There’s a guy on Weightweenies who made a MTB/CX/Monstrosity . Looks very very strange but then if he has placed well at big races like Trans Alps who are we to argue? When you think about it, it makes a lot of sense in terms of speed… it just depends what you want from a ride and where you ride. A rigid 29er (with a flat bar) could be very fast and a heck of a lot of fun :D You then have the option to add a suspension fork if it isn’t really for you- a CX may be a bit too specific and limited off-road

Dan on a lot of setups, especially those not using a clutch mech a top only guide isnt enough to ensure the chain will stay on – add a clutch mech and one of these rings and it should be solid.

This approach I can understand- using the rings to add even more chain security. Makes sense

No guide means less faff. That’s it.

My guide isn’t any faff but dropping the chain even occasionally is a real pain. Why invite the chances with no guide? I really am skeptical sorry!

If the consensus is that a clutch mech is needed what are the benefits of these new profile rings? Apologies if it is a daft question!

Option 1: 254g
A clutch mech (XTR 986- 214g) and wolftooth ring (32T- 40g)
Option 2: 265g/ 245g
Normal mech (XTR 980- 174g), chain guide (e13 XCX BB- 56g/ shift up carbon- 36g) and ring (e13 32T- 35g)

There isn’t significant weight in it (XX1 rear mech is fractionally heavier than the XTR example above- of course cassettes will vary too but that is a different matter, plus sub 40g chain guides such as Shift Up are an option to reduce option 2 weight), the running costs are less with option 2 (or at least the same with these newer cheaper rings) and there is the extra security of the chain guide of option 2 is surely an advantage????

If the clutch mechs were lighter then great! But they are not and I can not see the advantages of option 1.

Why risk less performance (no chain guide) for no other apparent gains or am I missing something? Purely aesthetic? Are we taken in by yet more marketing :) It is a genuine question as I don’t really get these rings at the moment.

Ta!

Contacted Wolftooth and they were confident the chain should stay put without a chain guide or clutch rear mech- has anyone tried this combination?

I am not sure I am convinced but am curious all the same…

Saddle to bar drop to make even the roadiest roadie proud!

Very interested to here more of the STW Massif Groom one-liners to throw in :D

Planning to be too soppy can sound cheesy when the rehearsed lines come out so my plan for that aspect is to go with the flow… we shall see!

AWJ or Ryan (how is Ryan by the way?) seem like good choices as test captains but I feel they will do far better without the extra pressures.

Someone like POC or BOD will handle this better but may or not play too often on the tour. Whenever the Lions have been mentioned or there has been media around the Lions BOD has been the man fielding the question (of course recent injury did make him more available though)…

To be fair, in recent tours the teams have been rotated quite a lot between tests so it is very hard to predict who will be around for all tests. A “tour captain” such as BOD/ POC could be good…

Makes MTB look as relaxing as a round of golf

Or a tennis ball would do the trick short term.

Your ITB runs in between the quads and hamstrings. You should be able to feel the border between these two large muscle groups- that is where the ITB sits.

It is very hard to effectively “stretch” the ITB hence why foam rolling is so popular, especially amongst cyclists

“Rolling up and down” on the ITB is largely pointless. What you want to do is lie on the hard object so it sits at the top of the ITB and gently move your body so the object is moving down the line of the ITB until you reach a painful point. Stop here for 30-60s to start with and then continue to move your body over the foam roller/ tennis ball/ drainpipe until you reach the next painful point and rest on the point again for 30-60s. Keep down this all the way along the length of the ITB (usually the tender spots are close to the knee and hip).

That was my attempt at a lay explanation :) Google “Self Myofascial Release” for more information

Agree, very interesting film. Thanks!

I quite like that a 26 wheel and MTB tyre has the most similar diameter to a road wheel and road tyre.

It should actually be the other way around to the previous few posts if 29ers are really so much faster- Road companies should be increasing the wheel size.

Surely if bigger was faster during sustained higher speeds (rather than lots of short sharp accelerations- as appears to be one of the main arguments for increased MTB wheel sizes) then roadies have a lot to gain by increasing their wheel sizes.

I know toe overlap and so on are a limitation on a road bike but I’m sure frame builders would find a way around it if there was an advantage to bigger wheels. Much like the ridiculously angled stems pros are having to use on their 29ers because the huge wheels push the bars far too high for them! :D

I have used Parcelforce (through the Post Office) without issues. I think the length limit is 113cm or thereabout so you should have no trouble.

What is definitely criminal was the misclassification of 1000’s of bridleways as footpaths, by lazy legislators

Kind of agree but then again I wouldn’t want horses churning up singletrack throughout the winter as they do around here to all trails they have access to. Some kind of joint walker/ cyclist access to footpath would be ideal but I don’t see that ever happening…

I’m becoming a fan of their brakes so I posted up a few weeks ago asking if anyone has got/had experience of Formula forks. I got 0 replies, so it seems they might be good but no one has/uses them

Some on the guys on weightweenies may be good to contact. Basically they seem to have a good reputation

zangolin- I was stating the technicalities of rights of way- I was certainly not suggesting it was logical or if there had been previous prosecutions!!! The same civil law applies to carrying a bike on a footpath as riding it. You would hope common sense prevails in all of the circumstances discussed here but common sense is not the law :D

mrelectric- pushing a bike on a footpath is not different legally speaking to riding a bike on a footpath. Pushing a bike (or even carrying it above your head!) does not make you a pedestrian- you are a “foot passenger of a vehicle” or something equally daft sounding (someone refers to this in the previous thread I linked to earlier in this thread).

Formula also offer some nice looking forks at very reasonable weights. They seem to get good reviews but have not had much exposure. This also means they are rarely found at discounted rates and therefore work out pretty pricey.

Buzz- countryside footpaths. Urban footpaths carry a fine and can be given by a uniformed officer of the law. As nbt says, “no right to be there” is not the same as “illegal to be there”.

I would be very interested for a breakdown of why cycling on a footpath is automatically trespass. As far as I understand it is not but I may very well be mistaken :)

Buzz- Trespass is illegal, not cycling on a footpath. Is that not correct?

I have a Magura Durin at 1353g for under £300 from a German retailer.

I think even the top end new Sids struggle to attain that kind of weight. No noticeable stiffness differences from Fox FIT RLC w/ 15mm Thru Axle but much better controlled mid stroke damping. Same to descend, noticeably better climbing.

German A-Kilo/ Lefty is “exotic” but very expensive. DT Swiss have some light models but will likely be in for repairs pretty often.

To be illegally riding a footpath (a countryside one not an urban one) you would need to commit trespass dealt with through a civil law route. The police won’t be interested (very few exceptions as nbt says) so the landowner would have to sue you for trespass.

So I would say you are correct. Cycling on a footpath is not illegal. We just have no “right” to cycle there. Trespass is illegal. Cycling on a footpath does not necessarily equal trespass.

That is how I understand it. I also asked similar questions recently

Is storing bikes in the first 2 replies not generally advised against as it could deform fork bushings over time? Just being hyper-paranoid probably…

Heavy duty parts, steel parts and steel bolts are generally reasonably tolerant to ham fisted approaches.

If you have light weight parts, alu bolts, ti bolts, carbon fibre, etc then correct torque is essential.

Seems most people fit in the first category while I am certainly in the second category :D

Eating on a 2 hour ride is not really necessary…

So he’s going slow as well? Jesus!

22.5 mph is pretty fast solo. Should have said “2-3 hour ride” to be a little more realistic I guess.

Nevertheless my comment about the preparation before the ride (or lack of) being a bigger factor for struggling towards the end of the ride rather than an inability to eat a bag of nuts on the go still stands :D

The daft answers should tell you it is a daft question as Crikey and swiss01 say :D

Lingering illness, not enough conditioning, lack of sleep, poor choice of meal/ water consumption in the days leading up to the ride, lack of sleep and any other number of factors will have caused the struggle. Eating on a 2 hour ride is not really necessary…

Absolutely nothing wrong with KCNC in my (limited compared to Gee) experience :D

I have never come a cross a stem snap, even ultra light weight option. Faceplates crack (even on Thomson!) and bolts tend to go before anything else. Choose the bolts wisely and you shouldn’t have issues.

A KCNC Fly Ride stem with Ti bolts will save you a far ol’ bit of cash and get you within 5-10g or so of the Sc Wing. The Fly Ride also has a black face plate as opposed to silver which I personally prefer…

Alex, what is the least practical colour one could choose mudguards in? :-)

How are you measuring your “normal” resting HR?

I would not be unthinkable that the machine is not the most accurate thing in the world.

BP is at the upper end of normal is it not?

BMI is “overweight” :)

But as before… the machine is hardly likely to be that accurate ;)

I would have no concerns buying Canyon. If something doesn’t work then there is a route to fixing it whether it came from down the road or from across the world. I have had far more shonky LBS experiences than mail order problems :wink:

That is a lot of money to bimble about on as other have said! I have to agree with reducing the budget and going for something far higher quality secondhand/ on sale. Building a hardtail in the low 20 lbs for £700-1000 is no trouble at all. Why anyone would buy a 2 grand factory bike with comparatively poor components (to a SH self build of new/ nearly new parts) is beyond me!

Spesh Carve Pro?

A hell of a lot of money for OK frame, good forks, poor drivetrain, poor wheels, poor brakes… you get the idea :D If you really must buy new then someone like Rose, On-One, Canyon, etc offer the best value

I would second Mike at Bike Dynamics.

A bike fit may not solve every problem you have ever encountered on the bike but it will certainly identify areas to target for improvement. Bike fitting is an ongoing process and is well worth the money, especially considering the amount most of us tend to waste on our bikes.

Garmin heavily overestimate calorie consumption so definitely do not use this to judge what you should or shouldn’t eat!

Illness, not enough conditioning, lack of sleep, poor choice of meal/ water consumption in the days leading up to the ride, lack of sleep and any other number of factors will have caused the struggle.

I am not a physiologist but I seem to recall the average sized person can only process 60g of carbohydrate an hour (3 gels or 500ml of energy drink usually) during exercise so eating more than this is no help. I would imagine this is a far larger factor in determining eating during a ride than trying to count calories which should be replaced after the ride. Happy for someone more sciencey to explain this better!

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Very few bad bikes around as others have said.

I looked for a frame which offered the practicalities I was looking for (simplicity, mud clearance, low weight, reasonably priced, etc) and then checked the geometry looked ok. Very happy.

A bike test can be very misleading. Chances are the saddle/ controls will be set up very differently between bikes, tyres vary, suspension set up can take a few rides, might have some shonky/ amazing components which change the feel of the bike… basically too many variables to really nail down if you like the feel of the frame and more often than not you will not have the time on a bike test to ensure it is set up 100% correctly to judge bike fit.

Well that is my cynical view anyway :D

Edward Teachs no less

Ah ha! Blackbeard’s flag near Brizzle makes sense. Again, good attention to detail from Google.

Street view is a good effort too :D

Why is there a wired naked man throwing things above Bristol?

Skull and cross bones near the bridge over to Wales is a nice touch :D

You have taken some very general measurements and tried to apply to a different frame and are shocked there is a difference in feel? :D

As I am sure you will realise a few mm makes a lot of difference to the feel of the fit on a bike, let alone on a different frame. It is nigh on impossible to take decent, meaningful measurements at home to bypass some confounding variables. What really matters to getting a bike and your body feeling comfortable is getting the angles of (and in turn forces through) your hips, knees, ankles, back, pelvis, shoulder, elbows, etc the same and balancing this with weight distribution over the bike giving good climbing and descending. No way you can sort all that at home in a few minutes and hence why getting comforatble on your previous bike has taken many thousands of miles of evolution. Most bike fitters take a bodged approach to all of this too which is why they don’t always enjoy the best reputation. /Half arsed rant :D

What day is it today?

KMC links are by far the best- I wouldn’t go swapping them based on this experience!

Is the link new? Is it the first time you are removing it?

As other have said the tolerances are very small and they can be a bit stiff to start with. I use the tool when links are new then can do it be hand when they are a few weeks old.

Pop a link you can open and close by hand in you pack for trail side repairs not a new one which may be too stiff to use by hand! Also, I found the 9spd easier to open by hand than 10spd as others have said so there is definitely something odd going on in your situation!

Clean quick link, pop in pliers, squeeze quick links together, squeeze pliers. Shouldn’t be any harder than that. You did buy the right tool?