Hi
Looking for some help with a strange dilemma.
Ive got the chance to get a blue pig built running full xt gear and revalations 140mm or the chance to get a mamtor built up with the same spec.
My dilemma is, is the van nicholas worth the extra money??
My riding is based mainly in the dark peak and i currently ride a meta 55 and im not shy on the downhills, my problem is an ex roadie has joined our cycling group and hes whooping me on the uphills so im after losing some bike weight, (im only a 10 stone whippet so i cant lose anymore body weight)
I wondered if i would notice the extra weight from the blue pig vs mamtor?
Thanks in advance for any help and sorry if this has been posted before, im a newby.

?? 😕

Great, glad that’s sorted.

nice problem to have 🙂

you won’t go much quicker overall on a hardtail. just get fitter.

Thanks trailertrash. I don’t understand all the steel v titanium
Or weight issue stuff ie does it make you go much faster to be a
Couple of pounds lighter?? I generally just ride, but needing
every advantage I can to catch ex roadie whippet at the moment.
Nice problem to have yeah but mrs spikester grumbling about it
lots and had to sell a kidney to get to this stage.

do you really want to know what I think? it could go on a bit…… 🙂

2 very different frames. It’s not the material that matters as much as the geometry, and these, I believe, are chalk and cheese.

Doesn’t a Blue Pig frame weigh around 5.5lb? If you want to build a light-ish Ragley, wouldn’t you be better off with an Mmmm Bop. Or even a Ragley Ti?

Cheers for the replys. All useful stuff.
Is a ragley ti better than a van nicholas or
Is that another subject?? And I
would like to know what you think trailertrash
I suppose I ought to understand a little about
the hobby I live and breath for.

🙂

I’m no expert but my experience with climbing and running has given me a bit of extra savvy on the weight/performance issue.

within certain limits and at most people’s level and in most ordinary riding, a pound or two here and there on your bike makes no difference whatsoever. e.g. a bit of weight gain in a telescopic seatpost is made up for in going faster due to more control downhill. a heavier frame might be stiffer and transfer power with less lost in flex in the frame or enable you to ride harder due to psychological factors. the same can hold true of more expensive frames – must be stronger surely? and then the whole tangle of factors can play in the opposite sense for light frames – must be weaker, must be more flexible, must be treated more carefully. or is it like that? does your slightly lighter frame really fly off the line? or do you just think it does?

without rigorous scientific analysis you will never know. but it doesn’t really matter that much.

the most significant factor in the equation (if you already have a bike in the 23-26lbs class) as you already seem to appreciate, is the affect of the largest mass in the system – you – your body weight and the muscle to weight ratio of that object.

you will gain far more performance by focussing on your physical and mental training than you will by dropping 500g off your bike. if you really want to drop 500g, have a double espresso 30 minutes before your ride and be near a toilet so you can let fly. I am serious. you will see it makes little difference. ‘Racing Weight’ by Matt Fitzgerald covers the topic of sporting weight in exhaustive detail if you want a text reference book.

focus on hydration, nutrition, sleep, positive mental attitude and getting your glycogen stores up to scratch before the ride – in particular on eating high GI foods in the 30-60 minutes after the last training ride. this energy goes straight to storage in your leg muscles ready for use next time. do not overtrain. you will fail if you do.

pick your route. if you must beat this guy (more on that in a minute) then pick a route that suits you. a route featuring masses of dull climbing or flat out, flat singletrack is going to suit him down to the ground. so don’t do it. get him on your territory, your terrain and win. then when you are fitter you can take the fight to him on his ground. however, the fitness you get from road riding is not something you really get from mtbing. similar but different, and it takes a long time to develop. you aren’t going to do it overnight. compare a marathon runner to a parkour athlete. same difference.

now then. the nub of it all. what is it with this guy? why do you need to beat him? this is a bit odd. some guy pops his head up and throws a few seconds into you on a climb and suddenly you have a hard-on for pulping him. what gives? are you normally the fastest kid on the block…or is your life a yawning existential void gasping out for fulfilment, any fulfillment, even the transient glory of a minor sporting triumph or building the lightest bike on the squad? perhaps mrs spikester has a point? you could spend 50% of what you are spending on a bike on a couple of dozen sessions with a (sports?) psychologist and come out of it a wiser, happier and more at-peace man…..what’s going on dude?

Wow!! Cool stuff trailertrash.
Thanks for the info, really good and my type of reading.
It isn’t about me thrashing this ex roadie it’s about me riding
with him up the hills.
He’s a plump 14 stone kebab eating beer
Monster, I’m a teatotal ( yeah yeah boring) done sports all my
life healthy eating acupuncturist, who knows how to work and
Rest muscles and look after energy.
I guess I’m just looking for some help/ info on how
to improve as well as which bike? I’m never
afraid to ask for help and you seem to have some wise answers.
Well I guess I’ll go and do some zen thinking and sip my green tea.
Cheers trailertrash and others
Ps just to clarify, I’ve never had a hard-on following another male cyclist.

Got a mamtor and it’s great. That’s all I can say on the matter really.

it was a metaphorical hard-on, naturally 😀

how do you find tea-totalism and your social life? I am too and it takes a battering….

Im not alone on the tea juice then? You must be getting the battering i used to get??

I gave up drinking because it interfered with doing sports.
I did martial arts for a long time and training was every sat and sun at 9am so me spending the night before drinking, and then with my head in the toilet later the same night soon brought me to the conclusion something had to give.
Dont miss drink one little bit now.

I really enjoy sports and seeing what the human body is capable of plus with my job im always looking at ways to improve energy be it through food, exercise or rest etc

Got one shot at living life to the full and ive lost too many friends young not to give it my best shot. Cant beat the rush of doing a sport good ( so ive been told)

The mag tested the Mamtor a while ago and found the angles too steep for the fork travel, IIRC. Reading between the lines, they didn’t like it much.

This issue – http://www.singletrackworld.com/magarchive/issue-51/

Cheers Rickos

Very appreciated.

The mag tested the Mamtor a while ago and found the angles too steep for the fork travel, IIRC. Reading between the lines, they didn’t like it much.

What’s weird is the mag says

and the on one website states

So something isn’t right?

FAIL: should have read it properly (not just copied from the website)

Im not alone on the tea juice then? You must be getting the battering i used to get??

well, I stopped drinking in 2001 as drink and drgs had become habitual, boring and my physical and mental health were suffering. I didn’t drink for 8 years. Then I hooked up with a woman who was an enthusiastic drinker, i really liked her though, and the relationship didn’t work with only one of us getting drunk (‘cos that just doesn’t work), so i started drinking again. overall it was the right decision but now that we are not together anymore i have gone back to not drinking again.

i really like not drinking because i strongly dislike being drunk actually, and even more than that I dislike being hungover. i am someone who gets very bad hangovers, seems to be.

Not drinking alcohol does enable you to make the most of your time. i find i have learned how to socialise without it over the years but if you are tired and it’s dark cold and wet outside and you have had a hard week at work then it can be hard to find the energy to socialise in the pub on apple juice and soda.

also, people think you are an alcoholic if you absolutely don’t drink at all, this (being an alky) is generally seen as a unattractive trait, and people make that assumption rather than seeing you as an intelligent person making an individual and healthy choice to not drink or “severely moderate your intake”. shame eh? sometimes it’s best to occassionally take a drink just to avoid the stigma. just often enough for folk to remember “that time you had a drink….” pppffffff

blah blah i could go on. complex field etc…..

go for the pig, i like the chainstay design. alternatively go for a bike like a stumpjumper that would complement the kind of head-down riding you want to do and also allow so road sessions for fitness. use the 5.5 for the bigger offroad stuff.

also there is a difference between having a beer after work or a glass or two if wine with a meal compared with getting trolleyed every friday and saturday.
find the balance.

Didn’t Matt Hart deal with this kind of thing, relative power between heavy/light riders a couple of issues ago? 59 I think, always a fun read even if it doesn’t help that much 🙂

Trailertrash has given you an excellent reply, so I won’t try to cover the ground he has already mapped very well (you see, you can get quality help from the internet).

What I can give insight on is what one or other of the bikes you mention above will feel like.

The BluePig and the MamTor are totally different bikes. For a start, the BluePig is 5.5lbs whereas the Mamtor is 3.2lbs. That is quite a big difference and while I agree with most of what Trailertrash says, I think you will notice the a 2lb weight difference, especially going uphill which is where you say you want the performance gain. I base this on my own experiences of riding a variety of bikes that weigh anything between 26lbs and 32lbs and I do notice the weight difference even when the 32lbs bike drops 2lbs (I have different build kits for both bikes depending on what I’m doing). Having said that, I choose to ride the 32lb bike as a 32lb bike because overall the bike feels better with the heavier coil shock that adds the weight. I don’t care about uphill speed as for me the competition comes with who gets down and along quickest, not up. But everyone has different priorities and motivations.

What I absolutely agree with trailertrash on is his comment about geometry being more material. That’s an important insight I think.
I haven’t ridden the BluePig but I have ridden the Ragley Ti several times and I own a Dialled Alpine and have owned a Cotic Soul and an On One Ti456. Of those the Alpine is closet to the BluePig in terms of geometry, frame material and weight – so 5.5lb, steel, slack HA, long top tub relative to size etc.

Unquestionably the Ti framed bikes rode discernibly better in terms of their material characteristics. The ability for Ti to blend the best bits of steel with those of aluminium (lateral stiffness in the BB for fabulous power response with amazing longitudinal compliance for bump/buzz absorption) is what you pay for; that and the fact that you easily get a sub 4lb frame without any compromise in strength. But, while can blend the best bits, you will still find that a super strong steel frame, will most likely feel stiffer in the BB area than a Ti frame and that is very noticeable when climbing.

The Ragley Ti does this blending of the best bits the best of the Ti framed bikes I’ve ridden, which means it’s not quite as comfy or compliant as others but it is very stiff in the BB area so you get a sense of more of the power going to the back wheel when you stomp on the pedals. Bear in mind that I weigh 100kg (or 15.5 stone in old money) so I’m going to be putting a lot more torque through a frame than you or even your beer swilling kebab eating roadie mate!
Of all the bikes I’ve tried, for my style of riding (fairly aggressive, front weighted, quite loose, flat pedals etc) the 16” Ragley Ti was the standout bike but it’s not for everyone. The geometry on the Ragley bikes is very much geared to going downhill and to get the most out of it, you really need to take them by the scruff of the neck and be quite aggressive with them. That means balancing the weight properly, with a need to move forward quite a bit to weight the front wheel in order to get it to bite and turn in (because it’s quite slack in the steering angle, if you hang off the back, you’ll find the front doesn’t always go where you want it). The front weighting then means the back end can get fairly light and you’ll find the bike starting to drift quite readily in those situations. They also work best, I think, with a short (70mm or shorter) stem and wide bars which help with the weight balancing and turn in.
So it goes downhill like a demon and in a previous thread I described it like this:

“Insolent like a teenager in puberty and as randy as one on heat. It’s a ‘take me by the scruff of the neck, get right over my front, push my face into the dirt you mother fu**er and absolutely wring seven bells of sh*t out of my scrawny, tight, stiff titanium arse’ kind of bike. It’s a 19 year old with all the soft bits still taught as a drum but smooth when you climb onboard; a slip sliding, sh*t spitting, sideways sha**ing ragger of a bike and it’s **** brilliant.”
The BluePig then will feel very like the Ragley Ti in terms of how you ride it and probably be the better transition if you’re coming from a Meta 55. I can’t say what the MamTor would feel like but looking at the numbers (and it’s not the best way to evaluate a bike) it would look like it was going to need a more sensible approach to riding it.
If you want something that is almost as capable as a Ragley, but don’t want the Ti but you do want to save weight, then the obvious choice there would be the Cotic Soul, which is similarly brilliant, but it’s more refined, more mature and sophisticated. In the same spirit of the Ragley Ti comments above:

“ It’s as happy at a Michelin star restaurant in elegant black channel number with Jimmy Choos and matching purse, perfect make up and polite conversation but will also happily be wearing the very finest Agent Provocateur beneath the elegant exterior. If the Ragely is Kings Cross’ finest, then the Soul is a high class hooker. The experience is more sophisticated but it’s not down and dirty and ultimately, like a high class hooker, there are some things it won’t do.”

The last thing I would say is choose the bike you will enjoy riding the most, not the one that’s going to help you beat the roadie. The BluePig will be huge fun and should still be around the 27lb mark (my Alpine is about this and to be honest it still feels as quick uphill compared to the Ti456).

Cheers for the help everyone. Really grateful
Of your time and effort in responding. I think
It’s highly likely the mamtors not on my shopping
List anymore. Sorry to everyone who loves
there’s.
I’m getting the impression it’s a lot
to do with the bikes geometry that I should
be concentrating on and not just the material.
Cheers for the help geetee

one of these frames costs £200.

the other costs £1000.

i’ve more-or-less-permanently swapped from a 5″ full bouncer to a Blue Pig for peak district riding.

both have similar geometry, but the pig makes the climbs easier, and the descents longer and more interesting.

Cheers ahwiles.
Nice to hear your point of view, esp
Because you ride the same terrain.
I’m out in peaks tomorrow on bike and im
sure I’ll be looking at lines differently and thinking,
If only I had a hardtail.
Take it easy and thanks

Hey trailertrash,
Sound like you’ve had it pretty rough.

You also sound like someone with a very
Wise head.
I come across lots of people who drink too
much through my line of work, Im of the opinion
Where all on different paths in life and we all
have chances to change things.
Sometimes it’s not the big decisions that alter
our way in life, sometimes it’s the subtle changes
we make.

Take it easy my friend and look after yourself

If you’re up in the dark peak then why not contact Cotic and arrange a test ride of a Soul either through them or 18 Bikes in Hope.

Its a good weight (and price) compromise between the Mamtor and Blue Pig and its 853 steel and 140mm compatible.

Cheers danti.
18 bikes service my bikes for me.
I didn’t know you could contact cotic with
Regards to test rides?? The soul in 18 bikes
Is too large. ( im only a short arse)
Only hear good things about the soul,
bearing that in mind though I haven’t
read posts on stw site
about it yet.

Everyone in the peaks is now going to be
Looking for a short fella riding a meta, spinning
his legs like crazy chasing after bloke 300 yards infront of him
up a hill who stinks of beer and kebabs??

Spikester are you writing your responses in hiaku?

Bear in mind that 18Bikes also have a small BFe demo bike. The geometry is identical between the BFe and Soul.

Sorry no idea what hiaku means??
Cheers for the info on the bfe though

Oh I get it, my short sentences??!!
Im writing responses on a phone and it doesn’t
judge the spaces right. Lap top broke just the other
day.

Typing no where near a skill of mine I’m afraid sorry

Take it easy my friend and look after yourself

You too spikester, nice one 8)

If some one is faster uphill than you etc etc I’d say its either your fitness or your skills that aren’t good enough. Worry about the bike last!

Yeah fitness not at it’s peak at the mo, got a young child and another due very soon so training on the
bike ain’t wot it used to be. Doesn’t take long to get fitness back though.
As for skills, been mtb 20 years so no probs there, but never felt the need before to charge UP hills like ex
roadie does. I’m very competitive with sports but really not got a problem with losing to the better person.
I was asking would a hardtail help me perhaps gain some speed?? 15 yrs ago since I last had one and that was
alloy.
Cheers anyway

Spikester – either way if you’ve not ridden a hardtail for that long, you should probably get one anyway! They really have moved on a long way since you first started riding and you’ll be amazed at what they are capable of, plus it’s a good way to brush up on your skills.

Cheers geetee.
Yeah I will be getting one real soon. Once again I really appreciate everyones help.
Last hardtail I had was a zaskar le. Awful thing. Felt like you’d been in a washing machine
after every ride.

Be in the nx couple of weeks I get the bike. Policy paying out real soon and I can’t keep hold of money
for long.
Will let you know what I end up with and once again cheers for your time and input.