broken them in they do mold themselves to your Anatomy so they're more likely to be comfortable than something which is fixed if you are looking for a saddle then I'd say this is worth a go for me one thing that is really important is that I have a cutout in the saddle because I find without that I do tend to get a certain numbness downstairs which isn't much fun so cutout is really important unfortunately Saddles are generally just a case of trial and error you have to try out a lot of saddles you find something that works for you I don't wear padded shorts either so it's really important that I have a saddle that works and that's comfortable for days on end even without the ptra padding and Brooks for me has been the one so far some people do ask about how I look after a leather saddle when it rains in theory you're supposed to protect it from the rain because rain can damage it but actually in my experience that hasn't happened I've never really worried about protecting my saddle I've just kind of left it out in the rain when needed and it's always been absolutely fine they know we near as delicate as people think so so I just personally don't worry about it it's been absolutely fine this saddle is still going strong after a couple of years and I've never really worried about it it's still doing great so yeah no stress the seat post that I have on here is a suspension seat post this is the red shift shock stop suspension seat post seat posts are one of those components that I didn't think was really that important until I tried some better ones and I would say it's worth looking at if you're looking for a decent upgrade supension seat posts are pretty expensive so it may not be worth the money to you it just depends on your budget obviously if can afford it I would say this is the one to go with I did try using a Cane Creek e silk suspension seat post for a while and I found that one made a small difference but not enormous this one though I find does make a really big difference to comfort so I'd say this one is actually worth it the Cane Creek I didn't find to me quite significant enough to be worth the extra cost but this does definitely make a significant difference to comfort the big difference I find is that it just takes all the stress out of my lower back when I'm cycling so it is definitely worth it if you can afford it on another note I do get asked every now and again about mud guards or fenders if you're in North America I don't usually run mud guards when I'm on Torch because I find that although they help protect you from water spray they can actually cause more problems than they solve because mud can very easily get stuck in there you can have clearance issues so usually I don't tend to bother with them generally speaking I tend to prefer to tore in relatively dry places so I don't usually need to bother with mud guards too much lastly we've got pedals one of the less glamorous components on a bike I prefer running flat pedals for bike packing just because I don't like taking a second pair of shoes and I like doing a lot of hiking off the bike so I don't want to bring clip in shoes cuz I know I'll need a second pair whereas I can get away with just one pair if I go with Flats my first year of bike touring I didn't really give much importance to pedals so I just generally went with whatever cheap pedals I could find as a consequence I think I went through four or five different sets of pedals over the year that it took me to cycle from New Zealand back to England including one pair that snapped on Me In in the middle of a snowstorm in his bistan causing me to have to cycle about 15 km on one pedal to make it back into civilization which is hilarious in hindsight but wasn't quite as funny at the time so I would actually say pedals are something worth taking at least a little bit seriously and not necessarily going for the absolute cheapest option you can find these are raceface Atlas pedals which are incredibly good incredibly grippy with a good pair of mountain bike shoes and pedals like these I don't find I miss clipping pedals at all actually I find I have more than enough grip even when it's very wet the downside to these pedals is that they're absolutely lethal on your shins when it comes to hi a bike I've got more than a few scars from pedals like this because the pins really just love to dig into your skin especially when you have to do hike a bike so you do definitely need to be a little bit careful if you're running pedals as grippy as this if you're looking for a cheaper alternative a good pair of flat pedals that work I would say the Race Face Chester flats are a good choice I was running those for about a year they're pretty affordable and they work really well so I'd say definitely worth looking at those if you're looking for a cheaper option than this I'm not sponsored by Race Face I just reckon they make good pedals okay so I think that is just about it it is freezing cold here in England so I am looking forward to getting inside and warming up my hands if you did find this video useful I'd really appreciate it if you could give this video a like and let me know in the comments also please subscribe and share this video with your friends it helps me out a lot with the YouTube algorithm there are going to be a lot more videos coming out this year and subscribing is free so why not okay I'm going to go inside and get warm so I hope you enjoyed the video I hope you have a great rest of the day and if you have any questions be sure to let me [Music] know
2024-02-18 12:11
