Oh, woe is us! The sky is falling down! Well, wet bits of the sky are falling. The woodburners of the forum have been lit again and Jess the dog won’t come out from underneath the Swobo jacket that she’s adopted to keep the wet out and the world at bay.
But lo! There is hope! The forecast is promising a visit to at least double digits next week and a chance of sunshine. OK, it’s not much, but it gives us hope. And then we glance around at the Fresh Goods Friday Shelves (for there are such things… and no pilfering allowed or James will hurt you with his good arm…) and we see XTR! Finally! The prodigal groupset has finally appeared. Or most of it, at least. And that means that bikes and wheels need to be built, events entered at the last minute and bike riding done. And we all know that once you get out on that bike, the clouds all part anyway and sunshine once again reigns supreme!
NS Snabb 160 2
- Price: £2749.99
- From: Hotlines
A little-big Enduro bike from NS to kick things off. This frame is a size small, but it’s got big potential with 170mm front, 160mm rear travel, 2.5in Maxxis Minion DHF/Agressor tyres and full SRAM NX Eagle drivetrain.
The finer details include a nice silk finish, some rubber hub cleaners, a handy red spoke where your valve is, and the demand to go FAST imprinted on your palm.
Muc-Off Pressure Washer
- Price: £99.99 inc. Snow Foam Lance, 1l Muc-Off Cleaner, Dry Bag Carry Case (£79.99 for Pressure Washer only)
- From: Muc Off
Apparently there has never been a bike-specific pressure washer before, so Muc Off has decided to make one. It’s a mains-powered jetwash with a max pressure of up to 100BAR (a whopping 1450PSI) – which would be enough to strip your paint off, but luckily that’s not the idea, and Muc Off supplies three different lances with the unit for different purposes.
There’s a bicycle specific lance with enough pressure to shift grime, without destroying your bearings.
There’s a motorcycle lance that’ll shift dirt without damaging moto seals and bearings
Finally, there’s an adjustable lance that’ll go from mild to deck cleaning power.
Available separately (£14.99) is a snow foam cannon. It’ll turn regular pink Muc Off into a soapy sudsy film that should lift dirt before you get the hose out.
And finally, there’s a dry bag carry case. Or you can get the whole bundle for a penny shy of £100, which includes Pressure Washer, all the lances including the snow foamer, a litre of Muc Off and the carry case.
Camelbak Podium Dirt Series Bottle
- Price: £14.99
- From: ZyroFisher
The new Camelbak Podium Dirt Series bottles are meant for just that. The original Podium bottles was design mainly for road riding, but these Dirt Series bottles come with an easy to fit cap that’ll keep the sheep poo off. They also come with an on-off switch to stop you emptying your water bottle in your gym bag…
Camelbak Podium Dirt Series Chill Bottle
- Price: £17.99
- From: ZyroFisher
The Chill version of the Podium Dirt is insulated, which means that on hot days, you can stick chilled drinks in (or ice cubes) and on murky days like we’ve been having recently, you can put warm drinks in. The Podium Chill was first launched during a very cold and wet Tour of California, resulting in riders asking for hot tea in their bidons instead of the usual water or flat Coke. Now you know.
XTR Groupset
- Price: If you have to ask…
- From: Madison
It finally exists! After nearly a year passing since the XTR launch we’ve had our delivery of near-enough a complete groupset to review. What we have here is a 12 speed shifter (£95 or so), a 12 speed Shadow Plus rear derailleur (£189) and the ENORMOUS 10-51 cassette (£289…). It’s seriously big – bigger than a 180mm rotor by far. It’ll need to be fitted to a new Shimano Micro-spline hub though, which will limit you to Shimano, or DT Swiss hubs for the moment.
Thanks to some ‘production issues’ (which did include Shimano’s head office and XTR production facility catching fire) the new 9100 XTR cranks aren’t yet available, so in the meantime, Shimano is offering a ‘non series’ chainset that will do the same job (being all nice and cranky with 12 speed chains and allowing different direct-mount chainrings to fit). The upshot of this is that it’s less than half the price of the XTR version, at £189. Who said it’s all bad news, eh?
DVO Sapphire D1 Suspension Fork
- Price: £749.95
- From: Windwave
The Sapphire D1 comes from DVO, a suspension company that’s been quietly making some fine products for a while. The Sapphire is the trail fork, with 34mm stanchions and 130-150mm travel (internally settable) for the 27.5in fork or 120-140mm for the 29er. The fork we have here is a 27.5in Sapphire D1 set to 130mm travel. Aimed at being an all-round trail fork, it has been revamped in recent months to bring it up to standard, with 34mm stanchions and a ‘slightly modified’ air spring for that holy grail of supple/support/progressive spring curve through its travel. There are six clicks of low speed compression, 30 clicks of high speed compression and a shim stack controlled rebound. Pretty adjustable then…
Santos Hold-It-All
- Price: €29.90
- From: Santos Bikes
The Hold-It-All from Santos looks to be a versatile carrying solution for this, that and what have you… Made from a flexible plastic that Santos say is both impact resistant and able to cope with hot and cold weather conditions. It’s shaped to both cradle and support loads and there are integrated rubber bumpers, slots for the two included straps. The straps include neat rubber grippers and there are three mounting holes. It’s been a busy week… James will be strapping in a bottle of Gin today.
Rockstop
- Price: £65.00 per insert
- From: Rockstop MTB
Made by a UK company in Cumbria called Urofoam, in collaboration with Grizedale Mountain Bike Hire.
Unlike other tyre inserts that are mostly EVA foam, it’s made from polyurethane elastomer.
Weighs about 250g per wheel.
Available in 27.5in, 29in, and 27.5in wide for plus tyres.
Panaracer Seal Smart
- Price:
- From: ZyroFisher
76 Projects The Piggy
- Price: £25.00 (pouch sold separately, options available)
- From: 76 Projects
76 Projects Little Piggy
- Price: £25.00 (pouch sold separately, options available)
- From: 76 Projects
And there can be no better feel-good, summer’s nearly here song than ELO’s Mr Blue Sky, right?
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Friday Tunes & #themtbchain
Here’s our regular playlist of the week to go along with our Fresh Goods. Each track is picked by a staff member here in the office and added to their individual playlist over on our Spotify page. Head over there to identify exactly who is responsible for each choice.
About this week’s choices: Some classics this week with a bit of Dylan intermixed with some modern poetry from Kate Tempest. It’s been that sort of a week you see. If you like what we do at Singletrack then joining us as a Premier Member would really help us
The Singletrack MTB Chain
This week we’ve added Winter Hill, by Doves. If you can tell us what the MTB connection is for this track then you could win yourself a Singletrack T-shirt. Tell us in the comments or use the #themtbchain on socials.
Remember to use the hashtag #themtbchain to suggest your additions. If we like your suggested tune and your reason for adding it then it will be included in the playlist.
This week’s addition is a chilled out vibe with an obvious link in the title – Enjoy
Check out our MTB Chain page here to keep up on the additions and to try out more of our Singletrack playlists.
All of the Singletrack staff have their own playlists that list all their choices for each FGF. So if you want to see who is responsible for which song you can find out by checking out their personal choices. Hey, maybe follow their playlist and boost their egos in the office. Not that any of us need reader validation of our musical tastes or anything.
Here’s our Hannah’s personal selection. The very definition of eclectic, we are sure you’ll agree.
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At last, Camelback are making bottles that might fit into my bottle cages again