Josh rolls into the trailhead parking lot, five minutes early for the weekly group ride. Almost everyone else is already there, putting bikes together and doing standard pre-ridemaintenance. Matt is already pedaling around on his Jabberwocky, extolling the beautiful simplicity of riding a steel frame with 29″ wheels and only one miserable gear to anyone who will listen.
As Fitch puts away his shock pump after fine-tuning the air pressure in his massive fork, Josh notices that he is wearing his favorite pair of baggies, complete with a hole over the left butt cheek from a nasty wreck into a thorn bush on last week’s ride. Fitch wouldn’t ride a hardtail if his life depended on it.
“Everyone’s bike is different,” John thought.”Every bike is so different, that being different is almost ordinary. Is there any component or bike out there that is truly original anymore?”
In a sport that is rooted in rebellion and bucking the system, the quest to stand out from the crowd is deeply ingrained. The individualistic streak runs so deep in the mountain biker’s psyche that he even strives to stand out from the crowd of his fellow riders.
But in a subculture rooted in individualism with everyone riding a different style or brand of bike, how do you up the ante and truly make your mountain bike a unique machine?
Enter Dirty Dog
Dirty Dog’s mission is to do precisely that:
To make high quality, high performance components that look unlike anything else in the marketplace. Our theme is to, ‘Leave Your Mark,’ or stand out in the crowd. There are so many incredible bikes to choose from, but most are built up with standard component groups. DirtyDogMTB allows you to express yourself.
The Web Rotors
Dirty Dog hooked me up with a snazzy pair of Web rotors to review. At 160 mm (6″) in diameter, these rotors are at home on either my FS trail bike or my 29er. Weighing in at 109 grams, they are both stylish and weight conscious.
Installation is a snap: just take off the old rotors and put on the new ones, tightening the bolts down incrementally in a star-shaped pattern.
On The Trail
The web rotors’ performance was spot-on out on the singletrack. Stopping power was just as good as all of my other 160 mm rotors, thanks to a modern wave pattern providing maximum heat-shedding abilities.
While stopping the bike is a mandatory feature of any brake rotor, the Webs really do bring that “bling” factor to the playing field. These rotors are seriously original, and they do add that little bit of personal touch to an often overlooked part of the bike.
At an MSRP of $38.95 per rotor, this is both a stylish upgrade and a relatively affordable one!
More Rotors from Dirty Dog
Compared to some of Dirty Dog’s newer rotor offerings, the design of the Web rotor is pretty tame (though more affordable).
Check out some more of their rotor designs:
Bone Burner, MSRP $68.95 in 160 mm size
Dragon, MSRP $68.95 in 160 mm size
Skull, MSRP $68.95 in 160 mm size
Ace of Spades, MSRP $68.95 in 160 mm size
If you are looking to customize the snot out of your mountain bike, be sure to pick up a pair of Dirty Dog rotors!
Thanks to Dirty Dog for providing these rotors for review!
9 Comments
Jun 8, 2011
That intro was my attempt at being literary... IE it was fiction. (Maybe I should have said that, but I thought that since my main character's name for those few short paragraphs was Josh it woulda given it away, haha! Anyhow, I've had enough literariness for now.) I was trying to think of random names and I thought "Fitch is just a really awesome name," so I threw it in there. Hope you don't mind....
@Fleetwood, swapping 160 mm rotors should be easy as long as they have the standard 6 bolt pattern. I'm pretty sure you can increase the size of the rotor and just use the same caliper, but you might want to check with element22 on that.
Jun 7, 2011
Jun 8, 2011
I MUST have a pair of the Skull ones!
Jun 8, 2011
You'll need a centerlock to 6 bolt adaptor to fit the new rotors to your existing hub. You can also upgrade to a larger rotor but you will need the proper sized fork adaptor for the size of rotor you will be using and the type of fork mount your fork frame has. Some forks will have a limit to the size rotor they recommend running so check on yours first before just going out and buying the biggest thing you can find.
Jun 7, 2011
Jun 9, 2011
Sorry they won't work for you easily man.
@maddslacker, I could really go for a set of the Bone Burner's! Maybe for my other bike???
Jun 7, 2011
Are these pretty universal when swapping out, or are there things I need to consider first. Also, can you increase the size of the rotor (e.g. 160mm to 185mm) to get more braking power?
Jun 8, 2011
Oct 12, 2011