I’ve ordered a large, but I currently have an Felt F series with the stem completely dropped (and I do like the position) so I’m not 100% sure that I will be able to get low enough on this, the headtube is 36mm longer!

Worth a look though. Longer/more negative stem and deeper drops may help.

That would be great! Thanks!

Anyone? :(

I’d be tempted if you could get 142×12 compatible swap-outs so I could use my existing wheels.

I’m very impressed with my Endura MTRs. Light, nice stretch material (like board-shorts), good fit, don’t fall down. Basically, you completely forget you are wearing them. Highly recommended.

I use a Topeak MTX TrunkBag EXP for my commute. I’ve had it a good few years now and it generally carries: work clothes, gym kit, laptop and lunch etc (so quite a bit).

It still looks pretty much like new (despite being brushed against walls etc frequently). The quick mounting system is perfect for commuting (i’m always in a rush) and I’ve even used it off-road on the MTB for bike-packing while bulging at the seams with no ill effects.

Saturday – W2 at Afan for the first time. I even got a few Strava top 10s on the descents which was a nice surprise. And very sore fingers!

Sunday – 4 hour XC enduro race at Cannock on the exact same bike (didn’t even touch the tyre or shock pressure). Finished 9th in top cat, happy with that for my first ‘serious(ish)’ attempt at xc racing.

New shape Mondeo estate can get two full bounce 29ers in the boot without taking any wheels off. It is huge.

Ignore it, drink water and black coffee and bank some decent weight loss!

Well, I got the forks back, service kit and oils come in the post Saturday morning (total cost £30 with enough oil for about 10 services!). Spent a could of hours in the garage having a play around and they are good as new :D

SRAM service had drained all the offending oil/muck out so nothing for me to inspect other than the dirty foam seals.

To be honest, a lower leg only service would take me all of 30 mins from start to finish next time, so probably not worth getting in a fuss about if it happens every couple of months.

Ops version of bike usage and cleaning is accurate rest of the bike is still spotless.

Well on the one hand the shop are telling me the bike was pretty dirty, has clearly been used in muddy conditions and lacking in care and maintenance (In my defence the forks broke on an 18 mile after work night ride. Motivation for polishing was a little lacking afterwards!)

On the other hand I have SRAM telling me I have jet washed my forks to death which I guess is the exact opposite of the reason the shop are saying! There is just no winning!

has had it for a lot more than 2 months/11 rides/178 muddy miles

Nope, I even went back to Strava and listed out every single ride since new (Strava in actually being useful shock!)

Still think I’m mad wanting a lefty

Now if I could just win the lottery, I could get some too! :wink:

Before you all get too angry at me daring to use the hosepipe on my bike, the Pikes on my old bike were used for 5 years of the same riding and cleaning. They have never been touched yet still work perfectly, the seals still seem fine and stanchions show no sign of wear.

Maybe I was just expecting too much from the Rebas. After all they do say they need to be serviced every 25 hours in the get out warranty work free book manual.

What exactly went wrong with them?

I was getting near the end of a ride and noticed they looked a bit sagged down and felt very firm. Closer investigation revealed they worked fine when off the bike and pushed down from the fully extended position, but if they were pushed down to the sagged position then pushed again (as in normal riding) they were locked to the point that the bars would flex but forks not move.

How do you think the mud/water got inside?

I can only figure a seal has gone/theres a fault somewhere/something out of tolerance or cold weather caused the seals to shrink a bit?

None of the people I’ve done the rides with have had similar issues despite their bikes being older and washed in the same way at the same time (end of the drive with a hose pipe).

After riding through the worst weather all winter, I broke the forks on my new bike a couple of weeks ago (on a ridiculously muddy and wet night ride). I sent them back under warranty and have been MTB-less for the entire dry spell. Absolutely gutted. I have to keep telling myself not to ride the Cotic that is all cleaned up, serviced and up for sale!

Team ‘Four laps more than the oaf with the microphone claims’ are in!

I have a Lapierre XR529 which is a 10.7kg 100mm XC race whippet(ish) after a wheel upgrade and love thrashing it round the trails. Here’s some poorly angled GoPro clips from CYB for your comparison: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UfzKPGs3rvw

The pop lock still seems to work (maybe has a bit more give) and they just got sucked down all the way bar the last 15mm when I emptied the +ve air out. Another play confirms they are definitely broken in some way, they don’t budge at all once sagged, to the point of handlebars bending but forks not moving.

Cheers, sounds like a call to the shop is in order tomorrow morning.

Mine is fine.

You can create a course on various sites (I like http://www.bikehike.co.uk/), start from scratch and plot the route or import someone elses GPX file. Add course points for left/right turns if on the road bike and the unit will beep and flash up Left/Right/Straight etc which is handy (make sure when saving the tcx to set the course point warning distance to 250m or something though!). Plug in the Garmin and save the TCX file to the New Files folder then unplug and turn the unit on. The route will be in the courses menu.

I use my Edge 500 daily for MTB, road, commuting, snowboarding – anything really. It has been faultless throughout. Bear in mind that it is quite a bit smaller and the battery lasts longer than the fancier models.

With a bit of prep work, the TCX courses it can even be used for navigating pretty well – I’ve cycled to Italy by road using only the Edge 500 course feature and it got me most of the way across the Trans Cambrian Way on the MTB (although I did resort to an OS map once or twice for that one).

The 3.30 wheelset is 1575g on the Wiggle page.

American Classic race 29s are supposedly stiffer than the Crests and way lighter but just over £500.

Going purely off specs the Hope Hoops wheelset seems a bit heavy at 1750g for a noodly 390g Crest rim in my book.

After looking at the same options I ordered some WTB Strykers from CRC as they seemed a bargain at £240 for the pair (alleged RRP £700!) and came with 15mm front and 142×12 rear hubs so I didn’t even have to buy any conversion kits. They are hand built, use a WTB branded version of the American Classic hubs, have triple butted bladed spokes and decent welded rim with internal bracing which should be much stiffer than a Crest (the rims are about 50g heavier than a Crest each but the wheelset is 150g lighter than a set of Hope Hoops due to the hubs and spokes). They can also take UST or standard tubeless ready tyres which seems handy.

I should get to test mine round CyB at the weekend, if they are crap I’ll stick the new version of the light-bicycle carbon rims on the WTB hubs and spokes which should make a mega stiff < 1500g wheelset for under 500 quid.

Edit: They seem to have gone back up in price a little on CRC now since I ordered at the weekend.

I’ve raced DH at Hawkstone Park many many moons ago

The tests don’t always work – absolutely every test going says I should snowboard goofy, but I am definitely more comfortable regular.

I tried the soap flakes recently, dissolved them in a litre of boiling kettle water and poured them in. I set it to a 40 degree wash but the washing machine wouldn’t drain at the end of the cycle. It turns out that the drain hose had filled with a congealed gloop of soap and I had to use the wet vac to suck it all out!

I’m keeping an eye out for liquid soap when I go shopping but haven’t seen any so far. I won’t be trying the flakes again in the machine though!

I did it on a BFe. Deux Alpes was good, Morzine was Ok but tiring with the braking bumps. It felt a little unsatisfying being limited by how hard you could hold on into easy corners rather than pushing yourself on the techy stuff. I hired a DH bike for one day (after a week on the hardtail) and it was more fun.

We parked at Knighton station and bivvied it. We had great weather (although I guess the heat made it a bit more tiring as there is very little shade up there), even still it was a hard route with lots of grass riding, steep climbs and there were some big puddles and river crossings that would be difficult in poor weather. Don’t forget midgie spray like we did!

Unless you are really skint, or sponsored by a woolly hat maker, I really can’t see any reason not to wear one…

Benefits include:
[*]Keeps your head warm without overheating[/*]
[*]Keeps your head dry when its snowing or when you are cartwheeling down a steep backcountry run after a fall[/*]
[*]Stays attached to your head and keeps your goggles attached in the above situation (unlike a beanie)[/*]
[*]Gives you somewhere to lift your goggles without them fogging up[/*]
[*]Somewhere to stick the GoPro[/*]
[*]Lack of death if you hit a shallowly submerged rock[/*]

I can’t think of one good reason not to wear one… The guy in the backcountry photo above saying there isn’t much use for a helmet out there – I see plenty of exposure to hit, all it takes is a fall at speed, a variation in the snow surface, a small slide or just taken out by your own sluff and you can easily crack the back of your head on one. A helmet could make that near death experience into a non-event…

Cannock Monkey yesterday :D

I’ve raced XC on a BFe with Pikes and super tacky minions, I didn’t win.

29er Lapierre XR 529 coming from a Cotic BFe – Absolutely love it!

11am at work = black coffee and Christmas cake. It’s a revelation.

I tried my chesty mount for the first time yesterday, the position of the camera is great for capturing more interesting onboard video and you can’t tell you are wearing it at all (apart from looking a bit daft) however you do need to angle it up a bit more than you think, as I found out afterwards! And it is prone to getting covered in mud on a very wet ride http://youtu.be/sZCy6iLUh7k

Helmet mounts always look a bit slow and you need to really be recording someone else riding infront/behind to make it interesting.

The bar mounts would be great for clamping on frame and forks etc but they get terrible reviews for snapping and leaving the camera in a bush somewhere…

I’ve always sold it all separately on eBay in the past and have been happy with what it went for.

We did it in September and loved it. I didn’t think it was particularly testing on the fitness front, but I would echo the above comments about wetness! There was a long section probably just after half way which was basically like riding down a riverbed for what I remember feeling like 20 minutes. It’s all rock and hard-pack so no mud but would be VERY sketchy in icy conditions.

I’d probably avoid it in sub zero conditions due to the above.