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Swinley trails.
Swinley trails.
People say they're great?
Tubeless: it’s a a faff to set up, it’s not a weight saver, and if (when) you do get a puncture you’ve got all that jizz to deal with.
Natural riding: mud and pedalling , more pedalling, more mud, no corners. Just endless climbing through mud. All for a few seconds of descending, with no corners, just mud. Followed by another endless muddy climb along a field boundary. Give me a good old fashioned trail centre any day.
Long reach bikes: great if you’re smashing down steep rocky trails, crap for everything else. You don’t need 500+ mm of reach, you’re 5’7”.
Natural riding: mud and pedalling , more pedalling, more mud, no corners. Just endless climbing through mud. All for a few seconds of descending, with no corners, just mud. Followed by another endless muddy climb along a field boundary. Give me a good old fashioned trail centre any day.
sounds like an english thing with your brilliant land access laws.
Swinley trails.
People say they’re great?
Yes. Not the greatest. But great.
As long as you aren't caught in a traffic jam on a busy weekend, they are fun at whatever speed you personally find hard; incredibly weather proof (red2 being the exception); the layout and lack of height means you can chop and change your route in almost infinite combinations; and crucially, its within an hour's drive of a huge chunk of the UK's population.
For every smug bloke on here that rides out their back door to a day in the Lakes or the highlands, there's a hundred guys driving to Swinley, having an enjoyable 2 hours ride and going home to their family for lunch.
To answer the OP - low end 12 speed groupsets. I'm sure X01 is lovely, but 700g cassettes and clunky finicky shifting on the lower tiers, just to give people a 50 tooth stump puller to ride up a hill at sub-walking pace; and and/or the useless theoretical ability to ride at 25mph on flat tarmac roads. All the downsides of 1x and 3x rolled into one.
thisisnotaspoon
NHS seems like a perfectly valid contribution.
Everyone says its great, the reality is your as likely to sit in a corridor with a leaking roof for 6 hours as actually see a doctor thanks to the cuts.
It's not the NHS that's wrong. What's wrong is what the recent governments have done to it.
That it operates at all is a miracle.
sounds like an english thing with your brilliant land access laws.
Not to mention the miles and *miles* of tarmac linking the ‘good’ bits.
Great Bear. Just a bunch stars, miles away, can’t visit them and all they do is twinkle, doesn’t even look like a bear. Total rip off.
Dogs (runs and hides.....)
Having ridden fixed gear for around 17 of the last 20 years, to me it is great.
Any other sort of bike just doesn't feel right to me and the 3 years where I have tried singlespeed, and even geared for a very short time, were just temporary breaks which didn't work out as couldn't wait to build up a fixed gear again after a few months.
Clearly after riding one at least twice a week for 17 years means that I am pretty good at riding one and don't need brakes, can bunny hop, get myself down technical singletrack etc,. so my view of them being great is coming from that angle but I realise that some people are going to try it and instantly hate it.
Still worth trying though as you may love it immediately just as I did.
Dogs (runs and hides…..)
Agreed - In fact, pets in general. Pet owners as well.
(Awaits inevitable backlash...)
Online / live chat on consumer websites, might as well just send an email and await the response instead of having a browser window open to achieve the same thing.
failedengineer
Dogs (runs and hides…..)
No point in hiding. The dogs will find you...
Tubeless.
Crap all over the floor. Ballache getting tyres inflated and staying inflated. Dried crap inside the tyre adding weight. Can't then change tyres easily for conditions. Tyre anxiety...will they or won't they go on then go up. Gopping toxic mess in there if you have to put a tube in to get home on day all over your hands. Syringes, valves. Get it right and it's good for just 3 months.
I recently went back to inner tubes on my Swift and it felt like an upgrade to my cycling life. No mess. Immediate inflation. No difference in ride quality as I swapped back to a tyre with a lighter more suppple compliant carcass. Weight was the same. Zero ballache, mess and crap. I didn't puncture before or since.
Yorkshire
Tubeless.
Let me then nominate your mechanic skills 🙂
I didn’t puncture before or since
If you don't puncture with tubes and run your tyres at as low a pressure as you want then there is little point to tubeless.
Where I live a puncture happens about every other ride if using tubes. When I switched to tubeless I never got a puncture in 1,000s of miles of riding.
Single track, it's always a bit of a disappointment.
Tubeless: it’s a a faff to set up, it’s not a weight saver, and if (when) you do get a puncture you’ve got all that jizz to deal with.
OK I get that you might not like it, I can appreciate the downsides, but in what world is 75ml of sealant as heavy as a 400g+ inner tube? The tyres are within about 50g tops these days, like for like (only the early no sealant tyres were.) - and certainly to give something of comparable puncture resistance it's far far lighter.
Sex
Sex
You ain't doing it right.
The web in 2019.
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...but in what world is 75ml of sealant as heavy as a 400g+ inner tube?
A tube weighs 200g
(I've just weighed one)
And you've got more favour with the gods, than I, if 75ml of sealant leaves you with some still sloshing around a week after set-up. I've found I need closer to 200...
(Take out 200, put in 200)
And you’ve got more favour with the gods, than I, if 75ml of sealant leaves you with some still sloshing around a week after set-up. I’ve found I need closer to 200…
I don't think it is other peoples favour with the gods, more like some evil you have done in a previous life may be going against you as using 200ml of sealant is outrageous.
200ml per tyre? Ye gods. Nearly half a litre of sealant sloshing around!
I normally put 3-4oz (about 100ml) and 1 year later still had enough sealent in there to be able to seal a large thorn pucture. The sealant will coat the inside of the tyre, if there's half a gallon sloshing around, there's too much!
Tyres don't drink the sealant! 😀
Thinking about it,I would say on a bike related front pedal strike, and the mtb jornos telling us that ultra low bb is good,and criticising bikes that have higher ones (that are truth be told still to low).The obsession with gravity like we all live near a cable car, 1x12 who the **** needs 12 gears on a mountain bike? the back wheel needs to be kept nice and light people and finally the mainstream media who's lies are getting worse by the day, o and opera,musicals theatre all politicians China North Korea I'll stop now.
Uphill mountain biking.
It's always a bit too far, a bit too steep and you're a little too tired to get over the big rock that's just appeared
Wine
Any sort of wine.
Sex
You ain’t doing it right.
Well, I'd agree with the poster.
Sex has always been a disappointment. In fact, it's a bit boring and a bit yucky.
Frosties. F you Tony, they're not great.
Tablets and powders to go in your Camalbak or water bottle. Unnecessary, questionable taste and make the camalbak/bottle go manky much quicker. Some of my mates swear by them. I think they're crap.
Sex has always been a disappointment. In fact, it’s a bit boring and a bit yucky
You have my sympathy.
Personally I don't mind old school trail centres, but hate the new ones. Huge berms and jumps but with a surface as smooth as a billiard table that you could ride with a road bike if it was strong enough. The whole emphasis is on how big your balls are and nothing else. BORING
Gravel bikes. Shit 90s mountain bikes for bored roadies who watch far too much GCN.
I love gravel bikes, fixie's, 29ers, dropper posts and 1x.
Tubeless gets my vote. I've spent over a decade persevering with it, and there has been times it's worked very well for long ish periods. But overall, the mess, the faf and the frustration when it doesn't all go to plan outweighs all that. You need a special charger pump, special repair inserts that can cost as much as a tube each time (Stan's darts), foam inserts to stop your rim dinging, and still there are issues.
Internal cabling, its just a pain in the bollocks.
Tubeless
Nah
Tubeless is the best bike related invention since suspension.
You dont need foam or plugs if you run the same pressures you did with tubes to avoid getting pinch flats. Then you have nothing but the advantages of less weight and zero punctures.
If you want more grip run less pressure but it's not essential
Frosties
Internal cabling, its just a pain in the bollocks.
I agree apart from dropper posts. Don’t know why, but I prefer internal for that one component.
You need a special charger pump, special repair inserts that can cost as much as a tube each time (Stan’s darts), foam inserts to stop your rim dinging, and still there are issues.
I haven't got or used any of those items. Tubeless was brilliant on MTB. On road with higher pressures and a lot less air in the tyre to escape before any sealing occurred I found it a lot less brilliant. In fact I have gone back to tubes and heavy duty tyres as a way of decreasing amount of punctures.
Frosties
Did you mean to post this on the "things that tigers say are great..." thread?
I agree apart from dropper posts. Don’t know why, but I prefer internal for that one component.
Ditto, mainly because it's the easiest one I suppose.
There's a certain subset of riders who prefer internal cabling. I'd guess that they also tend to like coloured Hope bits and spend as much time cleaning and polishing their bikes as riding them.
Did you mean to post this on the “things that tigers say are great…” thread?
Ah, but you seee... Tigers can't actually speak.
You need a special charger pump, special repair inserts that can cost as much as a tube each time (Stan’s darts), foam inserts to stop your rim dinging, and still there are issues.
I've None of that stuff either, been tubeless for about 10 years. Mibbe your just not very good at it? 😊
I'd put tubeless in the same category as droppers. Once you use either you can't really go back.
Tubes just seem like a pointless contrivance once you can consistently set up wheels tubeless (or just buy them set up)
The only bike I have that isn't tubeless is my old commuter that I'm using on a trainer. The other day, I swapped to a skinnier slick for running on the trainer and made a complete arse of it because the tube kept getting in the way as I tried to bead the tyre, i'd basically forgotten how to deal with tubes.