Seeing as the Rochdale canal passes right through the town, and there is a significant patch of now empty land by the side of the canal, opposite the AmDram theatre and next to the new NHS building, you could construct a marina. There are alot of folk who use the canal to travel and live on in that area of Calderdale. More tourist facilities could then be placed around the marina. This would then offer something that surronding towns don’t aready have, bring in more tourism and bring money into the area.

Can’t see an arthouse cinema competing with Hebden Bridge cinema just a handful of miles down the road.

Seems to me it needs more employers so people already living there can earn good money and attract others to move into the area. Not sure how throwing money at rearranging a perfectly good market and sqaure area are going to offer this!

Ah, well for me, buying new and then selling to buy new again the next year is for people with money to burn. But I’d like them to keep doing it so there are lots of nice, newish, parts turning up on the classifieds. In the bike buyers food chain we need these people to supply us bottom feeders with secondhand parts. 🙂

I find that if you buy a frame off here it doesn’t cost too much to sell the frame a year on and buy a different frame from here, so there isn’t such a cost involved. This gives people the choice of playing around with the type of bike they ride. So if you just fancy a change its easily done.

I’ve changed bike frames over the years because I’ve moved to different areas. I didn’t own a car, as I used bus and train to travel to work, so didn’t drive to trails so would mostly ride local trails.

I’ve had the same hardtail since 2003 and intend to keep it but I do change the build depending what I’ll be riding mostly. I moved to chester from west yorkshire 5 months ago so I’m looking at putting a much lighter build with fast tyres that don’t need as much grip. But my full suss is built as a do anything bike so I can drive off to trails that have real hills.

I might end up in Cumbria in the near future so will change the build again to suit the terrain.

From my experience of catching the train for 4 years, up until 6 months ago, you’ll probably be fine catching the 15.54ish train. If you get there a good 10 mins early you can make sure to get your bike on whilst its still quiet. There is often a bike storage area on the train. The 16.24ish train gets busier from people escaping the office a little early. Again if you get there in good time you’ll probably get your bike in the storage area. Anything later gets full to the brim with standing room only, a bit of a sardines game, until the 6.20ish and 7.20ish trains when they become pretty empty again.

Pace have found some old stock.

Clicky clicky

Thanks for the info so far, as many opinions as possible would be great.

If you check out ebay you’ll notice two newish frames, one close enough to collect and the other with reasonable postage costs. Although I’m sure you’ve check out ebay already.

I had some float R forks from 2003, I think. Anyway the performance was starting to show somewhat when compared with newer floats and they tended to be a bit divey under braking. They had been well looked after and were in tip top condition. I phoned mojo and for £120 bought a new, 2007 at the time, RLC dampener for the fork. I fitted it and the rebound/compression was/is a considerable improvement over the 2003 R dampener.
They probably cost more now, and if you can’t fit it yourself it’ll cost a lot more, as Mojo will fit it but they’ll want to service it at the same time. Very very easy to fit it yourself though. I never use lockout but I prefer a little more compression dampening than the factory setting.

I find if I post a WTD ad on the classifieds then I get a load of offers that are really somewhat over priced, IMO. Whereas if you wait until somebody posts one up for sale the price generally seems fair. You might have to wait until somebody posts a heckler frame for sale to get it for a fair price. When you post a WTD people know you want their frame and seem to try it on a bit with the money.

If you basically don’t ride your Meta 5, except the odd trail centre, because of its weight and prefer your hardtail over it, then if you had a lighter full sus would you ride it more and make your hardtail a little more redundant? The Meta frame is something like 7lbs + of frame, I think, but a superlight will still only end up saving you 1.5lbs if you transfer the kit over to the new frame. If you work out what performance you really want, ie. air or coil forks, carbon or aluminium bars/seatpost, platform or none platform pedals, and braking power (180mm or 160mm rotors). Then you can build a bike that doesn’t compromise the performance you want and is the lightest you can get for that performance. You should be able to build a superlight around 27lbs but you might need to split and sell the Meta 5 and buy alternative kit secondhand from here. Obviously you could get it lighter if you throw money at it.
But if you are still only really going to ride it at trail centres and otherwise use the hardtail then there isn’t really much point doing it.

The fighters QR are supposed to be 1650g, I just rounded up, the Bolt thru are supposed to be 1750g. As for the Pikes I looked at the coil for 2300g but the air are 2113g according to the SRAM website. So you’d only save about 360g or 0.8lbs plus your 100g for carbon bars, would be about 1lbs. As you say though this is all hypothetical, you could always carry 1 litre less water in your backpac and just top it up halfway around the ride, therefore saving 1 Kg or about 2.2lbs from the start.

You could live in Cragg Vale and drive 10mins over the moors to Littleborough station. Not quite between Tod and Manchester but close.

You could try getting yourself some secondhand pace RC41/40 fighter forks, I find mine are great. They weight about 1700g where as the pikes are about 2300g, so 600g or 1.3lbs. If you save another 100g on carbon forks you’d be able to get it down to 27.5lbs. Selling the Pikes would probably cover the cost of the Fighter forks.

I have Hope brakes running on Avid rotors with no problems.

I tried some Talas forks on my hardtail a few years back. Fancied running 5 inches downhill and 4 inches on the flat and uphill. The frame geometry suits 4 inches for speed. I found that whilst the extra inch was good, after a few rides I couldn’t be bothered changing the travel, I just left them on 4 inches all the time. After a few months I just sold the Talas and bought some floats, much easier to self service and a little more plush.
I recently tried some revelations on a full suss I have, it can change between 4 and 5 inches rear travel and suits between 4-6 inches on the front. I generally wanted to run 4 inches with the 5 inch option. Again I found I wasn’t interested in changing travel mid ride and didn’t like the feel of the revelations, with having a negative air spring as well as positive it seemed to be quite sticky to get moving. Anyway swapped over to Vanilla’s and set them to 4 inches. I service all my forks myself and I can very quickly change the internal spacers in them to change the travel between 4 and 5 inches before rides if I know I want more travel.
I’d always go for the floats and just swap out the spacers to give 4 or 5 inches of travel for the ride you are going on.

A Ti hardtail rides like a hardtail, just a little more forgiving on your body on long rides. It rides nothing like a full suss bike. Do you want a full suss or hardtail? Then if you want a hardtail, do you want a bike that puts your body through less punishment?

Knowing the answers to those questions should then leave you with just which full suss frame? Or which Ti frame? Easy eh!:-)

So you don’t fancy an XL Superlight?

As has been stated, undo the left leg topcap so you can compress the forks as far down as they can go. If it only goes down 110mm then it is the oil volume in the right leg stopping you getting full travel. If this is the case you need to drain the oil out of the right leg, take out the dampener and cycle it in and out until all the oil is out of it also. Then re-fitt the dampener and pour in the correct amount of oil, 7.5wt, I think it’s around 160ml. You should then be able to get full travel.

Perhaps its also a tale of an unrealistic budget and considerably over estimated bike building skills. But it’ll still be great fun to ride and now spring is upon us you can get loads of sunny rides in.

I bought a gravity dropper turbo a few years back now, 3 inch drop. My hardtail takes a 27.2mm seatpost so it was the only option. It works great, I take on a lot more terrain that I would have gone around in the past. You can keep the optimum seat height for fast pedalling and climbing and for most stuff keep it extended. Then if you see something steep with significant crash potential you can push the bar lever and have the seat down and be hanging low over the rear wheel and fly down the track with a lot more confidence. The GD drops very fast and is locked down until you push the lever again. Once pressed it fires back to full extension. It has a little play in the saddleclamp but not noticible when riding.

I also have a maverick speedball r on a different bike. Again 3 inch drop but once droppped it isn’t locked down, if you grip the saddle with your thighs it can move up and down. Also it doesn’t extend back up all that fast compared to the GD. There is more play in the saddle clamp but again you don’t notice when riding. I find I never play around with heights, I either want it fully extended or compressed, not 1/2 an inch or one inch lower than top so having that option with the speedball isn’t a pro for me in the speedballs favour.
I’d go gravity dropper everytime if I had to pick between them. To my knowledge the joplin is pretty much a rebranded speedball.

If you do head down the bridleway from the New Delight Inn and don’t fancy ending up down in Hebden you can climb back up into the back of Colden by taking a slight detour and get the blood pumping with a short steep climb. When you reach the end of the rocky decent and you reach the T junction with the dirt road, think its Calis Bridge, that leads down towards Hebden rather than turn right to Hebden you can turn left. Follow this over a bridge and up a cobble road going around one switchback and then when you reach the next switchback of the road you keep going stright on along a bridleway. You follow this as it snakes up the hill with a few switchbacks all the way tot he top. Keep following the bridleway signs till you hit a tarmaced farm track, go left and follow it around to the right and you’ll come out in Slack Top/Colden by the large grass area that is sometimes used for football and flying little helicopters. This way you get to do the good bit of the descent, a good, hard and short climb, and you’re still at the top of the hill to join up with more trails.

I find that ‘all rounder’ tyres are good in most conditions until you reach the extremes of those conditions. If you are happy changing your tyres with the seasons then I’d go down the mud specific tyre route. Panaracer trailrakers 1.8’s are excellent mud tyres and stick well to wet rocks. On the other hand a decent set of all rounder tyres can see you through the year with reasonable performance. Panaracer fire XC and cinder tyres are good in most conditions. I’m running kenda nevegal rear and blue groove front and they are good on most surfaces. I’d run some decent all rounder tyres and have a set of mud tyres in the shed incase the ground gets really bad.

a sunny summer ago

Pre-Build

By the end I was waiting for Gordon Brittas to meet Kevin when he went back in Feb to see the final product.

I would never bid on an item where the seller wouldn’t accept paypal. I also wouldn’t bid if the stated postage cost were noticably more than it will actually cost. Why as a purchaser should I have to send a cheque and keep my fingers crossed that the seller sends me the goods? Paypal offers me, as a purchaser, protection against fraud, and it suggests people who don’t accept paypal have a greater potential to be trying to commit fraud. You know the ebay fee process if you read their information and you know paypal fees also, if you don’t like them and you can find a better place to sell your stuff, safely, and make a profit then I’d suggest not using ebay. The fact people still use ebay suggests they are still making a profit, just a bit less.

As a community we are allowed to decide who we sell and buy stuff from. If you notice a user behaving in a way you see as detrimental to the community you don’t have to deal with them. If the majority of sellers/buyers did this then it would end this kind of behaviour. I know that before christmas I had users that I had no interest in dealing with, but now they may have new usernames.

I think having a selection of parts in stock and on display is much more important than having lots of bikes on display around the shop. A few of my local bike shops are over half full with complete bikes, none of which are under a grand. I’d not buy a complete bike for that sort of price, much prefer to pick the frame I want and then either buy the parts to build it myself or get the shop to put it together. But once the shop is mostly full of bikes there is limited space for other parts so they only have small tyre sections, no brake sections, bike lights, bars, headsets etc… As a result I’d not buy much from them so wouldn’t go to them for a custom build.

Communication is vital for me also. I don’t want to have to go into the shop everytime I want something or to discuss a service. So if you offer a telephone number you must answer it reliably. Also with email addresses you must reply by the next day. If you don’t then for me I’d not order anything with you as I see keeping in touch would be difficult. I was trying to buy a black santa cruz chameleon frame a year ago, I searched on-line for shops that stocked Santa cruz. I emailed them, many just didn’t bother replying, some tried to convince me I wanted a different size frame because they didn’t have, and couldn’t get, a black medium frame. Some emailed back once and then couldn’t be bothered to continue responding to my questions. Others just didn’t answer their phone, and some that did said they would call back once they checked their stock and then never did. I ended up buying from Leisure Lakes as they were very organised, friendly and attentive to my needs. I had the frame within 24Hrs. So if you want people to cough out over £1000 on a custom build you need to have excellent communication lines set-up.

Chameleon

I owned a kona roast some many years ago now. It was very harsh to ride for anything over about 2 hours with a combination of trail chatter and the odd larger impact, was running 1.8″ tyres too. I was pushing a little too hard with it on one ride and buckled the rear wheel rim. Not enough it wasn’t still useable but you could feel the buckle in every revolution of the wheel. I bought a Koobi PRS saddle, it made a huge difference, I could barely feel the buckle anymore and the chatter was greatly reduced. I quickly replaced the Kona Roast with a different hardtail and after a bit of riding I replaced the aluminium seatpost with a carbon seatpost. The difference was very noticeable, the chatter/vibrations was massively reduced, but the odd jolt from the larger impacts was still there. I have since tried a titanium seatpost and these seem to reduced the vibration and give a more forgiving responce from the larger impacts.
I’d have to say for cost/performace I’d get a decent carbon seatpost, USE are pretty good, and use a good quality saddle designed for comfort. This should make a significant difference over a racey saddle and aluminium seatpost. Ti just costs too much in my opinion.
I recently bought a Chameleon and have had no issue using an aluminium seatpost as I have a Kenda Nevegal 2.35″ with about 35psi in it and find a large tyre volume offers much more relief than all the carbon and titanium bits you can find to add to your bike.
I’d suggest, if you stick with the giant that you get a carbon seatpost and also try carbon bars, they really do make a comfort difference. Otherwise if you get a new frame it doesn’t matter what it’s made of just make sure you can fit a nice big tyre on the back end.

Back when it was clean and the weather was a little sunny, last summer.

I know its not steel but the Santa Cruz Chameleon with the EBB works well with a Rohloff.

I set up my sag depending on the type of riding I’ll be doing with my bike. If I’m XC lightweight racer type bike then 20% sag max is all that is needed, but I’d be using an 80-100mm max travel fork for that. If I’m all day riding trail type stuff then 20-25% max sag with a 100-130mm max travel fork and then if I have a big travel fork then I’m obviously wanting it for big hits and not an all day ride, I want plush performance so 30-40% on forks with 150mm + travel. Measure the sag with your weight, with pack on your back, sat on the bike. If I then want to reduce brake dive then I’d adjust the compression dampening, and the same with rebound.
Right travel for the task and right set-up for the terrain.

As stated by metalheart the float forks have an air spring system in the left leg and the vanilla forks have a coil spring set-up in the left leg. Otherwise they are the same except for the paint colour used.