Musing on a 2Souls Quarterhorse 1 year(ish) on. – Page 2 – Bike Forum

Scienceofficer · 2016-01-03T11:33:12Z

In a somewhat rare event for me I find myself with some time to kill, so I thought I’d write down some musings on my 2souls Quarterhorse. I’ve had the t’Orse since September 2014 and built since November 2014. With a little over a year I’ve made it through the honeymoon period (no thanks to 2souls (more of that later). Here it is in sunnier days. [IMGand less sunnier days. [IMGSometime in 2013 one of my riding buddies bought one, which I duly dented (fortunately non-fatal) on a test run and decided it was a very nice arrangement of steel pipes. At the time I was looking to replace a 26” Ti 456, but the price of the 2souls as what would have been my first 29er was just too juicy and I settled for the significantly cheaper Cotic Solaris. [IMGThe Solaris build was built light and singlespeed, but that didn’t last. It became increasingly chunky and got 1x9, until the day came when the trifecta of want, and two perceived limitations of the Solaris was enough for me to pony up to the money required for the Quarterhorse. My biggest difficultly was colour choice. I ended up with this. [IMGAs far as I’m aware, 2Souls is two or three blokes with regular day jobs. This showed. Their communication was slow, and if it wasn’t for people having already successfully bought from them before, I would have become twitchy about being swindled, but that turned out not to be the case. I waited nearly 4 months, but it did arrive. Straight away, the head tube badge was not mounted straight. On closer inspection, one of the holes was threaded and the bolt wouldn’t bite. 2souls were pretty good in responding to me about this and we agreed a way forward. – They sent me some larger bolts and a thread tapping tool and a (too large) jersey by way of apology. Disappointing, but it won’t affect the ride. Later, I found my stiff-from-new BB was the result of an ovalised BB shell after the Shimano one they fitted dies in three months. 2Souls offered solution to this was to ream the BB tube, a solution that I felt was unsatisfactory for PF92, since the internal bore was already the right size, just the wrong shape. Reaming the ID of the tube would just have resulted in less grip on the BB cups, from a BB standard that is already notorious for creaking. My chosen solution for this was metal cupped BBs to resist the deformation of the bearing from the BB tube. And so the fun started. I’ve never, to this day, ridden a bike with such short chainstays. With a pike on the front and probably aided by a fairly slack seat tube angle, I found wheeling off the back was a simple matter of pedalling hard uphill without leaning forwards. No matter, I’m a ‘ride the fork’ kind guy, so it was pretty easy to adapt to. Within weeks, I’d dropped the bars as low as they could go and fitted a dropper post. Within 6 months, those same chainstays were so widely spaced they allowed me to get wide carbon rims and 2.4 tyres in. I became aware I was taking it to some of the places I would previously have taken my full susser and riding similar lines. [IMGYet, it is still a hardtail with all of the limitations, and a moderately heavy one at that. It’s only about 1 lb lighter than my full-susser, which has 125mm more travel at the back, with similar sized tyres. Yes, its 853, but its designed to be strong and robust – It’s not a magic carpet ride, but neither is it ‘dead’ at the back end like, say, my old steel on-one 456. It still hooks up at the back on square edges, both climbing and descending. Mistimed sitting on choppy ground still kicks you up the arse. Only tire size and pressure help to mute the high speed death rattle of choppy mountainside descending. Steppy, bouldery descending still requires enough leg suspension that at the bottom, shitting-dog-leg remains a reality. The geometry and build of this thing (or indeed, my own build) is never going to win me any XC races, but that’s not what this bike is about. Despite this, it’s possible to shift it along at fair clip if you’ve got the beans to spare, and big, low pressure tyres and short stays can get you up technical climbs better than you’d expect as long as you remember to mind the front with appropriate weight shifts. Pointed down, it carries a feeling of un-earned composure, that un-panicked forward looking ‘I-know-what-to-do-here’ collectedness that 29 inch wheels seem to provide, yet it is not a lazy, slow turning bike. Equipped with almost-comedy 800mm Raceface atlas bars, and my own long arms and 14st, its happy enough, and stiff enough, to be bossed around to the point of wheel tuck and high side me once or twice during the acclimatisation period. Extra care is required in tree lined, narrow singletrack to avoid clipping big bars and landing on the top tube with ones plums. [IMGAs Barney of Singletrack towers said of the Swarf Spline, ‘the front writes cheques that the back can’t cash’. This is also true of the Quarterhorse. One of the reasons for this is that combined with a dropper post, the extrem...

DirtyLyle

Posts: 463

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Would be very interested in your thoughts on the new bike (FF?), found this thread very informative!

Posted : 27/05/2017 5:21 pm

Scienceofficer

Posts: 7935

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Topic starter

Yeah, T'is a Last Fast Forward. I've had about 3/4 weeks on it so far. The Quarterhorse is currently languishing in the garage on, uh.., standby I guess.

😀

I've kept the Last as a 29er which I think at the moment is in a minority compared to the few I've seen on STW.

Posted : 27/05/2017 5:35 pm

NormalMan

Posts: 2370

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Scienceofficer - Member

If anyone's interested in how I get on, I might post up some first impressions, but I think it'll be on a new thread.

As a fan of 29er HTs I'd be interested in reading. Even if my 2 are at a different end of the gnarmeter/ radometer 8) although 1 is a Solaris so pretty much where this thread came in I guess.

Posted : 27/05/2017 7:34 pm

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[Closed] Musing on a 2Souls Quarterhorse 1 year(ish) on.