Been checking out new bikes last few weeks, and i know living in birmingham not the best place but went to the fort yesterday, speshi shop and i think the other place was the bike shop, both funnily enough owned by the same person. As the one sales guy came across from the one store to the other to help me try the bikes for size.

So ive been looking at 120-125mm travel, maybe a speshi camber expert. Reason for it, 1 i weigh nothing and my current bike has 140mm and i never even come close!

The guy in the shop asked what i rode and where so i said cannock, you know all the braking bumps lol! and welsh trail centers, oh with that you will need 140mm at least, really??

I know ride what your comfortable with, but made me think, if i don’t come close to my existing limits surely im wasting money buying a bike with the same travel again?

It’s an arms race.

Salesman are trying to make sales.

Most people don’t even bother trying to set-up their suspension.

I’ve not been to Cannock, but other trail centres can be ridden on pretty much anything with 2 wheels.

Rigid and hardtail bikes can be ridden on mountains, including the “Greater Ranges”.

The rider makes more difference than the bike.

The travel myth is slowly unravelling…better damping beats travel in most situations. There’s no hard and fast rule, back in the day everyone rode trail centres on fully rigids…

I’ve three bikes, two of which are full sussers with 5″+ travel. If I were to buy a bike tomorrow though, it’d be a Camber.

Ideal bike for Cannock would be a 100mm HT or possibly a rigid 29er…

I’ve got a 150mm Pitch, it makes trail centers (on the whole) boring, it much prefers fast open rocky tracks where you can drift the bike through corners and use the travel in rocky bits, trail centers make it feel a bit dead even when you’re on the limit of the grip and going quite quickly it feels very…………I dunno, it like you just go into a corner, turn your hips, look at the exit and you’re done, there’s no involvement. Wider more open tracks you’ve got constant line choices to deal with and they’re much rougher.

Stainburn trail center – yes to FS and lots of travel
Kielder – no, I want to go back on a hardtail to convince myself that it was just the bike as the trails seemed realy well built, just didn’t work with the pitch
Dalby – borderline, 90% of it is probably fast and involving enough for the pitch, but a 100mm FS would be faster, and there are still sections where less travel would be better.

Fastest I’ve ever ridden cannock was on an anthem-x, it just seemed to work all the time there, I imagine it’d be hard work on the tracks the Pitch likes, but for trail centers in general and ‘normal’ trails I’d say either that, or a ~130mm hardtail.

A rigid 29er……… 🙄

thisisnotaspoon – Member

I’ve got a 150mm Pitch, it makes trail centers (on the whole) boring, it much prefers fast open rocky tracks where you can drift the bike through corners and use the travel in rocky bits,
From what I’ve seen, most people don’t ride anywhere near as hard as that, trail centre or otherwise.

There are always a lot of fairly flash bikes in the car parks at Llandegla etc. but, even so, it is rare that anybody ever overtakes the motley bunches (riding a variety of hardware) that I ride with.

I used to fly round on a 100mm travel full sus but after a scotland adventure i changed to my current bike, 100mm wasn’t quite enough. For most trails would agree though 100mm is normally just about right!

Geometry and quality of suspension’s more important… But they’re not unconnected, if a company’s making a slack low bike they tend to give it a load of travel too, and an awful lot of 100/120mm bikes come with xc angles.

I want to try a camber, seems like it might tick the boxes for me.

How much travel you use is dependant on how stiff your forks are, and how much they are damped. I could use 140mm driving off the kerb if I set forks up that way, or not bottom 80mm forks landing a jump. 😉

As per PJM1974: It’s all about the damping.

Get the damping right and you don’t need as much to compensate.

However getting the damping right requires clever fettling and understanding of the characteristics of the travel.

I’ve had Loco tune my Float RL 140’s and now I can lean on them through anything and know they’ll not give out.

Before, they were a bit uncontrolled.

Likewise at the rear. The amount of fellow riders I’ve had to teach to slow down damping and they eventually go quicker and get less beat up over the course, is unbelievable.

Henceforth, I’d rather have a well set up 120 than a badly setup 140.

I’ll add that I love my Zesty to bits; I love having the extra bit of travel to play with on the descents. However I reckon a 120mm is better for the majority of my riding. A 100mm would likely end up with wierd angles, and a bit too racey for me.

ETA: I love razzing about on my hardtail Charge Duster – it’s ace with a set of 120mm forks. On the flip side I miss my Spicy (although still sitting unbuilt in my garage – that thing seemed to feel like a full on DH bike, which is credit to how well the geo and suspension worked, bearing in mind it climbed well too.

LMT

The guy in the shop asked what i rode and where so i said cannock, you know all the braking bumps lol! and welsh trail centers, oh with that you will need 140mm at least, really??

He probably assumed you’re a hack. Did you give him any reason to assume otherwise? No offence like.

Reason for it, 1 i weigh nothing and my current bike has 140mm and i never even come close!

How much do you actually weigh? I mean, are you a small child? I struggle to believe that you’ve never come close to using 140mm of travel somewhere. If not you really need to point your car north and step on the loud pedal.