Grumm,

To try and answer your question about the use of these 'freeride' bikes, mine spends a majority of it's life getting a hard time! Most frequent haunts are Innerleithen and Ft. William getting a downhill fix as well as generally larking about at places such as Glentress freeride park.

EG.

Pissing about at Glentress last week

Make of it what you want, and yeah i'm sure there's someone on here gonna say 'I could do that on my blah blah blah – all I know if I'm havin the time of my life when i'm on that bike!!

SO, they're not black hubs but i went with black rims, black nips but and silver spokes to be a bit different. Personaly I think they look great- everyone seems to have black spokes atm and i wanted to be different!!

Apologies for crap picture phone quality btw

I'll second CalD on the Session 88fr. I've been riding mine for 9 months now and still love it!! (apologoes for poor picture quality – camera phones just ain't what they sed to be!!)

I’ll second the Reverse Fli xxl bars from mtb-direct. I’ve been running the 20mm rise version for about 6 months, take a little bit of getting used to but I wouldn’t swap them for anything now! Come in 0mm, 20mm and 40mm flavours, all 760mm wide and in black or white!

It’s not Edinburgh but another thumbs up for big Al at wheelcraft. He built me 729s on pro2s with some silly strong spokes. After repeated downhill bashings at inners and ft. william they are still perfectly round and true(even though half the paint is missing off the rims from being bashed and scraped!).

Also, as already mentioned, if he has built them and you bend them he’ll sort them out!