I took out my cobbled-together-from-spares bike at the weekend, and had a great ride on it. It seems I’ve managed to put something together that is very fun to ride. DMR Trailstar with 130mm Floats, 1×9 and flat pedals.

It’s quite a lot shorter than my other bikes, particularly on the chainstays, and I seemed to start riding it with a completely new cornering technique. Rather than getting over the front and sticking the front wheel into the bends, I seemed to just “think” the front wheel in the right direction, all the time keeping my weight reasonably far back and using the back wheel as a kind of pivot. It almost felt like I was steering with my heels only. The same kind of motion as doing a manual, but with my front wheel on the ground.

Anyone else understand what I mean?

I am sure people will come along and tell me I’m doing things wrong (either in my old technique or my new), but I think it’s a useful, very subtle, new thing to have learnt, and something I can apply on the other bikes, now I know how.

I sort of do that on my 100mm HT. Seems to allow me to ride more smoothly over the bumps. Almost all my weight through the BB, light on the bars, seat down and out of the way.

I’d be careful of unweighting the front too much – you don’t want to lose all grip at the front just before you hit a wet root or something.

I do something similar on my hard tail. Oddly, it seems to work well for pulling round a tight-ish corner on loose ground.

Hardatails have less grip out back, so pushing weigth back increaces its grip?

Or it could just be that your riding like a nonse and its not killed you yet becasue you’ve not been going fast enough.

My 456 has long chainstays and definatley encourages the rider to keep their weight central. Before that I had a couple of DMR’s (trailstar mk1 with 130mm 2002 Z1’s and a switchback with 130mm menjas) and I’d agree with you, they definately encouraged a more rearward bias, but I put it down to the steeper head angle needing more help through tough sections, wheras the 456 can just be left to blunderbuss its way through.

er.. waswas – unweighting the wheels is exactly what you do want to do before you hit a wet root

Op – all my bikes are really short and I ride the rear wheel far too much too.

GW – well, yes, but I’m not sure shifting all your weight on to the back wheel is the best way to achieve it was what I meant.

sometimes is, sometimes isn’t 😉

For wet roots, I get it pointing in the right direction before I hit them, unweight over them, and steer again once I’m beyond them.

I’m not saying I’m now going to spend my whole riding life over the back wheel, just that it was an interesting new idea (to me at least).