Stiffen the forks up, if you blow through travel too easy.

This.

I’m running 140mm RS Revs on my HT but on a typical trail ride it only ever uses about half the travel…which seems about right, why would you want a bike (even a full suss) wallowing in all of its travel for fairly tame trail riding?!

The fork tends to use full travel (or a few mm short) on uplift days only, that’s with the air pressure put in that RS recommend on the fork leg, no buggering about with tokens either….I’m slowly coming round to liking air springs and their ease of tuning….i had similar performance from my old coil spring Sektor but that involved swapping the OEM medium spring out for a firm spring from TFtuned…which was obviously more hassle than just playing with a shock pump.

Tokens are now available for some 32mm stanchion forks like the Revelation but I wasn’t sure about the Sektor but that’s good to know as it’s a good fork that performs better than it has any right to for the budget price.

Brutal track, most of the riders just tip-toeing their way down mountain goat style, shame as it looks like they’re going slowly (they’re not!)….they just can’t let loose like some of the other tracks this year.

I know people (including the riders) slate the bike-park tracks but at least they give a sense of speed…..hell even Danny Hart at a sopping wet Champery looked faster than the riders on this track….I can only imagine it’s clay like, greasy, and virtually impossible to steer on.

I don’t think Gwin is going to get this, this is very much European conditions and I think it’ll go to a Euro rider.

Well done Greenland and Rachel so far, the Brits still doing well on the world stage.

What do we think of these wheels: Alexrims or pacenti on switch ultra hubs. Any good, suitable for xc and odd trail centre use. The other ones are stans arch or crest on switch ultras clerance wheels.

I’d go for the Stans as first choice (width depending) as I don’t know which of Crest or Arch is wider and I tend to run wide tyres but you may be different….after that I’d go Pacenti (I have TL28) myself and they’re great, light and wide…last choice would be Alexrims, they just scream budget to me….i’m sure their top end stuff is good but every ‘reasonable’ priced set off Alexrims I’ve seen have looked crap.

So there ya go:

Stans
Pacenti
Alexrims

…..in that order.

Switch Evo hubs are very good, not just for the price either….they’re good hubs full stop, I believe the Evo upgrade included a move to SKF bearings….which was probably just as well as about the only criticism you could level at the old Switch hubs was the standard bearings were a bit crap.

Interesting one this….parts of the course look vertical!

Form says Gwin but he’s had such a good season I’d like to see someone else win it.

I’d love to see Brosnan come out from Gwin’s shadow and snatch it…. I’d like to see Bryceland take what was his last year until he threw it away with 100yards left….i’d like to see Gee become a triple Champ just because it would wind up all his detractors!….

Vergier is getting quicker with each race, dark horse for me….Hart if it rains obviously!….never count Minnaar out but he’s won it enough times that I’d like to see someone else.

Bruni could do it but needs to see a shrink this off season so the constant 2nd place finishes don’t get to him.

Blenki, Jones, MacDonald, Thirion, Fearon, Lucas etc are all capable of pulling out a one-off dream run, as someone else said, anybody who’s been in the top-10 at some point this season could conceivably win on their day.

Fantasy result for me?…Sam Hill, if he was fit it would be a given….the course has his name all over it, sadly though I think his injury is worse than he or the team let on and this season is a write off….it would be great though!

Yes, the new ones are good….if you like your 160mm-170mm travel bikes then arguably the Sanction is class leading.

The new Force was favorably reviewed by a website I read the other day, may have been Pinkbike…the Force is the more trail orientated one isn’t it?

(I also spent the 90s riding around on a GT Avalanche!)

Stop it with the Ohlins shock pics!….I might do something I regret.

Never considered Polygon, what are they like re. VFM, I’m anticipating some money left over but not enough to go spunking 7k on S-Works versions of Spesh’s and suchlike!

Don’t buy the 601 if you really want a full-on downhill bike that will only ever go on uplifts. It’s not one. It’s a massively capable machine and would cope with any downhill track but it’s not designed to be a DH rig. You’d be spending a lot of money and getting something sub-optimal for that discipline.
That from a 601 devotee!
Buy the 601 if you need to get to the top under your own steam and then want to descend as though it’s almost a downhill rig.

Interesting to hear, thanks…..shame really as I love the look of them.

If it’s the Turner you want and you can afford it, why not?

….because the really superficial, easily led, peer pressure and marketing susceptible part of me keeps coming back to the fact the Turner DHR has 26 inch wheels….it’s the same reason I don’t already have a Canyon DHX in the shed as they’re awesome too and I actually prefer them to the YT Tues.

I’ve emailed Mr Turner and he said it’d be fine to run one with a 650b front end, much like Liteville advocate on their bikes for riders my height so I haven’t entirely ruled one out.

Only thing bugging me is this is a dream build, I’m unlikely to ever build another DH bike after this and if I compromise at the start I’ll just end up hating it and selling it….. It’s irrational because I’m one of the biggest 26 inch wheel fans on this forum and never miss an opportunity to tell people how good my 26 inch HT Ragley is!….I just feel that if I’m going to spend thousands then it should be future proof and correct from the beginning.

With Superstar it’s the hub choice that’s important, they do Switch hubs that have been in their range for years and are bombproof or they do Tesla hubs which was their attempt at a clever hub with click on and click off axle standards and loads of points of engagement…. Trouble is the first batch were crap and ruined their reputation.

I have Tesla Evo hubs which have supposedly ironed out the problems and touch wood they’ve been faultless but I also have some Switch hubs on another bike and can’t notice the difference in performance so if I was buying again I’d go with Switch hubs.

Any of their new rims are good, they vary from 21-25mm internal widths and are usually available on prebuilt wheel sets for much less than £200….have a browse of the site but I think you just missed out on their August wheels promo where they were offering 15% off certain sets.

Like I said, Switch hubs (evo model now available too) with their DS25 rims or EX23 rims and you can’t go wrong, the hubs are easily serviced at home and axle standards can be changed in minutes depending on whether your fork is QR, 15mm thru-axle etc….

Plenty of food for thought here chaps, thank you.

The Banshee looks good and appeals to the part of me that likes less rear travel, 200mm forks with a 180mm frame could be perfect, similar in concept to the 200/190 Liteville.

As others keep saying, this isn’t about getting the perfect bike for UK uplift days….boringly and predictably that would probably just be any one of the current 160mm FS bikes out there now…..this is about building (or buying) a DH bike because I’ve always wanted one and I’m finally in a position to do it.

Regarding tracks, obviously Fort Bill is capable of allowing a DH bike to stretch its legs….Glencoe?….Llangollen?….the blacks at Antur but I’ve not been there?…..and obviously the obligatory week in the Alps each summer.
Either way, I’ll enjoy riding it even if it is only on high days and holidays, just need to hurry up and complete on the house move!

I’m going to be a boring old sod and say unless you’re going to start DH racing or head to Ft. Bill every other weekend a 6″ bike would be more fun. The modern crop of DH bike are so slack and so focused they’re a real handful at less than warp speed.
I’ve had a couple over the years, even with Cwmcarn and BPW on my doorstep I won’t have another, my 6″ AM bike is easier to go mad on and I can ride it anywhere. Sometimes by DH bikes would hardly see the light of day between Alps trips.

I knew someonec would say that….and there is some truth in what you say, I have a Trance with 160mm forks and a 66 degree HA that is fine for most gravity stuff in the UK.
But this isn’t need it’s want, I’m 38 in October, the next big one is my 40th….this is an early birthday present as much as anything else…..look at the plethora of fat bikes on here at the moment, nobody needs them but people are buying them because they WANT them and they’re supposed to be fun…..it’s the same for a DH bike and me, I don’t need it but I want one.

I’ve ridden a few on uplift days recently, when people see my hardtail they seem dead keen on having a go and I get to have a run in whatever they’re using that day….the steering from triple clamped/dual crown forks is a step on from how a conventional fork deals with rough ground, it blows my mind every time….just point and go, very little deflection compared to single crown forks…..there is a Spesh Enduro Evo that comes with 180mm dual crown Boxxers, maybe that should be on my list too?

If we were all riding what we needed as opposed to what we desired the trails would be full of 120mm Cotic Souls as that bike pretty much covers most UK trail riding!

The purchase is being prompted by relocating to central Wales so although it’s not Alps countries I am likely to get more use from it than when I lived in the South East.

You cyclical old bugger glasgowdan, it won’t be sold, the new house has a man cave so even it spends its life on axle stands as an ornament I’ll still enjoy staring at it!

Good call on the Solid Strike, anymore?

Another vote for 521’s here, ran a set on a hardtail years ago, entered some of the inaugural UKGE rounds in 2011 on them too, swapped them over onto my Saracen Ariel for a while and they did sterling service on that bike….. Never needed trueing, never dented the rims etc….only criticism I can think of (and I’m clutching at straws now) is that they looked a bit boring in plain black!….and may be considered a touch narrow these days at 21mm but I never had a problem sitting 2.35 High Rollers or 2.5 Minions on them.

I found the angles weird on the BFE I tried, correct me if I’m wrong but aren’t they the same geometry as a Soul?…and they’re optimised for 120mm forks.

Just chucking on a set of 160mm forks and hoping it’ll work seems half arsed to me, the bottom bracket was high, the seat tube was canted too far back with long forks etc…lovely looking but if you’re going to design a frame for up to 160mm forks you need to lower the BB, slacken out the HA and steepen the seat tube so it still makes a good fist of climbing….none of that was done on the BFE, it just looked (and rode) like a really lazy effort to get on the ‘long forks’ hardtail bandwagon….simply making the construction more burly does not change the fact it’s a Soul with different tubing.

I was underwhelmed, the 456’s I’ve had have been designed from the ground up to take long forks, whether the quality of steel is there or not is largely irrelevant, they’re a good design rather than an afterthought which is what the the BFE felt like…. I’d love a Soul, you couldn’t give me a BFE.

I also had a Dialled Alpine for a while, my 456-evo and the Alpine briefly overlapped….honestly I couldn’t tell any difference in ‘feel’ between the two despite the Alpine being covered in Reynolds-853 stickers….the fabled springiness from steel comes from narrow tubing which has all but disappeared due to demand for bolt-thru rear axles, tapered head tubes, dropper post compatible seat tubing etc….it doesn’t matter whether the steel hardtail in question was a cheap 456 with gas piping or an Alpine with 853 tubing, as long as it had thin stays, a traditional head tube and a 27.2mm seat tube it felt ‘springy’ and great to ride.

Sadly those days have passed, I should’ve kept one or the other and bought a straight steerer set of Revs to keep them going….like a gullible fool I believed the hype, I believed I needed a dropper post, I believed the front of my bike was compromised without a tapered head tube, I believed the rear wheel needed to be bolted through on massive stays….what an idiot eh?!….goes to show peer pressure and marketing does work though!

Each to their own, I like the more aggressively treaded, mud shedding tyre on the front, the 2015 Nic looks more like the new breed of Moto style tyres around at the moment whereas the Dampf is far too ‘cluttered’ for my liking, looks like you’d ride through some mud and regret it for the rest of the ride.

I have one of the new 2015 Nics and it’s a great front, I’d always put something faster rolling on the back though….Rock Razor, Hans Dampf etc….

Had a 456-evo that was brilliant, a proper little trail weapon, just as happy being loaded on an uplift truck as being pedaled around the trails for several hours….it had everything that great steel HTs had, narrow (flexy?) 27.2mm seat tube, thin stays, delicate 1-1/8 head tube etc….great bike, shouldn’t have sold it.

I bought into the hype and went 27.5 with a 45650b, with a 150mm fork it was a tank and could barge through anything…unfortunately it went to harsh tubing with 30.9mm seat tubing, chunky 44mm head tube and much thicker stays…the old magic was lost IMO but if you wanted to race DH/Enduro on one I’m sure it’d be brutally effective….it wasn’t for me though and I sold it.

On One at this point had stopped making the Summer Season and Evo models that I wanted, there was the Evo-2 but it had a 1-1/8 head tube and I now only had tapered steerer forks.

I turned to Ragley, they still had 26 inch bikes in the range, settled on the Piglet as I wanted a decent trail bike too, as attractive as the Bagger and Troof were, they are for 160mm forks and descending only really….anyway, there are certain things I hate about the Piglet, the chunky 44mm head tube, the crazy big and stiff 31.6mm seat tube and a generally thicker set of tubing and stays than I’ve ever had on steel HTs before….but you work with what you’ve got and I’ve built it up with a Renthal cockpit, RS Revs, Pacenti 28mm wide rims, Saint brakes etc and it now gives me pleasure in that it is virtually bombproof, it’s my first choice on uplift days and the Trance only gets used for mates that want to come on a ride or if the other half wants a comfy ride round the woods on a full susser, if I started racing Enduros again I’d probably use the Trance but the 456 was (for me anyway) the start of my obsession with HTs and just how awesome they can be built up and the terrain they can cover while needing bugger all maintenance.

If I was buying now I’d be spoilt for choice:

Commencal Meta HT, Nukeproof Scout, Transition TransAm, PP Shan, Orange P7, Dartmoor Hornet, Stanton etc etc….only problem is they’re so damn tough that waiting for something to break or wear out so I can replace and upgrade is a loooong and frustrating experience!

High Roller 2 front, Ardent rear if you like Maxxis.

Trail King front, x-King rear for Continental.

…so many to choose from to fair.

On-One Chunky Monkey up front with Smorgasbord rear if on a budget?

I’d personally suggest you have your current tyres the wrong way round, I’d want the Nic up front and the Dampf out back for max grip up front and a better rolling tyre on the back.

You should be able to find Sweeps around your budget, I did.

Had RS Revs at 150mm on my Trance but wanted to try a 160mm front end like the SX model, found some RL2 Sweeps on Wiggle in 650b for around the £300 mark I seem to remember.

Keep looking as the chunkier stanchions on the Sweeps are better than the 32mm legs on Sektors/Revs.

For 2k you can pretty much build whatever HT you like, go cheap with a Dartmoor Hornet frame for £185 and then adorn it with £800 new Fox 36’s, Hope/Flox-Ex wheelset, Renthal bars, stem and chain ring, XT everything else (11 speed naturally)…. It’d be awesome and light as the Hornet is Alu….but depending on how much of a snob you are the cheap frame may nag away at you?!

….or go crazy with the frame and buy a Curtis for £1000 but then have to budget with the remaining 1k for a lesser fork, probably a Superstar wheelset, likely 2×10 Deore/SLX groupset etc….

I’d do something in the middle, frame by Stanton, Pikes up front, Stan’s/Hope wheels, Funn cockpit (their stems, bars etc are great), XT brakes and 11 speed running gear….sorted…and probably change left over for some uplift days.

You seem a little confused.

Perhaps and perhaps not, a similar shock appeared in the Millyard DH bike and was universally praised despite having less travel than conventional DH bikes, it was noted for its simplicity too which for me can only be a good thing.

Maybe people like paying over the odds for average kit?…maybe that feeling of being an amateur engineer armed with your shock pump and twiddling dials is worth more to people than kit that works better?….with the Ohlins DH shock on the Demo also praised for its ease of setup and lack of adjustability I’m excited that things could be moving to a point where your shock arrives in a box and actually just works straight away, no faffing around, no tokens, no posting to Loco/TF etc….sounds bloody great to me.

Don’t think so, I read the article as suggesting nitrogen charged shocks offer better damping than their air equivalents and that because of this better performance less adjustment is needed to get them working as they should.

The article also addressed the rider weight issue in saying that shocks would leave the factory already tuned for the purchasers weight….it also said there is more margin for error with nitrogen anyway so setup becomes less critical.

What’s not to like?…. Sounds great to me and seems far better thought out than the route most manufacturers go down where the fork you buy is very much ‘Jack of all trades, master of none’ until you either pay to have it custom tuned by Loco, TF etc….or start buggering around with tokens/spacers yourself.

Add in how air damped suspension changes in performance based on how hot the shock/fork gets whereas nitrogen doesn’t to the same extent and it seems superior all round.

For once this seems like a genuine step forward instead of different sized wheels or plus sized tyres.

I like the idea, nitrogen reacts to heat far better than air, top race teams have been filling tyres with nitrogen for ages to negate changes in pressure when things heat up, can’t see why it wouldn’t work for shocks.

As others said though, the practicalities are probably the barrier, air shocks for all their compromises are a doddle to set up with a shock pump….and I think a certain section of our MTB community love to tinker, buying a ‘fit and forget’ nitrogen shock would be anathema to some people’s expectations of how suspension should work.

You only have to look at how people lap up the RS tokens nonsense to see what I mean….to me that indicates a half finished product, one that needs development before coming to market….but people love the fact they can take the fork apart, shove some plastic in the air can and change the feel….maybe it makes them feel like an engineer or a suspension guru?!….personally if it comes working well straight out of the box and has as few adjustment dials as possible then that indicates to me that it’s probably a better product and probably had more R&D for a wider range of rider weights that a product put out for 60kg flyweights and some naff tokens in the box so you can finish the job the suspension company should’ve done in the first place!

Rant over, if it came to market at less than £1000 and had service centres that could take care of the nitrogen element I’d buy one, for me MTBing is about riding not tinkering and fixing stuff, I want my bikes to work with as little hassle as possible and as close to zero maintenance as I can get away with.

Good luck to Hunter, Millyard or whoever is developing it at the moment, no doubt there will be resistance from the established players but if they can get them built and sell direct over the internet I don’t see why it couldn’t take off, get a few decent privateers in DH on this shock too, bloody some noses and they’ll be laughing.

170mm on the MTB…..172.5mm on the road bike.

If I was building a true AM, DH type bike from scratch I’d go 165mm to avoid pedal strikes over rough ground.

5′ 9″ by the way with 31-32 inch inside leg.

They’re great, with more and more media being consumed on mobile devices it took Apple long enough to catch on and produce a serious phone for watching videos, tv etc….given that their business model is based on the iTunes store and lockimg you into purchasing through that I always thought it daft they didn’t offer a decent sized screen, the 3.5 inch screen on the phones up to the iPhone 4s were becoming a joke compared to the viewing experiences on Android devices that had already gone to 5 inches or more.

My other half loves hers, I’m still using a 5s as it fits better in all my cycling gear but I can see myself switching to one of the 5 inch screen waterproof Motorola or Sony devices so I don’t have to bother with otterbox cases, lifeproof products etc…

Don’t be put off by the Sanction, it gets incredible reviews from all sources and at £1500 seems decent value when compared to some of the more boutique stuff that may cost another 1k again for the frame, I believe the Sanction can also take 170mm forks if you fancy going truly bonkers….a set of 160mm forks by anybody would do the job though….X-Fusion would probably give you more change to spend on other stuff but it looks like you’ve got that covered with XT just about everything from what you just posted!

chickenman – Member
I would love to go for a ride with Deviant up somewhere like the Golfie. No weight over the front wheel means you can’t steer or brake on steep terrain; I guess the trees would slow you down!

deanfbm – Member
Bum over the back wheel isn’t how you ride steep stuff in control.

Nobody mentioned riding the whole trail like that, I learnt the hard way at Rogate that hanging off the back all the way down just had the front tyre washing out as soon as I wanted to turn.
Just Google images ‘downhill mountain biking’ and see what comes up for an idea of what I mean, I’m on my phone and can’t post pics from here but you’ll see pics of pros and amateurs alike all getting down and back (arses nearly on that rear tyre) for certain extreme sections of trail and drops/step downs….the test rides I did on large bikes didn’t allow me to do that, I was static in the middle of the bike and sections like that were a heart in mouth experience.

This new long stretched out positioning on the bike justb isn’t for me, doesn’t allow me to ride the way I feel confident and comfortable.

I get the argument about playing to your strengths and maybe my Strava times should be taken as a sign that a more XC focussed bike would suit me better, but two things put me off this conclusion. First, my 26″ Five clearly isn’t that bad as an XC bike if a 50 year old bloke can ride it up hill faster than plenty of folk half his age. Second, I have to come down as well. While I may not be getting anywhere near the limits of the Five I still appreciate the confidence it gives me. Would I enjoy the descents as much on some twitchy XC bike or would I be spending the whole descent worried that I was about to crash?

There are now slack angled short travel 29ers (like the Orange Segment) that will allow you to play to your strengths and climb better than the 5 but also take care of you on the descents.
I think most manufacturers now offer something like this as a lot of riders have finally twigged that they don’t need 140-160mm at each end to ride their usual trails, look at the plethora of mismatched travel bikes out there now offering big forks for hard hitting descending but keeping things taut and efficient out back with far less travel….for most UK trail riders these kind of bikes would arguably be better than the long travel beast you typically see on the trails these days.

You don’t have to go from one extreme to another and get a twitchy XC type bike, there is a healthy range of mid travel trail bikes out there offering more refined suspension systems like FSR/Horst/4-bar/DW-link etc that will climb more efficiently than your 5 but still descend confidently and competently allowing you to gain confidence in that weaker area.

If you like the 5 and I was in your position I’d get a Segment, seems perfect for what you want, try and grab a test ride somewhere.

As someone else said, short is a relative term.

At 5′ 9″ I keep getting told to size up and get a large bike but I simply don’t like how they position me compared to my usual medium.
I tried loads of these new breed of long bikes when I bought my Trance earlier this year and for me it was horrible….the long top tubes had me stretched out, coupled with fashionably wide bars I was then splayed out too….the end result was me effectively unable to move on the bike, stretched out in the middle of the thing in a precarious position for descending….it felt like I was on my road bike, far too much over the front….when I’m descending I like to be able to get my arse down and back , on extreme stuff that may mean nearly scraping the rear tyre with my bum….and this new school geometry didn’t allow me to do that, it effectively had me locked in the centre of the bike…..i felt like a passenger, a sack of spuds on the bike….I can see why people have OTB moments riding like that!…. It’s not for me, I’ll stick with mediums (or even small sizes, my 456 was 16 inches) and enjoy being able to move around on the bike instead.

Some sage advice I had from a bike company no less was that it’s easier to size up a small frame and make it fit with longer stem, lay back seatpost etc than to be stuck with a frame that’s too large, you can’t exactly hack away at the tubing if you’ve bought too big!
Obviously you want a perfectly fitting bike but if you’re between sizes like I often am I reckon it’s a safer bet to go smaller but each to their own.

Looks great, I’m very partial to a thin tubed steel hardtail, to me they are the true ‘do it all’ bikes (if one even exists!?)…they’re usually strong enough for big forks and DH laughs yet efficient enough to make a good fist of an XC/trail type ride….and did I mention the thin tubed gorgeousness?!…..£500 seems like a bargain next to the £1000 I have been considering for a dream Curtis hardtail frame!….the reality is I’ll probably just spend £185 on a Dartmoor Hornet and try aluminium for my next hardcore hardtail but I can still dream.

Some great bikes coming out of the Eurobike show, loving the 65-66 degree HA hardtails that are becoming more mainstream now.

Mine was great, bought because i had a 27.2mm tubed 456-Evo….ran it through all weathers, dead simple to use and never failed, in fact when i sold the bike i Ebay-ed the TMars post seperately.

Currently have the B’twin/Decathlon one on my Ragley HT (it was £30 in their recent promo) and couldnt be happier, faultless so far in this shite weather of the last few weeks, done a few decent length rides and has no play in it yet despite my 90kg sitting on it….if anything its a little stiff and i should imagine hard to get down if you’re alight weight!

Seeing as TMars and Decathlon can put out perfectly decent droppers for far less than £100 i find it laughable when people part with £250 for a Reverb or similar….then come on here and complain it doesnt work, they had to dismantle it, it needed servicing to work properly, its seized etc etc….in my mind its a part of the bike that should be cheap, i’ll happily spend good money on forks, wheels, frames, brakes etc….they’re crucial to a good ride but dropping the saddle?…nah, its a luxury not a necessity so i wont pay top money for that kind of nonsense.

Before dropper posts if i was going on the kind of ride where lowering the saddle was beneficial i just used to position it about an inch below optimum pedaling height and this seemed to give me enough room to move around…obviously i wouldnt do a DH run like that, if the terrain ahead looked like a long descent or i was on an uplift day i’d just manually drop the saddle with the QR collar and leave it down.

Made me laugh the other day when some plank on here described a dropper post as being ‘essential’….hmmm.

Yep, tested both a Reign and Trance back to back from Pedalon in Basingstoke prior to deciding which to buy….opted for the Trance.

Really really wanted the Reign because as others said, it is long low and slack…downhill its a beast and very much Enduro race ready out of the box….but i havent raced an Enduro in a couple of years now, i tend to do uplift days on my steel HT and really my next bike is going to take dual crown forks so….i had to be honest with myself and decide what i wanted from a FS.

Having a Reign and then building up a DH bike next year would overlap in too many areas for me, arguably some would say that having the Reign would negate the need for a DH rig (in the UK at least) and it would save me money by not wanting to buy a DH bike…perhaps and perhaps not, the steering from a dual crown fork and 20mm axle is noticeably different to single crown forks and Maxle type fixings and that is what i’m after for my next ‘gravity’ bike….similarly as slack as bikes like the Reign have now become (65 degree HA), downhill bikes have evolved too with most of the 2016 batch coming with 62-63 degree HA’s….nothing stands still and the now cliched line of ‘AM/trail/enduro bikes have DH geometry from 10 yrs ago’ is wearing thin seeing as DH bikes have gone slacker still.

Anyway, i decided a FS for me had to be a better trail bike than anything else and thats why i went with the Trance, it is shorter, lighter and slightly more responsive to ride as a result….not as good downhill but thats what my DH bike will be for!….i put 160mm forks on the Trance giving it a HA of 66 degrees as per Giant’s own SX version of the bike, its fine….really how much slacker than a 66 degree HA and 160mm of travel do you want on a trail bike?!…already seems like overkill when you think about it.

If you race get the Reign, it will also do Alps holidays well i should think….if you just ride in the UK and do more trail centre stuff get something else.

Awesome, this frame is slowly chipping away at my resolve to build an out and out DH bike next year….i’m thinking some bombproof 26 inch wheels, a new set of ‘old’ Lyriks with the new internals, Saint everything else…..Mmmm, nice.

That said, am i right in thinking there was a German racer at Val di Sole with one of these in the 190mm rear travel setting and some 200mm dual crown Boxxers on the front?!….if so that’d be just splendid….180mm ultra-Enduro/Park bike with the ability to convert to 190/200 with some dual crown forks and go race DH….with either 26 or 27.5 wheels….those Germans are bloody good arent they!?

*edit, just googled ‘Liteville 601 downhill’ and loads come up in the 190 setting wearing dual crown forks…that throws a very pleasant spanner in the works, how much are they?….

Yep, they’re chalk and cheese.

HR2 rolls well and makes a good all round trail tyre and a great front, the 2.4 is a nice size….whereas the ‘paddle’ style tread pattern of the DHR2 makes for great braking and climbing ability on the rear of the bike but at the expense of rolling as well as a HR or HR2.

In these past few damp weeks I’ve had a Mary on the front and a DHR2 (2.3 exo) out back, perfect.

Would like to try a Shorty up front due to the reviews and hype but can’t justify the £40-50 price when I can get Marys for half that.

The new Maxxis sizing is far more accurate than it used to be too, the 2.3 tyres are big enough now for AM, Enduro, DH use but still roll well enough out back and the 2.4 is now pleasantly large as a front without being a draggy pile of crap…none seem as big as a Schwalbe 2.35 though!

This kind of boll@$&s is part of the reason I moved away from the South East, everybody is so highly strung and the general attitude of London-centric types is that they’d sooner glare at you than say ‘hello’….any instruction to somebody seems to be seen as an invitation to fight, add in overcrowding, congestion etc and I just threw in the towel, there’s more to life than house prices.

Take the blinkers off people and move away from Laahndahn and the South East, there are far nicer places to reside!

I have to agree too Ton
I reckon a few others do also mate, but afraid to admit their purchase may have been not quite suitable.
following fashion is not always the right thing to do.

This, tried a mates CX bike and hated the poor brakes, crap ride quality and lack of grip…. If your commute was rough lanes and maybe a short stretch of off road but mainly tarmac I could understand it….but he was trying to use it like a mountain bike on our usual trails and coming a cropper all over the place, it was like Bambi on ice!….as others have said, I’d consider one as a commuter for disc brakes and a less stretched out position than a traditional road bike but for off road stuff there’s far better suited machines out there….and I say that as someone who likes to ride a hardtail on DH trails so I’m generally happy with inappropriate bikes out of their comfort zone.

There are loads of 2nd hand Ragleys on eBay at the moment, I have a Piglet and it’s great. Some are frame only and some are complete bikes for around £400 with really good specs (Revs etc) which is a steal!

Frame only for your £200 I’d be going for a Dartmoor Hornet, slack angled, tough bolt through rear axle, takes up to 160mm forks, light-ish as they’re aluminum too….have a look at them?

As above, Revs are the standout 32mm stanchion fork so you may or may not notice a difference….if you were coming from a flexy 150mm Fox-32 then you’d certainly notice!

Liked that, dirt bikes do make you do stupid things!…also amazing how many ride them like a sack of spuds and don’t use any body movement or weighting then wonder why they fall off the back on a steep climb etc etc

renton – Member
I’m going to start adding some weights I’m next week.
Compound moves like squats, deadlifts and bench press.

Good, concentrate on good form and technique, forget about the weight being used for a while, you should see benefits fairly quickly as they’re good exercises.

My deadlift form is impeccable (even if I say so myself!) due to a back injury in my early twenties.

As above, back ramrod straight with chest out and bum out, drive from the hips not from a rounded/bending back..
After a good deadlift session it’s my hamstrings and traps that are sore the following day, not my lower back!

You’re doing them wrong, sorry.