Viewing 12 posts - 81 through 92 (of 92 total)
  • Anyone else not get on with hardtails?
  • idiotdogbrain
    Free Member

    I appreciate the input, but please read the first post properly! It’s not about only being able to ride FS, or FS vs. HT – I was trying to see if anyone else didn’t get on with having squish at one end but not the other. I love riding rigid offroad; how many HT riders would..? 😉

    Maybe the thread should be entitled “Does anyone else find hardtails unbalanced compared to rigid or FS?”

    ghostlymachine
    Free Member

    Spend some time sorting the fork out.
    My FS is set up far softer and ramps up far less than the HT.

    i reckon a lot of it is the population changes over the years. We’re all older and fatter. So the 12″ of travel you used to have on the back of your hardtail when you were in your 20s and weighed 70 kilos now gets tired quickly and either locks out, packs down or needs to have a sit down and a rest after 10 minutes. 😉

    ghostlymachine
    Free Member

    And FWIW I’ve tried a long travel hardtail. It was bloody horrible.
    That changing of the HT angle and the feeling of being about to pitch over the bars and the amount the handling changed during the travel was awful. Don’t think you’d be able to fettle forks to get over that. Unless you made them ramp up so much that they became short travel forks. Which sort of negates the point of a long travel HT.

    idiotdogbrain
    Free Member

    See, that’s exactly the feeling I’m talking about – that pitching forward unevenness. I run the forks on my FS with the HSC wide open (maybe one click), but a fair bit of LSC to stave off the brake dive. Just couldn’t get the (more basic) forks on the HT to feel right so ended up just winding on the compression damping/lockout so they were only active on big hits.

    whitestone
    Free Member

    Forks have come on significantly in the last ten(?) years or so. Those on my Mt Vision would pitch/dive at every opportunity no matter how I set them up but the X-Fusions on the HT were much more controllable.

    Putting a decent set of forks on your HT would seem to be the answer (or go some way towards it)

    benp1
    Full Member

    I personally think a dropper on a hardtail is as important/useful as on a FS bike (for normal riding)

    Your legs are the suspension on a hardtail so you need the saddle out the way, if it’s bumpy you can’t sit and spin as you’re getting bucked up all the time

    On a FS (not that I’ve ridden one for any distance) the suspension provides the travel to let you sit

    paulneenan76
    Free Member

    Then ride a good slack hardtail with forks as good as your FS bike then – it’s not difficult is it. A great hardtail with great forks and good tyre choice will be a better ride than a boggo FS bikes with spindly forks. I’ve got an older set of dual air Revs on my HT and they are top notch. No diving, tuneable etc., so I don’t find the above issue familiar at all.

    nwill1
    Free Member

    I have a HT and FS, don’t find the HT unbalanced. I generally ride them on different terrain though. FS for rougher terrain and HT for lesser rough terrain, I think if the terrain is really rough with lots of big rocks the HT is less fun guess you could consider that an imbalance. Considering converting the Hat to rigid in the winter with carbon forks just to try it out.

    andykirk
    Free Member

    I have a Stanton Slackline which is my first suspension fork bike after a few rigids. I cannot get on with it at all… glad to hear I am not the only one who feels pitched far too forward on the bike and suffer from the terrifying ‘fork dive’. I have been over the bars three times, and wasn’t even doing anything particularly testing. Coming from a rigid I always rode on the back wheel, and now with the sus fork people told me ride more on the front wheel. I just don’t feel safe riding that way, I am used to weighting the back and have the front wheel sketchy, not the other way around. However at 6ft2 I have always had the nagging feeling that the large frame is too small for me which may be partly to blame, but my next bike will be longer top tube and max 100mm front suspension for sure. Or rigid.

    chiefgrooveguru
    Full Member

    I ride all my bikes off the back wheel – I just ride them better that way. It’s particularly noticeable riding my hardtail – way more control and speed standing tall on the pedals and light on the bars, than leaning on the bars in that “ride the fork” way.

    Most people giving technique advice don’t know what they’re talking about, even great riders. They’ll often incorrectly analyse what they do and then tell you to ride differently to how they really ride. See Neil Donoghue’s drop coaching video for a prime example of “do what I say, which isn’t actually what I do…”

    chiefgrooveguru
    Full Member

    And the front wheel isn’t sketchy when you ride a bike with a sus fork like that – by riding more off the rear wheel you make it do more of the turning work so the back slips first. Just like a mid-engined car has more weight on the back but the back lets go first.

    grannyjone
    Free Member

    I’m usually on the full suspension but when I’m occasionally on the hard tail it feels really sketchy on the rough stuff, both Up and down. Might be because I’m not used to it but I don’t ever feel confident on it when it gets rough.

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