Would I? Yes…… and no.

To elaborate, I have one of each. My winter road bike/CX bike/towpoon has discs and I like it lots (two sets of wheels one with road tyres and another with CX nobblies).

My bestest/summer road bike has rim brakes. This works just fine for its intended use. If I was buying a new one now I’d probably lean towards discs but if there was a bike I really liked at a very good price I wouldn’t be put off if it didn’t have discs (although I’d always want discs on the CX/winter bike).

Mine (2015 Arkose 5 that I got in the Evans end of season sale) –

Not the sexiest option and the colour wouldn’t be my first choice but for the price it was hard to ignore. It’s had a few upgrades already although there was nothing really wrong with the original spec. I’ve also got a second set of wheels with tubeless road tyres on so it’s pretty flexible.

As an alternative, I recently put Schwalbe S-One 30c tubeless tyres on my cross bike as winter road / mild/dry-ish trail tyres. They seem like a good option so far.

WTB Cross Boss tubeless here. Roll pretty well on road and work well off road as long as it isn’t too muddy. They aren’t proper mud tyres but a good choice for all round riding and mixed road/off road rides. I run mine at about 35 – 40 psi.

Unimog.

I run about 80-85 psi in 28c tubed tyres for pure road riding.

On my CX/gravel/gnarmac thing I run about 35 psi tubeless with 35c tyres.

Seems to work for me.

I went from an older, racier Cannondale (Alloy R3000), to a newer Synapse Carbon. I much prefer the taller front end on the Synapse and the ride is so much smoother / less harsh on bad roads. The 28mm tyres probably also help smooth things out a bit although I’m toying with going to 25mm to see how they work/feel. I may drop the stem a bit by moving a spacer or two from underneath to above the stem soon to see how that feels as the stack height is quite high. Plenty of options to adjust the height/fit to suit though.

Loads of riding around Ashridege and the general area around there. Do you live locally? I’m in Potten End and ride regularly with a local group (MTB Berkhamsted). I have loads of .gpx logs from rides. Don’t do Strava though. Ashridge does get very muddy at this time of year though as has been mentioned above.

I’m interested in the vertical mounting on the rear too. I have a Vito van so space isn’t a problem but being able to put a muddy bike on the back would be useful sometimes.

Same bike as mine,it will be a real pain if I do end up swapping them out as the gear selector is mounted to the righthand brake clamp and the dropper remote on the left.

I got a T130 Works that came with Guide RS brakes. I’d had some Avid Elixir 7s on a previous bike and wasn’t impressed (they got swapped for Hopes), so wasn’t expecting to like the Guides. Having used them over the last year though they have been just fine (including riding in Wales, Alps and other hilly / mountain locations). No problems at all. I’ve got three other bikes with XTs on and they also work fine. I had planned to put XTs on the Whyte just to keep everything the same but don’t really see any need to.

Mud hugger if proper wet or muddy. One of those little plastic flaps under the saddle for mild spray.

I got mine (Arkose 5), mail order too.

So do I really need to take my bike in if I want a replacement? Or can I just take my spare dropout in, get that replaced, fit to bike then repeat with the one that was on the bike? Taking my bike into a store is a pain I could do without. Haven’t had any problems so far so if I have to take bike to store I’ll probably just not bother.

Cheers 🙂

I have two Picos, two Wilmas (not the very latest versions) and a Neo with a selection of batteries. Not the cheapest but work well, the bits are mostly interchangeable and they are very reliable.

I’d really like to do Dr Ps BLB ride next year. Missed out this year although I did do L2B off road on the cx bike. Maybe you could give me a shout when planning?

Hose pipe with a variable spray/jet nozzle to get the bulk of the mud off. Spray with MuckOff or similar. Run over everything with a brush. Hose pipe to wash off. Spray chain with light lube or water displacing lube like wd40 or similar. Lube chain properly before riding next time. Bike always goes back into the shed clean so that it’s ready to go next time I want it.

I use my Fenix if I just want to record where I go on a ride and get some stats on speed, distance etc. That’s about it really. I probably use a very small percentage of the functionality available and I expect most people would be the same.

I used to use a Polar GPS watch for the same functionality and that also worked fine. I only switched to the Fenix because I also use a Garmin Edge 810. The 810 is used for navigation mainly on the road – to follow pre-planned routes. I wanted all my ride info in one place rather than having to use the Garmin and Polar websites.

I’d wait for the Fenix 5. That’ll be better. Or maybe the 6………

Seriously though, my Fenix 3 seems to work well. It does everything I need it to do plus a ton of stuff I don’t need. Can’t really think of any additional features I’d need.

I’m not a fan of mudguards generally but at this time of year they’re a necessary evil.

On my CX bike I’ve put one of those RRP bum guards under the seat and their CX guard on the front. The front one is very minimal but keeps some spray and suchlike off your face. The rear keeps your bum dry but you still get mud thrown up onto your back. It’s good enough for me though and isn’t as aesthetically offensive as proper mudguards.

I got rid of the Ardent Race on the rear and replaced it with the standard Ardent from the front. Then put a 2.4 Ardent on the front. Seems to work ok for me.

I put a shorter stem and carbon bar on (Renthal), and changed the grips.

I once put a tyre on the wrong way around.

“it was invented in the vietnam war to quickly repair or balance damaged rotor blades. apparently.”

Invented? That seems a bit of a bold claim. Surely someone just said “hey, why don’t we just put some sticky backed plastic on it”.

When did sticky back plastic become “helicopter tape”? What have helicopters got to do with it?

Thanks for sharing. I just had a cup of coffee and a mince pie.

Have you tried adding more exclamation marks?

That might help!!!!!!!!!!!!

You should know that you can’t stay out all night with your new little friends. You have to be back in time to do your homework and it’s turkey twizzlers for dinner.

I’ve still got my Klein Mantra which is currently setup single speed. Have been toying with putting some rigid forks on it as the original Manitous aren’t great and I ride fully rigid on other bikes more often than not anyway.

Arrive in style……..

I do run tubeless on 5 bikes but my wife doesn’t bother on hers even though she could.

I’d say overall there is more faff involved in tubeless especially when running multiple bikes and wanting to change tyres to suit seasons/conditions.

For me though the upside is that the faff is usually when I choose to do it rather than out on the trails on a ride. So I can do the messing about in the shed with a cup of tea rather than fixing punctures in the mud and rain when out on a ride.

1 x 11 works for me –

36 front ring with 11-36 rear gives enough spinage for getting up Chilterns hills without compromising the road gearing too much – certainly with nobbly tires on. With slicks on it’s still ok but I have a proper road bike for purely road rides so whilst not perfect it’s perfectly acceptable road gearing (for me).

Seems to work. Shame there’s no such info in any of the SRAM docs I could find.

After some google-fu it would appear that the issue is that road cranks have a shorter axle so the spacers that are used on the BB for use with an MTB crank dont get used for a road crank. I found this info from a few cycling forums but couldn’t find it anywhere on the SRAM website / tech docs.

Going to give it a try and see if it works. Will report back…..

FWIW – on my medium I’ve put a 1cm longer stem on and wider 44cm bars. Still not sure about the stem though. May go back to the standard length.

Sure I could have gone for a large and a shorter stem too but the medium was closest to my existing road bike geometry.

5’10” and riding a Medium here. Felels pretty good to me but I haven’t tried a large. Either would probably be ok with a bit of stem tweaking. There’s generally only a cm or two difference in the dimensions.

Wouldn’t it have been better to have bought a frame and build it up the way you want it instead of buying a load of stuff just to discard and replace?

Specialised Storm Control work for me.

No cable/hose running under the downtube on the new models as far as I can see. That’s good. Also seems to be Crud catcher mounts. I like. Hard to mount a crud catcher on my 2015 model.

I’ve had various single speeds but when I fancied trying a 29er I went for the Cannondale 29 Trail SL SS. it’s not the sexiest option but for the price it’s hard to beat (got mine reduced at Triton – 2014 model I think). The brakes were rubbish so I replaced them with XT straight away. I also put on some Middleburn cranks I had in the spares box. The fork is a bit harsh but in summer I run a 2.35 Hans Dampf tubeless which makes a big difference. There’s masses of clearance at the front but not so much at the rear. Overall I really like the bike and a few strategic upgrades have made it even better.

Thanks 🙂