It sounds like the humpback was required to allow space for a 750ml bottle and clearance around the shock for a coil (although I don’t see how a frame can swap between coil/air without some compromise as they require different leverage curves)

Dimmingsdale is the one if you like short, steepish and loamy trails, and its next door to Alton towers. Note it’s all off piste, unmarked and of varying difficulty (with some gap jumps etc). Quite a bit of it was in the Slice of British Pie films. Park at the Ramblers Retreat and follow your nose, most trails are on Strava so that will help you navigate.

Atera Strada 3+1 here too, very good. Keep an eye out for a well priced second hand one!

Only if you are incapable of using a shock pump correctly.

Do you pump your tyres up once and leave them until they need replacing?

As others have said, ideally you want double down/super gravity for the alps.

Technically you are supposed to check air spring pressures before each ride as they leak over time (I know no one actually does). Strapping them down with air in will have way higher PSI (300+) acting on the seals for an extended duration. This will probably leak a bit leaving your forks not quite feeling right, which is exactly what you were trying to avoid!

The were also finished pages for another new bike that has yet to be announced…

P.S. here’s the works model: https://www.whyte.bike/s150cw

There is plenty of tyre clearance this time round. I don’t think Whyte would make that mistake again!

I think that is 10:55am (met office use 24hr clock). I’m not too far from you and i’ve just had to take the washing in from the line..!

where I am in staffs the forecast is totally sunny and a totally tropical 27 Degrees tonight

Ignoring the big yellow warning of thunderstorms, downpours and local flooding… :wink:

Air spring force is position sensitive, you use this first to get your sag correct. Imagine the two scenarios below which could both be considered correct setups in terms of using full travel occasionally:

Too high air pressure and too little sag (combined with very low compression damping to still allow full travel) and you will lose grip as the wheel cannot extend to meet the ground.

Too low air pressure (combined with very high compression damping to prevent over-use of travel) will sit the bike too deep into the travel, giving a low BB, slack seat/head angles and potentially poor pedalling performance (depending on the design).

Then you can get into leverage curve to mix it up, if your bike is linear/regressive, you may want to use lower pressure and more damping to lessen the natural progression in air spring rate, and the opposite for a progressive curve.

On top of all that is personal preference and riding style! Personally I would get the sag right, then decide between volume spacers or compression damping with trial and error to achieve the correct ride.

Mine are M8 on the carbon T130.

Think of the oil as tokens, a large Fox 36 token is 11cc for reference. The 350NCR has a coil negative spring by the looks of it, so you don’t have to worry about the oil dropping through an air transfer port into the negative chamber. You should be able to let the air out, take the top cap off and compress the forks to bottom out, the space (volume) you have on top of the air piston to the top of the stanchion (minus whatever the top cap takes up) is roughly what you have to play with in terms of adding oil. Add 10ml (= 1 token) at a time…

I’ve switched between flats and SPDs and still ride both occasionally, and I don’t get the big fuss. Even after 3 years solely on SPDs I couldn’t really tell a huge difference in how I rode. (Not a brag, more a warning not to panic yourself into an accident).

Don’t overthink it, just ride as normal but be cautious on log/ditch hops etc as you will probably not even get the back wheel off the ground. Decent shoes and pedals are a must though.

Now on Pinkbike: https://www.pinkbike.com/news/fox-float-dpx2-shock-first-look-2017.html

I’m keen to see if it will fit my T130c, a Float X is too big but this has been downsized a little.

Good! Tough, but definitely good!

Bird Website Excitement to Bird Website Excrement in 5 minutes flat.

Surely the air beam tent overall weight is lighter – but a regular tent has the advantage of splitting the weight between the tent bag and the pole bag.

I haven’t bought one yet, but one thing I noted was that the Outdoor Revolution tents have a pressure release valve on the air tubes. I guess if you inflate them to the recommended PSI on a cold night, they are way over the allowed pressure after sitting in the midday sun and quite a few people reported other brands going pop on them, which is pretty catastrophic I guess!

Try as I might, I can’t convince him to run his forks more linear with some LSC to prop them up against weight shift and dive. Although it is hard to sell him my setup when he is so much quicker than me…

Martyn also has some B+ 2.8 high rollers for his, so I know that they fit too. Size wise they feel similar to a T130, but the rear end has definitely evolved a step with the bigger bearings and linkage driven shock, it felt much stiffer laterally.

P.S. Ison replied that they are not getting the air spring conversion parts alone, only the full Ramp Control kit. You will have to order from the US if you just want the spring parts.

Initial impressions seem good – First ride last night, running no tokens (previously 1 orange and 1 blue), and ~12psi more in the positive chamber than before. I started with 3 clicks more LSC but backed 2 out. I seem to still have a bit more small bump compliance but more mid stroke support keeping the forks up a bit higher and I just about got full travel once or twice too.

This was at the Wrekin so all steep and lots of g-outs/drops to fireroad but no real high speed chop testing.

MRP Fox 36 by philsherwin[/url], on Flickr

MRP Fox 36 by philsherwin[/url], on Flickr

Fitted my MRP dual air conversion last night, it was fairly simple but I needed a really tight clamp to get the foot nut off the air piston rod (used my drilled out wood clamp I made for getting the shim stack off my Monarch and had to supplement it with a golf grip clamp too!)

I run my 36s at 150mm and I had previously removed one neg plate spacer and the top out bumper to increase the negative chamber volume. I left it in this configuration, then pumped the positive to 50psi and the negative to 60psi which sucked the forks down to 150mm ish.

As you would expect when balancing the travel using the negative pressure, just the weight of the bike is enough to lose a good 5mm of travel. They should be super soft on the top – I’ll do a bit of setup tonight to check that config works, then test ride tomorrow night.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BNpo7UShTg4/%5B/url%5D

I was referring to that old picture, supposed to be the 36 coil coversion, but that could be wishful thinking.

To add to the options, Push are allegedly very close to bringing out a coil conversion for the 36 which also uses a Marzocchi style air assist for progression/adjustment.

AWK kit looks very nice – but I’m 100% sure the valves would hit my downtube!

Probably, but it is now cheaper to manufacture (sorry, I mean lighter and fractionally easier to add tokens).

I’d prefer the older ones with the MRP dual air conversion, but that’s probably not for 95% of people!

The ramp control is for spring progression, the kit for the 36’s is more expensive because it also contains a mod to convert them in to dual air forks so you can tune positive and negative pressure independently which will affect the small bump/chatter compliance.

MRP in the US are selling just the negative mod on its own for $50: http://www.mrpbike.com/shop/#!/FulFill™-Air-Spring-Conversion-for-Fox-36/p/84443343/category=20803113

I have been on to them to get them in the UK already!

2018 airspring has been reworked with a larger volume negative spring as well – maybe have Mojo retrofit that and the MRP thing – to give you both a larger and adjustable negative air spring.

You can’t (without a new CSU) as the 2017 and earlier forks don’t have a dimple to equalise negative pressure.

They feel very at home if you ride a T130 :D

Don’t wake up in the night (as that’s when they hurt most) roll over, take ibuprofen and go back to sleep. Doing that for a week gave me a stomach ulcer which cancelled more rides than the bad ribs!

Theory would suggest you get a more rounded than intended profile (more lean before the side knobs engage) and possibly more casing roll/fold as less support from the rims than they were designed to get. Would it make any real life difference is another question!

I have a pair of used once 29×2.0 EXc Beavers (the super light ones) hanging up in the garage too if anyones keen…

The bikerumour review is much better than the PB one and also hailed it as a miracle bike but I just don’t see how. It looks like a crazy workaround for patents on dual short links (dw) just like yetis last few designs.

The anti squat looks like it will have masses of pedal kickback but I also have some faith in the reviewers having some honesty.

A new era of kinematics? NAILD R3ACT-2Play suspension makes the Polygon Square One ride like nothing else

Rickos, the Pike RC compression shim stack is supposed to be much more restrictive than the RCT3 one, something to do with OEMs wanting the LSC dial to offer a complete lockout (allegedly). That might explain the differences you are noticing.

My experience..

Low enough pressure to get the ‘plus tyre benefits’ (smooth ride, immense grip) is great when cruising around, but as soon as you get aggressive the tyres bottom out on rocks/roots. High enough pressure (only a few psi more) to ride aggressively without pinching the sidewalls and they ride like a regular tyre at 40psi. I also didn’t like the slow direction change when leaning the bike, they feel like they take forever to roll on to the side tread but never really bite (more aggressive tyres may differ)

Maybe they would be well suited to those huck norris things..?

I’ve been waiting to see this. Looks like a great frame, except for the geometry :( Personal preference but I have a newer longer breed bike at the moment and borrowing bikes with similar geo to the mk14 feel like a step back in time. The seat post is a bit too long for sizing up given then Eightpins dropper goes up to 220mm drop.

I’ve done it on the rigid, the second lap (went over the road to the old red bull trail) got a bit tiring on the arms.

Are you actually bottoming out your Pikes or do you just ‘think’ you will? I’m lighter (75kg at the moment), but I prefer mine with no tokens, a bit more pressure (than I ran with tokens) and less sag (20%ish). I’m also tending for a bit more LSC and fast rebound. The goal being to keep it high in the travel and the air spring more linear (the fork reacting similar in the top or bottom half of the travel) to let the damper do the work. The LSC should stop bottom out on big drops and heavy landings, but no tokens helps keep the fork supple on the smaller but higher shaft speed stuff (rocks and general trail buzz)

With 4 tokens at 130mm they must ride like a rigid fork in the bottom half of the travel and I suspect you would need to be sending cliff drops to flat to bottom them out!

A Pike 27.5″ 120mm air shaft will drop 29″ Pikes to 100mm travel. Part number 11.4018.026.011

I don’t see the problem, I run a separate wheel for singlespeed on my 29er anyway, so I’d still have 2 wheels. Do you use the same wheel and swap the cassette with spacers?