duir – Member
Couldnt be a better area for Mountain Biking Cyclocross in my opinion.

That pretty much sums it up for me.
Nice wide open moorland crossings and plenty of mud.
Great if you like XC and measure rides in miles rather than smiles… but Calderdale/Lakes tech it certainly ain’t.

My favorite route is to start at Rangers Station, up Rangers; Down Rhyd Ddu; up Rangers to Telegraph; Telegraph to Llanberis track; up Llanberis; down Rangers.
We did that route early October, it’s about 20 miles and 6400′ ascent in total. Start early!
Like they’ve all said, don’t take a ski jacket!
Take multiple layers including a wind/waterproof outer and treat it for what it is… a mountain, with typically unpredictable mountain weather, for which you must be equipped.

I’ve no idea what my max HR is.
On a typical all day ride (say 6 hours in the Lakes) I up to about 178 tops.
The average throughout the ride is typically about 151 but I can happily carry on all day at that rate.
Does this go some way to explaining why a sweat like a pig but don’t feel out of breath?

That Kinder/Jacobs loop but instead of going up Chapel Gate, add in Edale>Hollins Cross>Mam Tor>Cavedale>Broken Road>Rushup Edge, then rejoin route at top of Chapel Gate.

Too late now, but I’d strongly advise always taking out a rental car excess protection policy. (Not with the hire company).
They cost next-to-nothing, maybe £4 a day or £40 annual typically, and mean you can then take out the hire company’s most basic insurance cover.

Megavalanche?
I’ll be entering again when I turn 50, year after next.

Cheap and cheerful tubeless ready – GEAX Datura

My current choice – Magic Mary (admittedly it’s a 2.5″ special made for Liteville, so much larger volume than standard)

+1 North end of Garda (Torbole)

That was our “compromise holiday” in June this year. Me, the Mrs and our 16y/o daughter.

4 days on the MTB (Mrs and daughter go to beach)
2 days doing via ferrata with daugher (Mrs on the beach)
6 days mooching around pretending I wasn’t missing the MTB & VF

Truly cat-astrophic

and 26″ ain’t dead, but the kitten …..?

Your shed is crap!

Oh, sorry, misread title :oops:

I failed to correctly align the XX of Maxxis with the valve, once, many years ago. Never lived it down.

it’s the “enduro” collar… seriously.
bolts in place to restrict drop if for some reason youfancy limitting the drop. Why anyone would want to do this though, I have no idea.

I took the view that the range of smart features was probably more use to me than 4k capability.
So I went for a decent 55″ Panasonic as there were plenty of good deals around on non-4k tellies.
Shouldn’t need to spend more than £450 for top-notch non-4k at that size.

Depends what you’re after…
We’ve got one current account with Santander for the 3% interest up to £20k balance and good cashback rates on utilities DDs…
and another with Nationwide for the best packaged benefits (travel insurance, phone insurance, etc) at the lowest monthly fee.

MSE is a good place to start assessing which accounts are best for you.

Warranty it Tom

Cranks:
I’ve always run Shimano but…
I broke an SLX (9spd) crank earlier this year.
One of our group broke an SLX (10spd) crank yesterday.

My new bike has SRAM X01 11 spd carbon cranks and they seem quite tough. Shame about the GXP BB longevity (lack of) though. I’ve packed it with waterpump grease from new but will go Hope when it fails.

Cassettes:
XT 9 and 10 spd has always worked well for me but X01 11 spd is even better. Shame they cost so much though. Will probably go GX when it comes to replacement time.

Rear mechs:
XT 10 spd & Saint 9 spd have been the most reliable to date for me but the X01 is holding up really well so far. Two big rock strikes on the mech in the last two rides and it’s only scratched it. They do seem to stick out in harm’s way a bit too much though.
The deal breaker will be the cost of a new X01 mech though. Mech’s are consumable items IME. £40 for an XT is tolerable but I’m not buying 2 or 3 X01 mechs every year!!!

I think the 11 spd config will end up as XT mech and shifter, SRAM cranks and cassette, Hope BB.

17″ rims, 215/50/17 tyres are OK actually. Good compromise, don’t feel harsh.
Goodyear Efficientgrip Performance are about £100 each.
Same tyre for the 16″ wheels on my previous Mondeo were about £80 each.

I consciously avoided the 18″ low profile variants though.

I’ve never used an estate agent. Always just stuck a sign up and relied on the fact that other houses in that are up with agents will bring the passing trade to your door.
My point being, all an agent really does is get you the exposure to the market. It these days of t’interweb, I’m surprised there are any high street agents left!
Not having an overpriced agent involved would also be a major benefit for me if I was buying. They just get in the way and stop the buyer and seller communicating/negotiating.
The less involvement they have, the better. Online has got to be a good thing IMO.

My old Mondeo 54 plate TDCI 130 estate went to 165k before I changed it and it was passing all it’s MoTs right up to when I traded it.
For replacement I went for a 13 plate 163 Estate. Fantastic cars. Loads of space and a comfortable place to be in when doing 1000 mile trips to Dolomites/Alps.
I wouldn’t have worried about the mileage alone on either of those two but would have walked away from the emulsion under the cap and the engine mgt light.
Keep looking, they are great cars.

What parts are you after? I’ve got a friend who has an account with them. I also run both a 301 & 601 myself.

You are only entitled to “A”

Rider order should be based on speed everyone knows this

or sacrificial offering/crash test dummy willingness

The first answer given was of course the correct one :D

Depends what you’re looking for.
It’s a maze of trails up and down all sides of the valley.
Take a look on Strava at segments in the area and see how folk have linked them into a ride.
Usual plan is to start from Hebden and either ride the Stoodley Pike side of the valley (fantastic descents but slightly less technical) or opt for the North side of the valley (which is steeper, techier and even cheekier).
Basically, every track on the map is worth riding but be considerate to everybody you meet on them because 90% of the good stuff is footpaths.

If you want to stay “legit” on bridleways, then a loop North to Worsethorne via Gorple Road might be your best option.

[three yorkshiremen mode]
Pedalling…? When I were a lad we carried our bikes up th’ills.
[/three yorkshiremen mode]

In fact, last weekend we carried our bikes up th’ills. 6,500 ft of hike-a-bike in a 20 mile “ride”!

I’m with Northwind on this.
Hope are better. Not 4 times better though.
XT are very good just so long as…
1. you don’t over-torque the side load adjustment
2. you pack the whole assy with calcium based waterpump grease. This is the most effective way I’ve found of keeping crap out. It almost “skins-over” like Plasticine and prevents grit mixing into the grease.

Little risk in them having your bank details.
Much more risk in them having your password, if you re-use the same password across many sites as some folk tend to do.

I wasn’t impressed with the cheap alloy ones that I ran last year.
They wore out quicker than BBB rollerboys and were less well sealed so the bearings went sloppy quickly.
When one ultimately wore down and failed in use, it bent/broke at the teeth, rendering it unusable. If I hadn’t had a spare jockey wheel in my pack, I’d have been walking home from the top of Nan Bield.
My point: if they fail, they fail catastrophically. You won’t limp home on a failed one.

Your roady helmet will be fine.
NEED = not a lot, just a few spares so you can look after yourself if you need to (2 tubes, pump, multitool, quick-link, brake pads) and some appropriate extra clothing if you’re going high.

Not strictly needed but a very good idea = spare mech hanger and a spare gear cable.
The rest is all personal preferences so don’t be rushed into spending a fortune until you’ve ridden loads of different places and decided what you like doing best.

[edit] Oh, and join a club/group so you can ride with other folk and see what works for them/maybe try their stuff out if you ask nicely.
If you’re in MNPR area, I’d also recommend Bogtrotters for regular Saturday/Sunday and Wednesday night rides [/edit]

I have had this in the past with one of the many M785 brakes I’ve run.

This:

coatesy – Member
All of your evidence is pointing towards the transfer port between the reservoir and master cylinder being blocked, probably by it’s piston not returning fully for some reason.

… is the problem.
Caused by this:

The piston seals can get sticky and not return under the spring pressure. I’ve just had a problem with mine…. You can manually push the lever back but the piston doesn’t always go with it…

Sometimes it is sufficient to just back-off the free stroke adjust screw.
Sometimes you also need to compress the lever and then let it “flick” open under fluid pressure. If it’s got to this stage, you’re looking at a new lever though.

[edit] I completely stripped, cleaned, lubed and re-assembled the lever assy before I reached that conclusion. At that point you can observe if the piston is moving freely through it’s travel. The tell-tale symptom is black contamination in the fluid at the lever, probably associated with some degradation of the piston seal.[/edit]

Calderdale then?
Possibly the most densely packed and varied MTB riding in a single valley, anywhere in the UK.

If you’re travelling that far, why wouldn’t you just go straight to the Lakes?

I’d be looking for a used CCDB at that money.

Don’t compress whilst reassembling. In fact, you don’t even need to let the air out at all for a lowers-off service.
It can cause vacuum in the lowers which works against the air spring and makes the fork ride semi-compressed. If this happens, then you need to break the seal at either the dust wiper (by carefully inserting the sharp end of a cable tie) or by slackening the lower bolts.

I’m another 14st rider using MM/HD on rocky Lakes stuff etc.
40mm rims on Liteville 601. Tubeless with Tape/Stans.

Front is a 2.5″ vertstar snakeskin MM (a special for LV, not generally available)
I can get away with about 20-25psi.

Rear is 2.3″ trailstar supergravity HD. I can just about manage to get down to 30 psi but at that I’m feeling the rim strike a little too often and am more comfortable with 35psi.

I’m waiting impatiently for Procore, so that I can drop pressures at both ends.

You might find a Liteville 301 for that if you’re lucky

Syntace W35
35mm wide & 500g

I’ve been running a set for 18 months and like them a lot. They work particularly well with Schwalbe tyres run tubeless.

I cant see the point in upgrading from Shimano 1×10 to Shimano 1×11. Srams 10-42 gives a much better range.

and Shimano’s mechs are not quite so extortionately priced as SRAM’s.
I’ll be swapping out the SRAM X01 mech and shifter for XT when the inevitable happens and the mech is toast.
SRAM cassette with XT shifter/mech would seam to be the best of both worlds.

Syntace
bike-magazine-handlebar-test

I’ve got a pretty old 26″ bike with Hope Pro2 hubs, am I right in thinking the new XT 1X11 stuff is all standard fitting and will work fine?

Yes, you are right