New bike day for our son with a 26” Norco Charger. I’m going to have him ride it as is for a bit, but eventually will be replacing the no name wire bead tires on it with something lighter that is tubeless compatible. I don’t need to go full XC weight weenie, but would like to be rolling resistance/weight conscience, makes a big difference when you weigh 80 lbs.
Being a more recent Conti convert myself, if they made a 26” Dubnital/Trinotal combo I’d probably do something like that. What tires should I be looking at?
If you’re in the US, I see that Bike Tires Direct still has some older Contis in 26”, such as the RaceKing and CrossKing. The RaceKing is a fast tire in 29”, don’t know about the 26.
My son also rides a second-hand 26” MTB, which came with some Chinese tires with a very rough profile on it. They weighed +1kg each, so I swapped them for some old 26” tires I still had in the basement (Vittoria Saguaro rear, Schwalbe Nobby Nic front). This made the bike 1 full kg lighter.
This question is interesting, as I don’t really know what tires you can still buy in 26”.
Looking at my favourite online shop here in Europe, it actually surprises me that there are still decent options.
On a related note, I know a small adult looking at the 26” Charger, and so being a bike nerd have of course been looking at the other upgrade options. “Do they make sense?” is a whole different question.
Fork: The stock Suntour fork has steel stanchions. A replacement with aluminum stanchions could save a kilo. Might be able to find one used, and it looks like there’s a current Judy Gold that would work.
Bars: Short(by current standards) used bars are cheap on eBay.
Wheels: Probably a lot of weight savings possible there, but most used sets are going to be narrow. Not many light new options.
Dropper post: A weight increase, but may be worth it.
