Oh they’re coming, they’re coming alright!

I ride my Trance SX with a standard 66 degree HA but with a HT for general trail duties I’m considering making the Trance very single minded with one of those -2 degrees Superstar headsets….hmm, 64 degrees you say….with the 155mm back end from the 200×57 shock instead of the standard 200×51 it came with it’d be a beast!

With beige suede seat I should add.

Apple, Google etc are all as bad and should have their products/services banned from the UK/EU until they start paying proper tax, that’d be my solution.
Take a huge market away from them and watch them cough up soon enough, bastards.

Edenvalleyboy…my parents are both retired social workers, if you are handy with the appropriate forms there seems to be no end of perks to being unemployed these days….my sister brings them her paperwork, they fill it out for her, hey-presto she’s on easy street again.
I hate her for it because of my political views but if the system is that open to abuse why not help yourself!

I watched a depressing program years ago with John Prescott who naively believed everyone wanted to work and there was no such thing as a benefit scrounge….it was almost embarrassing for him when he followed a (19?) old girl around for a week trying to find her work.
She had no qualifications but wouldn’t entertain a manual or ‘dirty’ job….being a cleaner was apparently beneath her, actually for once Prescott looked genuinely shocked, it took him away from his Westminster bubble and made him realise there are swathes of people like this up and down the country.

What happened to the girl? Who knows, she seemed to think she was entitled to an exec level job in the City….we’re still probably paying for her now.

Ok, two anecdotal views.
I was briefly on job seekers in my 20s when I didn’t know what I wanted to do and I’d cocked up another job…..it was humiliating but the £70/week put fuel in my car and allowed me to attend interviews until I was back in gainful employment…..and for me that’s what it’s about, a stop gap while you sort yourself out.

Now let’s take my sister. She has a child, this helps massively by the way…..her flat is pretty much paid for, she contributes chicken feed rent from the 16hrs work she sometimes does as a carer.

She is at Uni, my other half can’t afford Uni and I can’t afford to do my masters….but guess what?….the good old state are funding my sis through Uni.

I drive a £900 Golf….she has a brand new Nissan Juke, just another perk of playing the single parent benefit system eh!?

She is also covered in thousands of pounds of tattoos and attends a bodybuilding gym several times a week, who pays for that?….that’s not job seekers that’s a lifestyle choice….add in the latest smart phone, cigs etc….it’s not a bad life actually, bugger it I’m having a sprog and giving up work too!

I love her to bits, she’s my family obviously….but she really is one of those mickey takers you see on sensationalist tv programs….and she’s not unique that’s the frightening thing, she has friends (parasites) in similar positions.

Anyway I’m out,

.

There’s loads, you’re practically in London…only have to put up with the ‘Daahling’ types waffling on too loudly about whatever nonsense first world problem they’ve got…couldn’t wait to leave the area myself.

He’s done well to carve a niche away from racing, the UCI should bring him in as a consultant for their DH courses….Hardline stands alone as a bonkers event and his riding still rocks….his BDS result at Bala a few years ago shamed many regulars given it was a one off and a bit of a laugh!
The Athertons are still a formidable sponsors wet dream.

Watched a vid of him just riding up and down some unknown (to me) hill in Wales a while ago and it was as good as anything Danny Mac does (minus the tricks obviously) in terms of getting me out on my bike.
I really like the bloke and most of the community do too.

This needs to be done by degrees, 29er front with a 650b back end….that’d rock I reckon.

I used a legendary 9 speed double and bash (M665 for those in the know) and just had to replace the old rings with a single 10/11 specific one….easy peasy.

Magic Mary’s work as do Maxxis Shortys although you’d not call either an out and out mud tyre.

I have a Dirty Dan for up front when things get really sloppy, Geax Datura are good but not sure if On One are still punting them out cheap?…..also use a Spesh Hill Billy on the back in winter slop, great tyre.

Cheers fellas, some persuasion with a rubber mallet on the other side of the axle seemed to move it through enough to attach the cassette correctly…..it is a lovely bit of kit (MX3) but at £60 I’d hope so too!

Brand new bike with perfect freehub, I’ll try again later.

66 degrees on my trance, works well.

Paramedic….it’s rougher than when I first started 16yrs ago….police cut backs don’t help.

Ok cards on the table.

I’ve used Clen, Ephedrine, GW501516, GHRP6, Dianabol, Anadrol, Winstrol, Anavar, Testosterone, Trenbolone, Nandrolone, Insulin etc……

I don’t race from one year to the next, I don’t feel I’m cheating anybody…..part of it is my job, went to an extremely aggressive patient who was in my face….twice my size, top off and ready to go….no police attendance obviously.
I quietly and out of earshot of his wife, my cremate and his kids told him he was ‘fat, old and I’d break him…. he thought better and backed off.

Not proud but I’ve been doing this job 16 yrs, I’m nearly 40 and would like to do another 16 yrs…..if some PED use and regular exercise means I stay safe and come home to Mrs Deviant then I’m happy with that.

Let the moralizing begin.

Cheers gentleman.

Yeah, I had a 140mm Sector coil spring, easiest shock I ever worked on.
Buy the length travel you want (ebay)….and drop in the new spring, easy.

mikewsmith – Member
The unofficial version I heard from someone in a shop with one was along the lines of somebody put way too many tokens and 300psi into one.. after the conversation he happily raced on it.

Like I said earlier, dick’eds tinkering with stuff that takes years to master….i struggle to sympathise, other than setting my sag I send my suspension off to TF for anything more in depth.

Nobby Nic…the new one, the old one was lethal.
Magic mary…maybe overkill for your riding.
Shorty…same again, maybe too much.
HR2 is good.
WTB Vigilante but similar vein to Shortys and Marys…very aggresssive.

Trail King in 2.4 lovely volume, not too agressive tread, could be perfect.

Have used a DHR2 on mine since the tyre came out, love the paddle effect tread pattern…brakes brilliantly and digs in for traction.
It’s an EXO casing and its been used in the muddy rooty south of England and now in the harder rocky terrain in Wales, never managed to puncture it or tear a sidewall.

Short of a dual ply/DH casing I’m not sure what to suggest!?

Huge Shimano brake fan here, I have the new XT on my FS and was running Saint on my hardtail up until a month ago.

Then I decided that the Saints on the HT were overkill and would fetch a pretty penny on eBay and I’d just make do with the current Deore (615?)….so I did just that, got nearly £150 for my now second hand Saints and bought a brand new set of M615s for £75….fitted them, no bleed required and the vendor had already cut the hoses to the right ballpark length….went off for a ride expecting to be underwhelmed after a few years on Saint.

To my surprise they were bloody brilliant!…lovely sharp bite, good power building to huge power the more I squeezed the lever until eventually locking out and skidding was easily achieved….all with one finger.
Phenomenal brakes.
I know the four pot Saints put one pair of its pistons on the rotor momentarily before the other pair for increased feel and modulation but it’s not worth it, you can achieve the same with two pot calipers if you’re not heavy handed and I find the immediacy of the bite from Deore, XT etc far more reassuring.

I’d be interested to try Zee brakes as Dirt magazine reckoned they were better than Saint but for now I’m over the expensive brake thing when a £75 set of Deores are as good as anything I’ve ever used….and I include a pair of Hope and a couple of sets of Sram brakes in that group.

On Pinkbike at the moment there is a video with Brett Tippie checking out all the bikes being used at Rampage, virtually all of them are on Shimano brakes….make of that what you will.

Swapped to X-fusion both forks and the shock on my full suss, haven’t looked back… Knocks spots off the RS stuff that the bike came with.

I read somewhere they used ex riders, current riders and former winners as judges for the first time this year….seems sensible and probably had more to do with getting the judging right this year.

It’ll be fine, the angles stay the same as both front and rear of the bike are dropping by the same amount….as you rightly said, the bottom bracket drops but depending on the frame or where you ride this might actually be a good thing.

Tyre clearance should be better, a smaller wheel in a bigger space so to speak…a rider won the Mega a few years ago in appallingly muddy conditions by putting 26 inch wheels in his 650b for added mud clearance.

I’m currently running 26 inch wheels in a Dartmoor Hornet 650b hardtail frame, no probs, go for it.

That shock with the 7 spacers is ridiculous….i made a post on here a few years ago now where i stated that if a shock is needing the buyer to retro-fit spacers to get it working properly then its probably not fit for purpose and should go back to the manufacturer or at the least off to a specialist to be properly tuned….

….needless to say i was criticied for it and told how i was a neanderthal and how tuning with spacers was the best thing since sliced bread etc etc….

Amatuers with no clue about suspension tuning should leave well alone and i include myself in there, i’ve always used TF-tuned but other firms are available.
I’ve seen too many well intentioned idiots out on the trail with too much air in the shock or as in the case pictured above too many spacers…it goes without saying that the shock doesnt work and the bike rides like crap….instead of going back to the beginning and buying a shock with the correct tune or sending their existing one off for tuning they add yet more air or spacers!

MTBers seem to love a good tinkering but suspension is one of the dark arts that even fully paid up pros in motorsport often get confounded by…but your average MTBer seems to think he/she is a tuning god because RS and Fox have given them the ability to bung a load of crap in there in an attempt to get it working close to properly….i dont get it?!?!

My weight often fluctuates between 12st and 15st depending on what time of year it is, what other sports i’m doing at the time, whether i’m lifting weights or not etc…but i’ve never felt the need to take apart my suspension or add spacers and so forth, i set the sag anywhere from 20%-30% depending on what kind of ride i’ll be doing and how plush i want it and then i ride…never bottomed it out, blasted through the travel or any other problems i often hear about and i’ve used RS, Fox and X-Fusion in recent years with the same good results….my riding has been in the fairly flat South East and laterly rocky and mountainous Wales, what exactly are poeple doing that they need to add 7 spacers to what should be a premium shock?!

Rant over but that pic of the X2 with 7 spacers is everything thats wrong with MTBing at the moment…bizarre.

Most bikes these days are ‘good’ in that they do the job and flatter a rider while representing reasonable value for money…you get the odd anomaly where a manufacturer specs a 70mm stem and narrow bars on a supposed AM/enduro machine but as said above; thats usually the accountant winning out over the design team and is easily remedied once bought and the mismatched components sold on eBay etc…

For me it comes down to frame/geometry and suspension….brakes are about the limit on what i’m prepared to splash out to make a ‘bad’ bike good for me…and with excellent Shimano Deore brakes for around £75 a set its no hardship….if i have to spend £500 on a new fork to make the bike good then something has gone wrong.

Reliability should be taken into account, with some of the more boutique brands costing the same as a decent second hand car i dont think its unreasonable to expect good (if not total) reliability from major components….sorry to offend owners but if i’d spent 5K+ on an Evil that then broke i’d be royally p##sed off, in fact if i’d gone direct sales and bought a YT for less than 2K and the frame broke i’d still be cheesed off….major load bearing components like that should last years not a few rides before something cracks, snaps or wears out….

….so i suppose yes, it is possible to make a bad bike.

In recent riding times i’ve had a varied selction of hardtails and full sussers and none of them have let me down….a selction of On-Ones, a Ragley, a Dialled Alpine, a Saracen Ariel, a Trance and a Dartmoor Hornet have all ranged from budget frame only builds to 2K+ full bikes….off the top of my head nothing currently on the market jumps out at me as being bad (if it works as intended!), certainly theres nothing i’ve considered in recent years and dismissed for being a ‘bad’ bike….in fact quite the opposite, theres so many bikes out there and such little time (and funds) to try them all!

I’ve tried a 26 inch wheel in the back of my 650b Trance, it drops the middle to rear height of the bike making it feel lower and slackened out the HA more…i wouldn’t ride like it all the time but for uplift days and general DH tomfoolery it worked great…Liteville have been bold enough to offer complete bikes on that principle.

Mine came with my Trance frame that I bought in 2015, it’s been faultless, haven’t had to take it apart or service it yet…if it isn’t broken and all that….

It’s pretty short only having 100mm of drop but the newer ones offer 125mm and 150mm I believe?…the positions thing you asked about is new to me, mine can be stopped anywhere in its travel, it’s an air spring setup not fixed mechanical points.

I’d happily have another if/when this dies but I can also happily recommend the cheap mechanical posts on eBay from Tmars and the like, I had one of those on an old hardtail for years with no problems….never seen the point of spending huge sums on offerings from Fox and RS when cheap dropper posts have given me years of excellent service.

I have one bike running 1×11 and the other running 2×10…both shimano.

In practice they both do the same job, they were put together properly at the beginning and have needed bugger all maintenance, the 2×10 is two years old and the 1×11 coming up to one year…if I was to be hyper critical then the chainline on the 1x setup is horrible looking even if it works perfectly…remember when people used to run 2x and 3x systems and get their knickers in a twist about using the big ring to big sprocket or vice versa when in the granny and using the smallest sprocket out back?!…same thing happens with a 1x setup but people conveniently forget how they used to fret over this in order to get on the bandwagon.

Seriously, if you’ve never been able to get a front derailleur working for you then who has been fettling your bike and just how bad are they!?

In its favour I’ll happily concede that a 1x setup is easier to clean and on a tech climb or tricky decent only having to think about and coordinate one shifter is nice but far too much of the reason people changed recently is simply fashion, gears should be there doing a job and not something you actively think about on a ride, loads of people go 1x and never get it working properly for whatever reason….if that’s the case ditch it and go back to 2x or whatever worked previously for you…life’s too short to worry about this…and the furrowed brows and hand wringing over a few grams here and there is laughable, once a rider is properly in shape and not carrying any excess timber then he/she can start worrying that the drivetrain on their bike is 200 grams heavier than a different setup!

For those sticking with 10 speed at the moment, it’s incredibly tempting, I was on the CRC website earlier and couldn’t believe how cheap it is, at those prices it’s virtually disposable….use for a year and bin ready for a new drivetrain next year….or keep a winter and summer setup separately….11 speed and 1x crank kits aren’t that cheap yet.

If I was building my own bike I’d go 2×10 for reasons of cost and having years of good service and experience with that setup, if I bought a new bike and it came with a 1x drivetrain then I’d happily just get on and use it, in my experience the difference is so tiny as to make no difference, far more relevant to me enjoying a ride is my braking setup, saddle height or malfunctioning dropper post, location, tyre choice etc….i’ve never driven home thinking “that was great but it’d be better if I had a 1x setup”….but I have driven home plenty of times cursing the tyres, pondering a brake bleed etc as these can make or break the ride (and subsequently me!)….a properly setup 2x drivetrain works just as well as a nicely done 1x setup and shouldn’t detract from the ride.

I’ll happily recommend the Trance, prices have come down since the 650b was launched in 2014/15 and its built incredibly well and mine has proved to be reliable with minimal maintenance.

As stock they are a 140mm trail bike but can be built up any way you like.
Mine has run a 150mm fork before going to SX spec and fitting a 160mm one… the rear shock is 200 x 51 as supplied but a popular mod is to swap to a 200 x 57 giving 150mm+ of rear travel instead.
The alu bike is lighter than most rival brands carbon offerings and its strong, I’m not light at 14st and thoroughly hammer it on uplift days as well as my local mountain riding all over Wales, there’s no play in any of the bearings, the maestro/DW link suspension is incredibly plush while giving a solid platform to pedal on, it’s worked well with both Rockshox and now X-Fusion suspension, some people (including at least one on here) have fitted a coil sprung rear shock instead if that’s your thing.

I don’t generally subscribe to the ‘one bike to rule all’ school of thinking as hardtails are so different to FS…26 inch wheels now feel vastly different to 29ers….short and step geo is noticeably different to the long and slack way of designing trail bikes now etc etc….but I could happily ditch my other bikes and just use this instead, I’d probably keep two sets of forks (140mm & 160mm) as this seemed to make the biggest difference to mine….harder hitting, slacker head angle etc but I’d have every confidence in taking the Trance to wherever I happened to be riding that day.

I believe the frame can be purchased on its own too if you have parts you’d like to carry across from previous bikes?

Excellent news, just been browsing the bay and found some reasonably priced coil shocks on there.

I have the 2015 bike and ditched the standard shock (RS Monarch)….nothing wrong with i but i’d read on American forums that the standard 200 x 51 dimensions are conservative and the bike will take a 200 x 57 taking rear travel from 140mm to around 155mm….coupled with a 160mm fork up front you’ve then got quite a beast without the weight and length of the Giant Reign which has similar travel but is heavier and longer.

So….i found a nearly new X-Fusion O2 shock in 200 x 57 dimensions and had the LBS fit it for me, they said it was easy and there werent any problems with clearance now it has an additional 15mm or so of rear travel.

Why X-Fusion?….i’m OCD when it comes to bike parts and i was running an X-Fusion Slant fork at the time, no other reason than that!…but i can happily say the O2 shock is easily as good as the RS Monarch that came off the bike.

The bike was bought as a frame only but effectively runs in SX guise with 160mm forks (Giant sell one with 160mm forks called the SX but charge a premium for it, i decided i could do it better and cheaper)….interested in the post above about a coil shock, thats an itch i’ve been wanting to scratch for a while.

Kiksy, did it go on ok or did you have to file bits out of the way, use offfset bearings etc?
Please please tell me it just bolted straight on !?!?

Lol at this thread, parking issues!?…move to the country Dahling, we have a nice garage, a double car port and a driveway you could park a double decker on….and it’s gated.

City folk threads do make me chuckle…carry on.

People are so inconsiderate these days, how dare they talk about an event before you’ve finished watching it
Surely it’s common sense that looking at a topic about an event after it’s finished might have some results mentioned

This.

If it’s a WC weekend and I don’t want to know the results….guess what?!…i’ll avoid said thread until after I’ve caught up with the action.
It’s not rocket science.

Now, spoilers in titles I can get annoyed about with the best of them….but that’s not the issue here.

I just had a very long debate about this (with myself) and decided to stay on 2×10. It’s fine. I haven’t seen any dead kittens at all on my ride today.

Same here, loads of gears, flawless shifting and no upgrade costs associated with the usual ‘latest and greatest’ ideas in MTBing….can you imagine the marketing meeting?

Boss: We need to do something about 2×10
Everybody else: eh? It works well and gives a good spread of gears
Boss: I don’t care, get rid of the front mech
Everybody else: won’t people struggle up hills?
Boss: yeah but stick dinner sized plates cogs on the cassette, shifting will be hit and miss but we’ll term it Enduro and make all our sponsored riders use it too.

Boss: right, what else can we bugger about with that will make people part with their hard earned?
Everybody else: we could invent a load of new tyre sizes, I don’t just mean 29ers….we could label them ‘plus’ sized and they could be 2.7 – 3.0 width….only we don’t have the tech yet to make these monsters light and puncture proof.
Boss: I love it!….get it out there ASAP, fixing flats is part of the joy of MTBing, nobody will mind!

Cheers guys, all food for thought.

Yeah, just to muddy the water here…..i do also have an X-fusion Sweep with the Roughcut damper and it knocks spots off anything else I’ve tried…to the point i decided against buying a dedicated DH bike and just stuck a 160mm X-fusion up front instead…..bike is a Giant Trance SX btw.

Many many thanks for that, with upcoming nuptials too this is great advice!

The Sektor is much underrated, the 32mm stanchions laugh in the face of Fox’s 32mm offerings….i ran a 140mm pair on a 456-evo and they did uplift days etc….tough old fork, I’d have another.