Fresh Goods Friday 794: The Fur Eel Edition

What does ‘FR’ mean to you?

For Real? FRench? FRysauce? FatheR? Flame Retardent? FRancium? Formula Racing (a trim level used by the car manufacturer SEAT apaz)? FRiday? FResh?

The correct answer is, of course, FREERIDE! Enduro is dead! Long live Freeride! Maybe. Let’s get on with FGF anyway, ja?

Fresh Goods Friday is kindly sponsored by the helpful folks over at Yellow Jersey.

---

*Discount is subject to T&C’s, which can be found at yellowjersey.co.uk/terms. Coverage is subject to T&C’s. Please refer to the policy wording for full details.

---

Merida One-Sixty FR 800

• Price: £3,800
• From: Merida Bikes

Is the enduro bike dead, killed by the eeb? Well, if we fail to have a good time on this Merida One-Sixty FR that certainly could be the case. I very much doubt that we’ll fail to have a laugh aboard this bicycle. Look at it. It ticks a whole heap of boxes. Vivid Coil? Yep. Zeb Ultimate? Yep. Slack head angle? Yep. Steep seat angle? Yep. Masses of standover? Yep. Yep. Mixed wheel? Yep. Massive brakes? Yep. Decent tyres? Yep. Proper dropper insertion? Yep. Water bottle? Yep. Accessory mount? Yep. It’s enough to almost make you overlook the headset routing. Almost.

Reserve 30 Frysauce Wheelset

• Price: £1,699.00
• From: Reserve Wheels

It’s been something of a wheel week on Singletrackworld dot com this week. We’ve had FSA’s sub-£1k carbon wheels. We’ve had Halo’s excellent Skelta MT2 wheels. And now we have these mullet wheels from Reserve. Despite being generally carbon-agnostic, I do still think that carbon wheels deserve a place in the market. Mainly because I just always seem to dent alloy wheels (fingers crossed the aforementioned Halo Skelta wheels remain dent-free). And there is no getting away from the fact that carbon wheels are lighter for a given strength. And weight (only) matters on rotating things. Anyway, the big question is: why are these called ‘Frysauce’? Reserve explain: “Like mixing ketchup and mayonnaise to create the perfect french-fry accoutrement, the perfect wheelset may require combining seemingly disparate things. In this case, it’s our venerable 30|SL and 30|HD, built into the respective front and rear wheels to provide the perfect combination of compliance and stiffness for your trail riding pleasure.”

Bikehike.co.uk

• Price: £0.00
• From: bikehike.co.uk

Those of you who follow our social media prattle channels may have listened to me mention this website already. It’s a route plotting website that uses proper Ordnance Survey mapping and is easy to use and is free (click on ‘Course Creator’ tp get started).. I thought this site had been binned off (during the Covid Times) but it’s back. Hurray! Easily one of my most-visited web resources of all time. Get it bookmarked.

SQ Lab 30X 12° High Handlebar

• Price: £99.99
• From: SQ Lab

Another super swept back (12°) bar. This time from one of the originators of the whole sweeping movement, SQ Lab. Despite the focus of SQ Lab being ergonomicky stuff (“it brings wrists and elbows into a natural, relaxed position while simultaneously reducing the strain on shoulders and neck”), we’ve kinda fallen for sweepy bars for the way they ‘mimic’ having an impossibly short stem. That said, there may well be something in the ‘natural’ position claims; regular bars certainly feel rather unnatural when you go back to them. Stats: 12° back, 4° up, 780mm width, 45mm rise, 31.8mm clamp, 7050-T6 aluminium.

SQ Lab Innerbarends 411 2.0

• Price: £29.99
• From: SQ Lab

Continuing our theory that gravel biking should/could just be mountain biking, here’s something that sort of does the same job as riding on the hoods of dropbars: These Innerbarend, as the name suggests, do not mount at the end of your bars, like old skool bar ends did. They mount inboard of your grips. SQ Lab: “More Comfort: Adds an alternative hand position for better performance and relief. More Power: A more aerodynamic hand position means up to 14 watts saved.”

SQ Lab 60X Dirt ltd. Team saddle

• Price: £49.99
• From: SQ Lab

This saddle may be named and described as a saddle for dirtjumper and pumptrackers, we thought it would actually make for a decent normal mountain biking saddle. It’s short. It’s grippy. It’s tough. It’s pretty flat-topped (which we usually get along with very well). And at 275g, it’s not even that hefty.

Canon 5D Mark II

• Price: £0.00
• From: The Singletrack Camera Museum (AKA cupboard in the spare office)

I’ve never had a full frame camera. Back when I had a dSLR it was an APS-C sensor. And after that I went mirrorless and Micro Four Thirds (MFT). Anyway, long story short, I’ve got frustrated with the dynamic range of my MFT cameras – and also the fact that I can’t really mount vintage lenses without losing loads of the desired effect – so went browsing eBay for a bit. And then Chipps mentioned that there should be a Canon 5D Mark II in the office somewhere. I had a delve and I found it. So here we are. Back to the noughties! There is some sort of mountain bike technology parallel to all of this. Which may well turn into a mag feature. We shall see…

Stockport World Series 2026

• Price: £45.00
• From: Borderline Events

“Stockport World Series 2026 is a multi-round downhill race series organised by Borderline Events, running across five rounds between April and October 2026. The series is open and accessible, with no racing licence required to enter. Saturday practice is available at each round, with weekend camping offered on site.”

Singletrack Mountain Bike Magazine #165

• Price: £10.00
• From: The Singletrack Shop

I personally think this is the best Singletrack mag cover for quite some time. Possibly ever. (Although issue 149 is a candidate…) Yep, it’s in black and white (the yellow hue is from the cosy glow of the fire). Taken by James Vincent and literally a parting shot as his last issue as mag designer. What’s inside issue 165? All the contents are listed here.

Forum Thread Of The Week

The winner this week is IHN for the What’s your stinkiest bit of kit? thread:

The winning TOTW in FGF gets a prize. So IHN please email editorial@singletrackworld.com for a random prize. Don’t forget to include your postal address.

The Continuing Return of Reader’s Rides

• Price: £0.00 – but you could win a T-shirt and stickers!
• From: This form right here

We’ve kickstarted Readers’ Rides back up. We rejigged the online form and pic uploader to make it clearer, quicker and simpler. We’ll be rewarding any submission published with a piece of STW merch. NB: they don’t have to be new bikes. Or expensive bikes. Or even clean bikes. We want to see real bikes from real riders.

Stale Goods Friday – 2016 Chromag Wide-angle 27.5

• Price: £549.99 frame only (or £764.35 in today’s money)
• From: Fresh Goods Friday 279

An entire decade ago we wrote: “And in the hardtail corner this week, we have the Chromag Wide Angle! More 27.5 wheeled goodness in a long-travel hardtail format for a future biketest! 68 degree head angle, 73 degree seat angle, super-short 419mm chain stays, should bring all teh [sic] funz. Our test bike cones [sic] with a frankly blingular array of gear – the RaceFace SixC carbonium cranks are adjured to Chroma’s ‘Yokel’ chain stay (it says here) which minimises weight and allows for stocking tyre clearance.”