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I reckon it was just a sh@t bike to start with..
If your going to replace that amount of parts, just buy another bike and save yourself the hassle 😀
I have a brown rigid singlespeed.. It's my only mtb
problem solved
yunkiI have a brown rigid singlespeed.. It's my only mtb
problem solved
On any other forum you would have won over both sides if Im honest. Well, mine anyway.
This being STW however, you've probably (unknowingly) taken out a contract on your soul. 😀
I have two rigid singlespeeds.
A summer one and a winter one. Not sure which is which.
Josh that is just showing off now
For those who's rides are through endless slop why? Ever thought your in the wrong place? Forget the bike and think of the trail.There are these magic places called trail centres, these are generally all weather and fun to ride in the depth of winter.
I ride most days, that happens because i have plenty to ride from the front door. The most fun stuff is generally the worst in terms of slop, i avoid it to prevent as much trashing as possible, this leaves fireroads and some select trails which are also still saturated with surface water, where i live, if i want to regularly ride, i have to ride slop.
I have a local trail centre (swinley), some more fun stuff stays pretty dry, happy riding it on the hack bike, the actual trail centre trails hammer the bike, avoid those and ride the more natural trails, it's only bimbling anyway.
I have multiple bikes, i ride the bike for the job, during winter it becomes much more XC, so i start using my XC (or hack) bike.
As others above, it's fine to have different outlooks, like i struggle with MTBers insisting they need 6" gnarpoon weapons for the simplest of riding and trail centres, those same people then proceed to find the climbs too much hard work, ride less, get more unfit, find the climbs even harder word, ride even less, get even more unfit etc etc etc.
A lot of my rides are 60-80mins local stuff.
driving to a lovely nicely drained trailcentre takes 2 hours... so obviously isn't viable.
I'm off to Afan a week on Friday so the Gnarpoon (Spearfish) will be still coming out for that... but for the local stuff it will sleeping with the fishes.
just get new drivetrain in the spring?
Wow I'm seeing a lot of hate again for a Five owner , I'm off to find that hate thread and order an Audi ,
Pointless rant
jaffejoffer - Memberjust get new drivetrain in the spring?
It's drivetrain and new bearings though, which is not only £50-100 all in, but it's an afternoon swapping them.
I have a brown rigid singlespeed.. It's my only mtb
Me too. (Mine isn't brown though, that sounds horrible 🙂 )
What is all this winter/summer bike stuff. I just change the chain now and again.
£100 and an afternoon tinkering but you get to ride your fave ace bike all year! also cheaper than a winter hack if you havent already got one...
jaffejoffer - Member£100 and an afternoon tinkering but you get to ride your fave ace bike all year! also cheaper than a winter hack if you havent already got one...
I have got one though and it's pretty decent 🙂 I've actually ridden the HT a fair bit this year anyway as my riding buddy has been having some Zesty issues so every time we've been out together I've been on the HT and he's been on my Spearfish. It's set up pretty damn well and is a lovely HT.
Got one bike Yeti ARC5c, it will get used all through winter, and will be washed and lubed at the end of every ride, as it lives inside, and I rent. It takes 20 minutes at the end of the ride, and It's done and ready for the next go.
I have 1 bike and 1 bike only ... I ride the spesh enduro all weathers any weathers .. all these folk talking bout how many bikes they have and what they use and when 😐 .... really !? a bike is there to be ridden
I have a similar strategy to McNulty up there ^^. My Five is my main bike, unless I'm away for a big epic in the hills, but now that we're getting into the real dark nights, I'll be resurrecting my P7. The Five will still get used on most drier weekend day rides, but the P7 will take over for night riding duties and wetter day rides. It's simpler to clean, has a slightly lower spec....so the inevitable trashed kit after a night ride impact won't hurt my wallet so much...and in all honesty, it's easier to pedal when the going gets a bit soft. Oh, and it's got the hipflask holder on it....very important on a cold winter's night. 😉
If you have the storage space, what's the problem with having more than one bike? If you have more than one bike, what's the problem with choosing to ride one over the other as the seasons change?
Chill out dudes.
C. 🙄
I would consider all my bikes as "good" but the single speed will be mostly in service during the winter months 🙂
and a nice man at the LBS with a scaffolding pole to remove the old one
A scaffolding pole eh? Not seen many of those about in a long while, everyone uses tubes these days 😛 (sorry - used to be a scaff)
It's drivetrain and new bearings though,
Except I used to get through more than a winter on a set of bearings in all of my bikes. More like 2 years... Unless you have a chap bike with crappie bearings
I went out for a short ride last Friday afternoon, on my way to Builth, around a local beauty/nature spot scattered with bridleways, fire roads and marked paths (perhaps intended for walking........). I'm glad I went, the trails weren't too muddy as such, but man was it hard going, we've not had that much rain but everything was just so boggy and seemed to require so much effort, my average speed was under 4mph, and I was blowing and sweating like a carthorse. Bike just didn't want to roll.
Most of my local routes/woods will be like this from now on, and I'm not sure I fancy it much to be honest. I need to keep riding to build and maintain fitness and make sure I don't put weight back on (1.5 stone lost since March).
I only have hardtails, so full sus maintenance not an issue, but scraping loads of mud, pine needles and crap off my freshly built up Soul on the weekend was somewhat demoralising.
I'm thinking the off road mountain biking will be almost exclusively weekends at more surfaced trail centres until we have some decent frosts and the ground firms up, but I want to ride mid week too, so contemplating a rigid fork on my Scandal 29er for more road-based rides, or getting a bargain basement road bike to use..........
Except I used to get through more than a winter on a set of bearings in all of my bikes. More like 2 years... Unless you have a chap bike with crappie bearings
You have one experience, another person has another, doesn't make you right and him wrong, it makes you both right but different!
FWIW, [b]In a single race[/b] I've managed to kill a brand new (as in fitted the day before) Shimano UN72 BB, and lower bearing in headset (Cane Creek), and bearings in rear hub (White Industries, standard sealed cartridge and extra grease sealing) which were only ~3 months old. Also put significant wear on the drivetrain too, and had to junk the cables (standard Shimano SP41 inner and outer). Fortunately it was a rigid bike, hate to think what state any shocks would have been in 😯
Conditions vary, just like experiences 😉
stevedoc - MemberWow I'm seeing a lot of hate again for a Five owner
Where?
+ 1 here with a couple of rigid singlespeeds.
I built up one and enjoyed it so much I bought a nicer one.
It was a bit of an n+1 excuse but it's become a real pleasure to ride round the muddy trails on them in the winter.
There is an element of saving the nicer bikes from the mud but in reality it's to save the washing as I'm not motivated to clean when I get back wet, cold and muddy.
It depends where you are really. Here in the Dales most (but certainly not all) bridleways are pretty weather proof, they might be wet in places and you are going to get muddy but you aren't battling through 6 inches of clart. However there are some BWs where your bike seems to double in weight during the course of a ride.
You just need to know what conditions are like and plan a route accordingly. After a while you get a set of "indicators" that let you know what the tracks are like plus you tend to know which routes get muddy first.
£100 for a new transmission?
Hmmm. Where do you buy your kit from?
I reckon I've saved enough to buy another couple of best bikes by not running the best bikes through the winter over the last 9 or 10 years.
£100 for a new transmission?Hmmm. Where do you buy your kit from?
I reckon I've saved enough to buy another couple of best bikes by not running the best bikes through the winter over the last 9 or 10 years.
Depends what stuff you use, but for a bog standard 2x (or 3x) drivechain,
Chainrings: £40
Chain: £15
Cassette: £30
Jockey wheels: £10
=£95, and lets round up to cover some cables?
Horses for courses (and budgets) though. I've known people who buy £300 hardtails from Halfords for the winter, do the bare minimum of maintenance, and junk it in the spring (or more likely, jet wash the hell out of it so it looks clean and sell it to some poor sod on ebay).
10 years ago my best and only bike was a £300 hardtail form halfords, I replaced the drivechain each April and ran it into the ground over the winter.
These days I buy bikes based on reliability and low running costs, so they're a rigid SS and a rigid fat bike (with 1x10). Partly because I'm tight, partly because I like the idea of going for a ride somewhere nice and it costing me nothing, rather than getting to the top of a long muddy climb and thinking "this view just cost me £15 in XO1 cassette".
The decision as to what to ride is easy as the muddiest trails round here don't require gears, and the ones that do are chalky mud rather than gritty/grinding paste mud.
As Whitestone says...My winter riding involves thinking of the trails i'm going to ride based on conditions, and I know the areas that deteriorate easily and can judge that pretty well. Riding through hours of slop is no fun for me, and it's bad for the trail too. It does mean that in a wet winter the trail options are very poor, and what's left will still be slow and pretty much non-technical. This means that i'll ride a rigid geared bike mostly, because the best bike isn't as much fun going slow in mud. I'll still ride the 'best' bike (a HT) when I want, but the key point is that the winter riding is not based on any maintenance equation. For me it's about keeping riding in bad conditions, but with respect to the trails and whilst still trying to have fun. Maintenance will cost what it does and happen whenever needed throughout the year, but winter will have less of a toll because i'll generally avoid multiple clag-fests.
Serious though, what's the meaningful difference between a five and a multi pivot bike, like, £30 per full service every once in a blue moon?
Having moved from a Five to a multi-pivot Smuggler it's not the cost that concerns me so much as the ease. Bearing changes on a Five were so simple that I'd often pop a new set in just in case and on more than one occasion I was surprised to find that bearings I thought were OK were actually pretty rough once I got them out. Am I going to bother doing that with all those fiddly little pivots? I don't know is the simple answer. Maybe it will be a trivial matter once I've got the hang of it, but the Five did make a pretty fantastic winter bike. In fact I'm thinking of building it back up with budget components for a bit of fun. Even if I don't keep it (based on this thread) I reckon somebody might fancy a cheap Five for the winter.
That's a fair point actually, some bikes [i]are[/i] a bollocks to change bearings on.
Don't say that. You were supposed to tell me it wasn't going to be an issue 🙂
i'll be swapping/changing bikes for winter, yes.
i like the 'freshness' of changing from hardtail to full-suspension every 6ish months.
it means my bikes get stripped/rebuilt every 6months.
winter/summer is just the excuse.
(well, that and the hope of keeping road-salt away from pivot hardware)
Chainrings: £40
Chain: £15
Cassette: £30
Jockey wheels: £10
Best bike?
Can pretty much double everything on there.
Best bike?
is SLX/XT not good enough for you?
Despite what the mags and a few on here might tell you the vast majority don't spend thousands on a frame (and forks and wheels), and then hang XTR off it.
I know, but I do. Most of the guys I race/train/ride with do as well.
The kit all wears out at some point so riding in mud (a UK factor) isn't really going to save the wallet as all the bits will need replaced at some point - most at the same point.
Having more bikes just adds to this cost.
The fact a full bounce needs more attention is part and parcel of running a full bounce bike...
I'm still unclear to the why (or the why not to riding it all year round), but I'm not saying it is right or wrong...I just can't fathom the logic as it seems to suggest more cost to me as you have more kit needing replaced due to more bikes.
I'll keep riding the same bike but I will use it a lot less. Not because of the extra wear but because I don't enjoy going out in 6 inch deep slop night after night.
I plan to use the road bike for fitness and travel to trail centers or places that drain a bit better than my local trails.
There was an MBUK article in the 90s where they stripped an old bike and made it extremely mud proof! Sand blast and powder coated frame, holes sealed up and other stuff I forget. Might be worth going down this avenue and making things a bit more carefree if it does get entirely caked in mud?
The kit all wears out at some point so riding in mud (a UK factor) isn't really going to save the wallet as all the bits will need replaced at some point - most at the same point.
Having more bikes just adds to this cost.
Just in case you go to other places I the world they also have mud, even saw muddy bikes in utah, plenty here in Oz and in NZ. It seems to just be the UK is the place where people insist on riding through axle deep slop....
My points as above are not that it doesn't happen but if you are trashing bikes over a winter then may your doing it wrong.
Bikes get trashed in summer as well...for many, the idea of a summer bike to be used during summer would be a very short-lived affair on this isle of ours (in Scotland, Summer this year was a Wednesday but it started late Tuesday evening and finally stopped just before lunch on the Thursday). It doesn't really make any odds what the conditions are...bike bits wear out - irrespective of conditions.
There was an MBUK article in the 90s where they stripped an old bike and made it extremely mud proof! Sand blast and powder coated frame, holes sealed up and other stuff I forget. Might be worth going down this avenue and making things a bit more carefree if it does get entirely caked in mud?
That was a Brant article. The bike was christened "BUM UK", using some cut up mbuk stickers.
I always put my bike away in it's hermetically sealed and optimally heated storage locker whenever there's a chance of it coming into contact with mud and/or rain. Heavens forbid if I actually got he thing dirty through use.
Tom KP
mikewsmith - MemberJust in case you go to other places I the world they also have mud, even saw muddy bikes in utah, plenty here in Oz and in NZ. It seems to just be the UK is the place where people insist on riding through axle deep slop....
I think it was a Rockshox dude that said the UK has the worst weather that any sane person would consider riding a bike all year round in. Not quite enough winter to have a winter sports season, not enough summer to have a summer season, just nuclear winter and atomic mud.
Just built up a rigid hard tail single speed to use through the winter down here the sub soil is mainly clay so water doesn't drain just more and more mud used a bunch of 2nd hand parts from my old 26er did this cause of the above and cause I can afford to also really NOT fussed what anyone on here thinks 👿
Not bothered but posted anyway...;-)
FWIW, In a single race I've managed to kill a brand new (as in fitted the day before) Shimano UN72 BB, and lower bearing in headset (Cane Creek), and bearings in rear hub (White Industries, standard sealed cartridge and extra grease sealing) which were only ~3 months old. Also put significant wear on the drivetrain too, and had to junk the cables (standard Shimano SP41 inner and outer).
May I suggest you engage the services of a professional mechanic going forwards.