You need to be careful with some of the shimano discs with the big spiders or some of the floating rotors as the inner part can catch on the pad removal tabs. Any standard disk will be fine.

Merlin have got RLT’s in 120 travel with 15mm Maxle for £270. I’ve just got some for my Inbred.

+2 for Chain Tug

Less than the EA30 but more than the EA70.

I’ve got one on my Inbred. For a budget bar they’re very good.

Done a 2.1 folding 60a eXCeption on a Mavic XM719 with a stans standard rim strip. Needed to use a compressor to seat the beads, once seated had zero problems in use.

wl – It’s an 18″. I’m 5’11” and it fits perfectly with a 55mm stem.

I got my wheels custom built by Merlin on red Hope pro 2 hubs, they were not cheap at about £340 but the build quality has been spot-on. If you want black Hope hubs then Merlin are currently doing Hope Hoops for £295. Superstar come in cheaper at £220 with thier own Switch hubs and more hub colour options but from what I’ve seen on the forums, the build quality can be a bit hit and miss.

Actually a very dark blue but looks black in the pic:

I like the white rims, everyone knows they’re faster :wink: Flows also still clean up well after 2 years of abuse.

Can’t comment on the difference between the 2, I’ve got the standard Blue Pig and my build (Revs, Pro 2/Flow wheels, Reverb, XT groupset, 2.4NN/2.25RaRa tubeless) comes in at exactly 30lb. It rides lighter than it feels though !

Sounds like you’ve got the freehub seal on the wrong way round. (I’ve done this myself).

I used to have a Cavalier that had a 1.7 Isuzu TD engine (1995, mechanical injection, overhead cam and the valves ran directly on the cam), a couple of times during it’s life it got to a point where it wouldn’t start. It turned out to be wear on the inlet valve seats which were causing the valves to be held slightly open when the engine was cold. The symptoms sounded like fuel starvation but actually was a lack of compression. It’s worth removing the camshaft cover and giving the clearances a quick check before doing anything more invasive with the fuel system.

I’m 6′ with short legs and ride an 18″ which fits perfectly. Definately 16″ for you !

My 2.25 Ardent is slightly bigger than my 2.35 Minion DHF. It is also considerably faster rolling than my 2.1 Advantage.

I’ve been sucessfully using a Stans strip on an XM719 rim for 18 months now. Can’t comment on the others as I’ve never tried.

Sorry bigsurfer, adventurer has already claimed the shims. FWIW I got them from Ribble Cycles when they realised they had sent me the wrong mech, may be worth a phonecall to see how much they’ll do them for.

I’ve got a set of 31.8 – 28.6 shims in the garage that you can have for a quid posted (taken off my inbred when I put the mech on a Blue Pig). e-mail d4vew4lsh at gmail dot com.

As you’ve not specified a budget, here’s a list of good VFM parts that I’d be happy to use on my Blue Pig. All prices are from Merlin unless otherwise stated (assuming with a name like lancslad they’ll be fairly local) and include the current 10% discount.

Groupset: SLX (£225). It just works. Whatever you chose you’ll also have to buy 3M of cable outer as the frame uses full length outers.
Brakes: Avid Elixir 3 with 180/160 rotors (£99). If you’re a big lad consider 203/180 rotors.
Handlebars: Ragley frames really suit wide bars. I’ve just swapped a 720 set of Sunlines for a 750 set of Easton Havoc’s (£36) and prefer this width.
Stem: IMO all stems are very simalar in feel no matter what you pay, the more expensive are a bit lighter. Ragley frames are designed around short (50-60mm) stems. £27-30 gets you a Raceface Evolve or Respond.
Grips: Large hands – Lizardskins northshore (£16), medium or small – Superstar supagrippa or size zero (£8-9, http://www.superstarcomponents.com)
Pedals: Superstar Nanotech (£43).
Saddle: My perch of choice is a SDG Bel-Air (£36), however another popular VFM saddle is a Charge Spoon, A google search should be able to get one of these for about £20.

My favourite Maxxis tyres for the riding that you describe are a 2.35 Minion on the front and a 2.25 Ardent on the rear. Ardents aren’t brilliant in mud though so if you regularly ride muddy trails I’d put a 2.1 Advantage on the rear. Can’t comment on HR’s as I’ve never used them.

My XT 11-32 cassette is 227g. Are you saying if I swapped it for an 11-26, this cassette would weigh 77g ???????

FYI, One of my bikes has a 22/32/44 chainset and 11/34 cassette (45 tooth capacity) which I run with a med cage X7 mech (37 tooth capacity, as supplied by Commencal). Chain goes slack if I try to run the 22t chainring with the 4 smallest sprockets so I don’t use these combinations !

If the spec on the cassette is Mx sprocket 28t then you need a 28-11 cassette.
The mech will cope with a few teeth more than it’s capacity, if you set it up the normal way i.e. put your chain around big chainring and big sprocket without the mech then add 2 links, rather than trashing the mech if you go big-big, you’ll be left with some slack chain if you go small-small, although you shouldn’t be using this combination anyway.

Not tried with a crest but failed miserably on an XM719 with stans rim strip. Took ages to seal then had lots of problems burping air through the bead on rough ground. Have since done a few Maxxis tyres on the same rim and rim strip without further problems.

I’ve done my 719’s with the standard Stans rim strip, can’t see the 319 being that much different. First time they went up with a track pump, however every time I’ve changed tyres since I’ve had to use a compressor, probably due to the rim strip forming to the shape of the rim.

FYI, first time was with Panaracer Fire XC pro tyres and they were forever burping. Since switched to Maxxis Ardent and Advantage and never had problems since.

Looks like you’ve already got about 20mm of layback with the saddle slammed as far back as it will go. If you don’t want to change your stem then it’s new frame time !

I’ve been running a Raceface Ride for 4 years now without problems. Currently £18 at merlin when 10% discount applied.

Are you running gears ?
I ran a geared slot dropout inbred for 12 months, just make sure that the wheel is in the front of the dropouts.
Can’t comment for SS use though.

-1 for the Ragley spike, the head of mine has started swivelling after 2 months.

The best post I’ve used is the Nukeproof Warhead. Never bent mine (27.2 on an Inbred) and I’m 18st !

You need one of these:

Make a noise like Darth Vader flying past when swinging for the little buggers !

You say there’s an insulated tank near the CH tank. This tank will also have a header tank that feeds it (may be incorporated into the tank, when you look under the insulation it’s actually 2 tanks, one above the other). Find the header tank for the insulated tank and reconnect it and that should give you water upstairs.

Looking closely at the pic, I’d say the pipe on the left is the overflow and the outlet pipe to the rads is directly below the inlet.

I had a bel-air for 3 years and it was great. Stupidly left it behind on a car park last summer so took the oppertunity to ‘upgrade’ to a Gobi. No matter what I did with the positioning I could never get comfortable on it, It always felt to me like the saddle dipped too much in the middle and the nose and tail were too high, so I sold it and bought another bel-air.

I’ve also got a cheep Bontrager jobbie that I got second hand for a tenner on my second bike. It’s ok but not as comfy as the bel-air.

Apologies for not knowing that the choice is limited to the contents of your garage. My ESP has failed.

For this time of year I’d run an Ardent on the back, much faster rolling than an Advantage. Advantage is better in mud though (I’ve used both).

Assuming it’s a Lithium-Ion battery, store it fully charged somewhere cool such as garage floor. Fully charge it before packing away and top it up once a month if it’s not being used.

Whatever you do, don’t fully discharge it. Once a Li-ion cell drops below 2.7V, irriversable chemical reactions take place within the cell which drastically reduce performance.

You can’t adapt splines rotors to 6 bolt hubs (but you can the other way around). Can the supplier not supply with 6 bolt rotors instead.

For every 20mm increase in rotor diameter you get around 10-15% increase in power.

XT rotors not worth the extra IMO, will be a few grams lighter but not significant enough to feel any different when riding.

My 18″ Blue Pig has 31″ of standover at approx 6″ from the headtube / seattube junction (the ‘knacker’ position). That’s with a 150mm fork and 2.4F / 2.25R tyres.

I’m 5’11” with a 31″ inside leg and find the size spot-on for me.

I stayed at Mynd House in Little Stretton for a night last year. The owner let me chain my bike up in his garage and it’s only 100 yards from the pub mentioned above (Ragleth Inn) which also does good food. Would definately reccommend.

I run an Ardent on the rear of one bike and it’s a great tyre at everything but mud. I’ve also run an Advantage on the back of the same bike and it copes with mud much better than the Ardent. I’m currently running the Advantage on the front with a Storm Control on the rear, which I’m finding very good in muddy conditions.

Try swapping the Advantage and Medusa around !

I’d get superstar switch hubs on stans crest or flow rims and spend the £30 change on something else, however if you can find the other £30, the hope hoops you’ve linked to would be my choice.