Forest of Dean today and proper Techy stuff for the Fuel. I have to say it was brilliant.
Yesterday I went to do some tyre swaps as I wanted something a bit grippier than the XR4, but it was easier to just swap wheels, or so I thought.
Rear was simple, a nice Soft Enduro Kryptotal was on the spare, so boom that went in.
The front I had a Mary and a trail Argotal, so went Mary, but that wheel is running torque caps for Fox 36 which meant it doesn’t fit my Fox34s and I don’t have standard ones.
So out came the Orbea wheel, but that had a 180 not 200 rotor, not a big problem, until it’s a center lock one FFS
So it stayed XR4. But I shouldn’t have worried , it was spot on and flew down the reds, blue and blacks. Spending time mostly on the techy Sheepskull track. I was quicker than all my riding crew, apart from the boy who’s just honestly **** ridiculous. I couldnt even keep him in sight for 2 corners. He just let’s go of the brakes and he’s gone. In a 5 second period he’s pulling out a 4s gap lol. Wtf.
He was sessioning the roots before the fire road as there was a gap he wanted to line up. He asks me “what do you think” and I looked and thought it was into a particular drop, but no, it was another 10′ on he was thinking of clearing lol. We had a few people standing watching who were commenting “he’s a nutter” etc each time he came through the roots.
We were then chatting with Sam Copp who happened to have a set of Mavens installed, oh wow, boy are they strong!!! Like wipe the floor in power with anything else type strong. I don’t know if that equals speed or better, but heck they really work. So spent 10 mins chatting brakes to him and put my mind at rest on reliability of them for sure. I think a set will be coming in.
Awesome day