Well, if they want to send a free SYNC my way I won’t complain. Otherwise, I’ll just have to look forward to reading foxyrider’s thoughts.

Sorry to dig up an old thread but what standard is the rear wheel fit? As in QR or 142/12mm QR etc. Cheers.

135mm qr.

Yes, good old 135mm QR. If it’s stiff enough for the pros currently riding the Tour de France then it’s probably stiff enough for the rear of my hardtail too 🙂

Just a quick update:

I used the FF29 on the Corrieyairack challenge at the weekend and it was pretty much ideal. I managed to puncture right at the start and after failing to get the hole to seal and resorting to a tube I started the ride 15 minutes behind the field. But actually that was a blessing as I was only doing it as a bit of fun anyway and starting at the back meant that I was just picking my way through the field all day and ended up right in the middle of the pack, which is where I’d have been anyway.

It’s 10 miles from the start to the top of the Corrieyairack pass and pretty much uphill all the way. Once again the climbing ability of the FF29 was amazing. It’s so planted on the climbs and I was able to just sit in and spin my way to the top without stopping or pushing.

Coming down the path is loose in places with a number of water bars (basically rock steps), some of which are pretty large. To make matters worse there are ditches in front of the steps made by the flow of water. Like the rock steps these ditches vary quite a bit in size and you can’t really tell how big they are until you are on top of them. This leads to a few hairy moments as you need to decide whether to go for it or not before you can really tell how big the lift needs to be. Although it is still not as easy to lift the front wheel as it is on my Trance (the flip side of the stability on the climbs) I am getting better at it now and managed to clear around half of the bars despite being quite cautious as I really didn’t want to puncture again. I did get lazy on a few and was surprised to find that it still just ploughed over them. Even when I hit one hard enough to knock my feet out of my (fairly tight) SPDs it still got over.

I switched to 23mm road wheels at the changeover for the 40 mile road section and used bar ends to get a nice stretched position. Although I’m sure it wasn’t as fast as a proper road bike it felt pretty good and allowed me to carry on climbing slowly through the field. More importantly I enjoyed the ride.

So, all in all a very successful outing, but that is really the sort of event that a 29er hardtail ought to do well in. It will be interesting to see how I get on with it now that’s over and I’m back to just messing about on trails for fun. I was expecting that I’d want to jump back on the Trance as soon as possible, but that hasn’t really been the case. I’m off to Mull next week and have decided to take the FF29 rather than the Trance as I think it will cope better with the sort of exploring type riding that I’ll do over there. It won’t be a pain if I end up riding on the road for sections and it’s lighter if I end up having to carry it.

OK, that’s enough for now, but for those who like such things, here is a picture on it in its “go anywhere, do anything, whatever the weather” mode.