All Things Bikes and Tacos! (...and every vehicle imaginable)

Yeah, pretty shit packing job. Looks like the box was smooshed, and the hubs may have caused the spoke damage as the wheels were pressed into each other, but hard to tell. The listing photos looked good. That's not a bad deal for those wheels, and it doesn't sound like the guy was intentionally trying to mislead you (he's just bad at packing). I'd personally take the $50 and put it behind me. I'd mount them up on a bike (without a tire) and see if they have a detectable wobble. If not, just ride them. If you find a Trek shop to have them fixed up, I'd have them add the extra pawls to the rear hub if that hasn't already been done, super cheap upgrade for double the engagement points.

 

Congrats!!! Im a Nica Alumni out of Pennsylvania, moved down to Brevard, NC last year to start school and race on the Brevard college team.

 

Poop packaging indeed. So far the seller is being very receptive of responsibility and is communicating that he’s willing to make it right.

LBS is a Trek store and I’ve known all the guys there for years. Full confidence in their abilities.

These already have the other 3 pawl set for 108pt. Another reason I’ve always liked the Line series of wheels. Super affordable wheelset with pretty darn good specs. Being a Trek/Bontrager product it doesn’t win trailhead points so not a ton of folks seem to ride them

 

Well, I ride them, and I ride XR4 tires as well. It's what came on my bike, but I'd ride them anyway. Maxxis seems to get all the love, but they don't agree with me. I've tried multiple models and there's always something that doesn't work well for me. Apparently I don't care much for trailhead points, lol.

 

I also ride some Line wheels with the XR4 tires on my hardtail. They're a good product for a reasonable price. The wheels have taken a beating, since they're on my hardtail, and have held up well. The XR4s came with the wheelset and I've been pretty impressed with them too, but I'll probably go back to Maxxis when they're done.

 

I'm with you. I've put lots of miles on Bonti XR4s. Zero complaints and would happily run them again.

Truthfully I don't consider myself a good enough rider to truly be able to discern much overall differences in tires that are built for similar purposes. Typically by the time I'm replacing a tire, its pretty well toast. So its no surprise that the 'new' tire might perceived as being a better tire. I'm on Maxxis tires currently and have another set of Maxxis in my parts bin. Although I just took receipt of some Spesh tires that I'll likely go to next simply because I wanted to try out the looks of some tanwalls.

 

The Taco is down there, somewhere...

 

We used to call them "gumwalls" back in my youth BMX days. I think I had the Ground Control/Purgatory combo on a Stumpjumper and liked them, but that was a Plus bike with all the grip, so not a fair comparison.

I rarely wear out tires. They usually get destroyed by a sidewall slash before I wear them out, so I try to keep a new spare handy. Nothing like buying an $80 tire and slashing a sidewall on the first ride. I've got an SE4 on hand just in case.

I should probably go through my parts bins and see what I don't need, maybe someone here could use something. I've whittled things down to one MTB and one city/street bike and probably don't need half the stuff I have sitting around.

 

I work at a bike shop and they are the only carbon hoops we could get for a while, and much cheaper than other brands. I’ve been digging them. Same with our customers, no complaints yet!

 

Tis seems like a good place to ask this LOL. Upgrade suspension on my Taco first or upgrade from my low end fork on my MTB first? Can only really get one this year LOL.

 

details on the current state of both?

 

Tacoma SR with stock suspension 19000 miles on it
Marin Bolinas Ridge 2 hard tail with a SR Suntour XCM DS 100mm travel. came with the bike.

 

upgrade the for for sure.

you can try suntours upgrade program. i got an epixon for like 300 a couple months ago. its not a fox, but its decent and servicable
https://www.srsuntour.us/pages/upgrade-program

 

Cool. I'll have to see if I can find my receipt from when I got my bike.

 

is the budget the same for both upgrades? I'd imagine you'd get a much better fork, proportionately speaking, than a suspension for a truck, for the same amount of money.

 

it's more that if I get a fork now, It'll come out of the fun money I squirrel away so I'd be pushing off truck upgrades. Got my MTB out for the first time for the season this week, and realized how much I really don't like the suspension.

 

oh i get where you're coming from. makes sense, than I would upgrade whichever one you enjoy least. the fork would for sure cheaper.

 

Probably the fork then. I can deal with the truck not being perfect. the fork is like riding a pogo stick at times LOL

 

Do some digging on your fork, sometimes you can get away with revalving or swapping some minor parts to make it perform better vs. replacing the whole unit.

 

Be careful with compatibility. Looks like your fork *might* have a 1 1/8 straight steerer tube with a 9mm x 100mm dropout. That limits your upgrade options a little, but verify the steerer tube. If it's tapered, it opens things up a bit. You might have to replace the front wheel/front hub to a thru-axle to get something better.