New Bike Day!

I have ridden a few bikes with a dropper post and it’s only after the ride I think “ah, I probably could have used that”.

Takes a while to get into the habit of popping it up and down. I’m sure I’d be the same if I went back to riding a mtb with a front mech 🙂

I thought you were buying the sx?

lexinoo – Member
I thought you were buying the sx?

My rational changed. I really wanted to keep the Yeti, and the SX wasn’t giving me the “long haul” advantages of a 29er. The Anthem 29 was going cheap(er) so… I took the decision to buy that for the longer events.

I’m going to let “new bike” syndrome wear off first but should I find I don’t need the Yeti I’ll sell it on.

Well I’m happy for ya’s, clearly the stem needs slamming and stay clear of dropper posts, other than that get it proper muddy.
Get used to it.
Race it hard.
Get out of breath.
Blow chunks.
😆

My plans, waiting until after Christmas (will ride it as it is in the winter) to keep my marriage alive are:

New lighter wheels
Stem lowered, possible flipped
Possible swap of the Thompson carbon flat bar from the Yeti
SLX gets upgraded to XT as it wears out
KCNC Scandium lightweight post.
Quaxar rotors
Possible Praxis conversion

I reckon thats it at 25.5lb then, which will do just nicely

slam that stem!

That steerer needs trimming. I’m surprised you can get the Garmin on.

pressfit

silly. I know some people don’t mind them but they’ve put me off buying a couple of frames I was otherwise seriously considering. I thought manufacturers were starting to move away from it now.

Having read up on OD that sounds like a pisstake too, but if you don’t do a lot component swapping I guess it’s not really a problem.

Well, I intend to build it lighter as mentioned above but I’m not worried about missing out on the weight of the Stem vs something else. And in all my biking years I’ve never broken one so… *shrugs*

Also as above I’ll probably go praxis conversion with standard HT2 cups the first time that needs changing…

Talking of which, I popped out the morning and played around resulting in lowering it by 10mm and flipping it. You wouldn’t believe how much this subtle change alters the look of intent of the bike…

Test ride this lunchtime hopefully!

On a related note I just joined the clown wheel brigade awsell, got a nice low front end, feels great on the climbs and properly motors along. Unfortunately, after about 20miles it starts killing my forearms, shooting pains up them when hitting rocks and allsorts of pain if I let go of the bar and “roll” my wrist. At first I assumed it was the sweep of the new bars but I put some old favourites on and it’s better but still not right, thinking I may have to raise the bars, but… I ride my cx bike a lot and that’s more stretched and lower (albeit with different hand position) so not sure, difficult to test aswell when the problem only manifests after quite a few miles.

Sorry for the slight hijack.

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Now christened. 😀

And… wow. Just **** wow. It has no right to be that fast, especially considering the wet & slimy conditions.

My observations;

a) Having ridden the same trails with the same 26″ tyres on Saturday what they about 29er versions/wheels having more grip is true
b) Stem could go lower still
c) Still playing with the shock pressures. The O ring only went 3/4 down even after I’d let -10psi of my ready-to-ride weight out.
d) That maestro system is awesome. Even out of the saddle there was little bob, and I could feel it being arrested by a platform in either the shock (trail mode) or the design, and on the trail is was super comfortable, and in a good way, forgetable.

Its a bloody good bike, efficient, lots of fun, wants to go fast, not like a barge at all, god knows how quick it’d be/feel with 500g less in the wheels.

On the one hand, I’m really happy with my decision. On the other, I’m a bit sad now about whats going to happen with the Yeti. I’ll still give it more time though.

^^ that looks better 😀

Don’t be too tempted to slam it yet, get used to it first then over the next few weeks drop it a bit.
All too easy to take the piss, like I do sometimes, about slamming stems but it has to be comfortable and controllable.

Looks way betterer 8)

Nice 8)

Can’t see your other bikes getting much of a look in for a while!

Oh and slam it and get some flat bars on there 🙂

Ha ha. I’m off to Afan soon, and really don’t know which bike to take. Taking this could be either dull, or the final nail in the yeti coffin.

I found with my 29er that the front end was just too high with an ‘upright’ stem, slamming was a near necessity, and improved control no end!

Looks good though. 1370g for my 29er wheels…

1370g for my 29er wheels…

I’m probably going to be in contact with you between January and March about that if you don’t mind. I’ve worked out how to save 300g (seatpost, bars, top cap, rotors, seatpost clamp) without touching the wheels or groupset, so add that ^^ and we are talking a 1KG saving. Jeez, a just sub 25lb 29er (by my calculations) for what will be an approx £2.2k spend overall, not bad…

Junk the front mech and get a NW ring too. Save a bit more going tubeless.

Going tubeless this weekend – on the grand assumption those stock wheels will go straight up with Stans.

Well, after reading Weeksy’s excellent Charge thread, i thought id post up some comments after a visit to Afan this weekend.

TBH, I’m amazed at how well the bike handled. Despite the fact all the trials were wet, it was comfortable, never got me into trouble (well, once but that was user error). I guess one minor niggle is that Evoloution fork doesn’t feel as smooth as the 2012 FIT fork on the other bike – but I wouldn’t notice that on any other than the really rough stuff that’s developed at top of Graveyard. I’m astounded at how well the maestro system just works – little if any movement on the shock up climbs, and I barely noticed it moving going down, although it did. Both front and rear felt smoothly damped after I got about 6″ of air on Energy. Even the Schwalbe performance tyres gripped without failure all weekend on the wet rocks and roots – with the thicker sidewalk will I ever buy the expensive ones again?. The bike as a whole seems to carry a lot of energy / momentum allowing a real pace to be developed in flats and rollers, I carried loads of speed there.

The biggest problem I had was reigning in the pace of the bike on Darkside after a couple of days and when I was tired. The bike just wants to push on.

I’m very happy and I feel I’ve got a lot of bike/ potential for my money, only bettered by a chap on the same bike that paid £1k for his via a employee discount.

Overall, taking a 100mm xc bike to Wales was a bigger success than I could have ever imagined.

*smiles*