Hi guys. I certainly wouldn't class myself as 'new' to mountain biking, having been doing it for the last 24 years or so(!) but I have been rather 'out of the loop' for a while.
Some years ago, I came into a bit of money and built myself what I considered to be my perfect bike: It was based around my 1995 Kona Fire Mountain frame (owned from new) with an IS rear disc mount (bought from Hope, don't know if they're still available) brazed on to the seat stay, disc supporting brace brazed in between seatstay and chainstay, canti nbosses shaved off, Crud Catcher bosses under the downtube and stove enamelled white. I finished it with a full 2005 XT groupset, Hope Mono Mini 160mm rear and Mono M4 180mm front brakes, Hope XC hubs on Mavic XC717 disc rims, Hope stem, Easton EC70 flat bars, USE Alien carbon seatpost and a Fox F80 RLT fork.
I loved that bike dearly and I don't think I changed a single component on it (other than wear and tear drivetrain consumables) in the 6 years or so since I built it. Hence why I drifted away from bike magazines and just got on with riding the bike I had no desire to change. Unfortunately, some scumbag lowlife broke in a couple of months back and stole it.
Now I come to my point, (sorry it's taken so long!). I've replaced the bike for now with a 2007 Kona Caldera from eBay and, after replacing the seized Hayes 9 brakes with a set of 2012 Deores (M596 I think), it'll do until I can afford something decent. But what to buy though? As you may have guessed from the spec of my old bike, I'm very much an XC rider, I like to keep my wheels on the ground, wear lycra when I ride and like my bikes fast and light. The bikes of today seem to bear little relation to what I knew though. Very short stems and very wide bars (for XC, 100mm was considered short and anything over 580mm was considered wide last I knew) now seem to be the norm, forks have about a mile of travel (does anyone do an 80mm fork anymore? I can't find one) and head angles are slacker than a serial killer's morals. Oh, and anything marketed as an XC bike seem to have 29" wheels, which were a quirky little fad in Gary Fisher's catalogue my 'last time around'. Oh, and a 'cheap' bike now appears to cost upwards of a grand!
I think I have a whole lot of re-learning to do, as I feel very much the bewildered novice all of a audden. What sort of spec is now considered to be the benchmark norm for light, fast, XC trail riding (not jumping, 4X or any of that malarky) bikes? Please help!
