MTB Lockdown upgrades part 1: The Wolf Tooth Bling Kit Link to heading
Like many parts of the world, the global Covid-19 pandemic has lead to a period of lockdown in Scotland, which has resulted in me transitioning to working from home, whilst also home-schooling my kids and unable to get out properly on my mountain bike (I say ‘properly’ as I have no decent trails near me - I am however getting out whenever I can just to spin the wheels with my boys, but I’ve been entirely unable to send it).
With all this isolation and lack of mountain biking, combined with saving a not insignificant amount of money by not having to pay to park my car every weekday or pay for city-centre lunch (man can’t live on Boots meal deals alone!), I’ve been forced to do what any self respecting mountain biker would do in the circumstances.
I’ve wasted all that saved cash on shiny trinkets for my bikes.
First up: The Wolf Tooth Bling Kit Link to heading
Golem would jizz his pants if he saw these rings!
So, what is it? Well, those engineering geniuses at Wolf Tooth Components have toiled away for hours and created…
some shiny headset spacers!
But wait, that’s not all! No, they’ve also bundled in not two, but four anodised bolts to add a bit of shiny to your bottle cage bosses.
Honestly, it’d be hard to get any of these wrong, and the guys at Wolf Tooth have some pretty awesome components in their line up, so it’d be a bit daft to spend too much time talking about functionality - this is just bike jewellery, hell they don’t try to hide that, it’s called the bling kit after all!
The only thing that does stand out is the top cap, which rather than sitting flush with the top of your steerer now incorporates a 5mm spacer into it, so it kinda sits over the top of your steerer, but honestly, this is the one bit of the kit I could take or leave. There’s nothing wrong with it - unless of course you want to run your stem right at the top of your steerer - it’s just different.
So why would you put these on your bike? To save a shit-ton of weight?
Strava KOM here I come!
Yes. Yes, I did weight them - and compared to the spacers, top cap and bolt I was replacing I saved a whopping six grams! So yeah, no, you don’t buy them to save weight - you buy them to look cool, and look cool they do… can you really put a price on that?
Of course you can! And that price (here in the UK) is around £30. Yeah, you read that right, the kit costs thirty damn quid and not only that, but I actually paid that.
“But Grant…why?!?” I hear you ask! Well, there are a couple of reasons - firstly, as I’ve already alluded to, Wolf Tooth make some fine kit, so you can have a bit of faith that these are decent tiny, shiny, things.
Second - neither of my mountain bikes have long steerers or run many spacers at the moment, and both only have one set of bottle mounts, so this kit will really do two bikes (for me, your milage may vary!), rather than just one.
Third - hey, they look cool - the top cap has a laser etched wolf FFS!:
Is that a fire hydrant in your pants, or are you just pleased to see me?
I really don’t have much else to add. The kit is lovely, it’s eye-wateringly expensive (for what you get - you could buy anodised bolts and spacers elsewhere for literally half the price) and I couldn’t be happier with it (hashtag lockdown hysteria…), even if you can’t see the bottle mount bolts when you’ve got a cage and bottle on the bike…
It’d be rude to cover these up… where’s my camelbak?
| The Ratings | |
|---|---|
| Utility | 6/10 - Does what it says on the tin, but you don’t need them |
| Aesthetics | 8/10 - Bling, bling baby! |
| Value | 5/10 - Yes, you did read that price right! |
| Overall | Tingly nippled excitement / 10 |
Closing Comments Link to heading
Sexy, Shiny, Cheap - pick two…