The Ikon and Rekon Combo

My Mukluk's 29er wheelset has been a bit of a weird spot for me. I got a Stan's Flow wheelset with 29mm internal diameter. They advertise it as capable of running 2.35" to 2.8" tires. My first tire was the Maxxis Aggressor - 2.5", right in the middle. It worked well, but it was a somewhat heavy and aggressive tire for the riding I do. Next up, I tried the Terrene McFly tires. Unfortunately, the Flow rims don't really work on 2.8" tires, and I experienced quite a bit of squirm and self-steer - typical problems with too much tire on too little rim.

The next set I'm trying is the Maxxis Ikon and Rekon combo. I got the Ikon 2.35" for the rear tire, and the Rekon 2.6" tire for the front. These tires feature frequently on the Tour Divide, and I anticipate that they'll handle the bikepacking and adventuring I like to do. I'm also intrigued to see how they handle dirt and singletrack.

I've put about 40 miles on these tires on a mix of pavement, dirt/gravel, and easy XC singletrack so far. They do the job really well on these surfaces so far.

It's been a few months since installing them, and I haven't done that much riding with them. I've put another hundred or so miles on them, and I think they're pretty great.

The Ikon measures out to 2.43" on the i29 rim, and the Rekon measures out to 2.54". Barely a size difference. Who ever heard of a Maxxis tire measuring out larger than it's listed width? I guess 29mm is a wide rim for these.

The Rekon offers supreme cornering and steering confidence in loose, sandy gravel. The Ikon sticks in great and has no problem pushing up a steep bit. Going for the Ikon up front would give me a bit lighter and faster ride, but it'd make riding some of the sketchier fire roads a lot less comfortable.

UPDATE (Oct 7 2019): These tires are stupid awesome. Fantastic adventure cycling tire if you want something a bit beefier than the typical Ikon.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Jamis Bike Comparison: Coda vs Sequel vs Renegade

Jamis released the Sequel recently.  It's a more modern competitor of sorts to the Jamis Coda series.  The Renegade is their gravel/adventure bike, but these kinds of bikes are fantastic commuters typically.  Let's compare these bikes. EDIT: I've appended a brief "test ride" comparison to the end. Frame The Coda and Sequel are running a Reynolds 520 steel frame.  The Renegade has a 6061 aluminum frame.  The Coda and Renegade have an extra water bottle mount on the bottom of the downtube. Geometry Here are the geometries for a medium bike on both: +----------+-------+-------+---------------+------------+------------+------------+------------+-----------+---------+-----------+-----------+ | Bike     | Stack | Reach | Top Effective | Head Angle | Seat Angle | Chain Stay | Wheel base | Fork rake | BB Drop | Head Tube | Standover | +----------+-------+-------+---------------+------------+------------+------------+------------+-----------+---------+--------
Read more

Lezyne Mega XL GPS vs Wahoo Elemnt Bolt

Image
EDIT HISTORY: This post was initially published in February 2019, and updated in the summer when some firmware updates landed. Those firmware updates fixed a number of problems, but not all of them. It was updated again in October 2019 to try out the new firmware, which caused many of the old problems to resurface, effectively ruining the device. I've owned the Wahoo Elemnt Bolt for a while, and I like it. It has poor in-app route creation, and the battery life could be better. ( see my whole review here ) The Lezyne Mega XL GPS came out recently and seems like a better fit for bikepacking. Lezyne advertises a 48 hour battery life and much improved offline navigation and maps. It's also $50 cheaper. If the Lezyne delivers on it's promise, then it would be a compelling choice. I got it to test out and see how it works in real life scenarios. Side by side comparison tl;dr: The Lezyne has dramatically better route creation from the phone app. The Lezyne has bett
Read more

Drop Bar Conversions

So I've got a drop bar Mukluk. It's awesome. Here's what you need to know in order to successfully do a drop bar conversion: Geometry This step is really important, because it will determine if the end result will fit you. It would really suck to finish the rather expensive conversion and have a bike that was too big! The geometry of the bike will change. While flat handlebars are, well, flat, drop bars have significant extra reach associated with them. The Salsa Cowchipper has a reach of 68mm, and the Woodchipper has a reach of 56mm. The Salsa Rustler handlebars that came stock on my Mukluk had a 11 degree backsweep, which worked out to roughly -20mm of reach when I measured it. So, we're talking a total reach difference of 88mm. The stock stem on the Mukluk is 60mm, and you can get 30mm BMX stems, which gets us to a 58mm difference. What I found is that your lower back angle doesn't change as much as you might expect due to the narrower bars. If we d
Read more