@backtobasics

MTB BB30 is 73mm shell width

ROAD BB30 is 68mm shell width

this generally corresponds to different axle lengths on MTB and ROAD BB30 compatible cranks, to maintain chainline and minimise Q-Factor

you may find some cranks can work with both BB30 variants using shims but its one of those things you won’t find out until you try to fit them, and knowing bicycles it will probably go horribly wrong 😉

@ratherbeintobago

Good friend of mine working for shimano (not the UK dist. Madison) said they were surprised by the volume of disc brake pads and disc brakes sold into the UK market.

Something about the enthusiasm for riding all year round in all weathers 😉

@IA

DP460 for the win!

We used DP420 when bonding OSBB cups on Specialized carbon fibre frames because the lower strength of 420 allowed removal a year down the road; with 460 you’d have ripped the cups out of the frame taking much of the bb structure with them!

@LoCo

its not the terrain as such (not the fork’s structure reacting to terrain) but riding often in wet mud, meaning the bike is being cleaned after every ride.

The tech at Mojo said this is something that Fox had been surprised about; the amount of warranty claims on creaking CSU in the UK market compared to other international markets.

Their explanation was that we ride all year round (compared to perhaps, riders in North American or European countries that could be snow bound for 3-4 months of each season), and we ride all year round in muddy, wet condition which means lots of cleaning with products like Muc-Off which cause the assembly grease to leach out of the stancion/crown interface over time.

I’ve had dozens of Fox forks including 32,36 and 40 on bikes that came with them or on special deals through retailers I worked for.

Can’t say I’d be buying any more now that I am paying regular prices for them

The thing that has killed my interest in the single crown 32 and 36 forks was the creaking CSU which happened to every pair after 6-12 months. Within the 12 month warranty Mojo were very good at taking care of the issue, no complaints about their professional service for Fox in the UK.

However, once out of warranty it gets stupidly expensive to have the CSU replaced.

On my last pair of 32’s – just a 100mm pair used on my 29’er for mild XC riding, it was more expensive to have the CSU replaced at my cost than buy a new fork off CRC; bear in mind Mojo had already replaced the CSU on the same fork for the same issue, under warranty 13 months before. I was a month past warranty on the repair…

I ended up with a Manitou fork, which has been surprising as its actually got more controlled damping than my Fox 32, and is structurally much stiffer.

No creaking yet, but not surprised, as its a little heavier than the Fox, with a much “beefier” crown where the stanchions are pressed into place.

This confirms the conversation I had with an honest technician at Mojo who explained the CSU on Fox is very light as people want a light weight fork. He said the assembly grease used when the stanchions are pressed into the crown tends to leach out over time, especially during bike cleaning that all UK riders are too familiar with!

He said its not a structural issue, but who wants to ride a nice mountain bike that creaks / clicks every time you pedal hard, brake or turn into a corner..

saw this happen on a number of carbon fibre road frames with aluminium alloy BB inserts, typically from galvanic corrosion causing the bonded joint to fail

in a warranty situation these frames were always replaced FOC by the manufacturer

outside of warranty, high strength epoxy adhesive is your friend…

This is a chinese made torque wrench that is sold under dozens of different “brand names” including PRO, Pedro’s, etc.

shop around, you can pick them up cheap. they work just fine…

Try DT Swiss RWS skewers?

In testing the design offered 50% more clamping torque than even Shimano or Campag steel QR, which have always been the bench mark for quality skewers.

I’ve been using DT Swiss RWS on my QR dropout mountain bikes and QR dropout road bikes for some years, and never had any dropout issues; the ability to set the lever exactly where you want after clamping is really neat too 😉

I can only speak from my own experience, I’d say sit down/stand up climbing efficiency depends on fitness, power and your body mass.

I’m light and actively seek out many climbs on every ride; one of my favourite pre-breakfast rides is up swain’s lane 10 times back to back (coming back down highgate west hill), pushing it harder each time.

To get good at climbing you are going to suffer, but the more you climb the easier it gets especially as you really get to know the limits of your body.

so i can either sit and spin a high cadence which requires good aerobic conditioning, or stand off the saddle at lower cadence in a higher gear to give a standing platform to work from; keeping it light either for stable pedalling or sometimes dancing is great for loosening up.

I don’t find it tiring to stand for long periods but that comes from years of riding bmx and free ride MTB with low saddles.

I could see a heavier rider finding seated climbing more efficient, but gearing range is critical for seated climbing, if gears are too tall cadence will drop making it very hard work even seated.

Modern 11 speed wide range cassette gearing with mid or compact gearing is great for climbing duties.

Largest bike manufacturer in the world does not make any 26″ bikes any more apart from 2 kids entry level models. The bulk of their range is 27.5″ and some higher end 29″ for the racing crowd.

Most customers coming into our shop are not concerned about 27.5″ its still a mountain bike, if they like the look of the bike and the price is right (it often is due to the manufacturer’s purchasing power) the customer is happy and soon out riding in the dirt.

When the largest manufacturer is focused on the mid size wheel, the rest of the market follows suit. Its neither good nor bad, its just a change in specification.

I ride a high end,carbon fibre race 29’er and can honestly say its the best mountain bike I’ve had, its incredibly quick yet huge fun to ride as it has a nimbleness that most would not associate with a 29’er.

Its not made by the largest manufacturer either. If the time came to get another FS I would be more than happy with 27.5/650

I used to do 12 miles a day on my McNeil Whitton (park/street bmx) through london as part of my bike/rail commute to waterloo train station to get out to Esher. Bmx was ideal for the train as it took up much less space than my MTB.

On a number of occasions the return train would be heavily delayed or cancelled so I’d ride my bmx back to London from Esher, Surrey. Not hard when you regularly ride bmx, just takes a while!

Read stories about pro bmx riders in the states getting dropped off by tour buses, then riding 50 miles home carrying a big backpack.

70mm Thomson stem and s-works carbon flat bar on my stumpy 29’er.

Feels great, but I went through several setups before deciding on what I now ride. Be prepared to experiment

http://www.pinkbike.com/photo/11738836/%5B/url%5D

DBL post

Shimano deore / slx with organic pads and appropriate sized rotors, will not feel on/off or grabby, at all.

On my road bike, i have shimano hydros with organic pads and 160/140 rotors and they are absolutely fantastic in terms of modulation and stopping power when needed.

In contrast I have Elixir 7 with sintered pads and 185/160 on the MTB and these feel very grabby in comparison, but also seem to lack ultimate stopping power.

Shimano anti seize and set each bolt with torque wrench so the bolt tension across the chainring is balanced

@firestarter

I really like the colour of the women’s version which is the Liv Avail

@firestarter

Here’s my Defy. Loving it 😉

My 56cm allez was too long for me. I am 5’10” with 32″ inseam and longish arms.

Had to run 80mm stem and in-line seat post , which affected saddle / pedal axle setup and handling in a bad way.

Then got a Tarmac SL4 and went 54cm, felt perfect with 90mm stem and layback post which let me setup saddle properly.

I had BG fit on both bikes.

Definitely try before you buy, its a relatively long bike. 56cm with appropriate stem should fit you well.

@pop Larkin

my condolences. I had to have my cat muji put down in 2011 and I still find it a sad situation.

At least I gave him a proper burial in open woodland, even though it was done at 2am by torchlight, as we did not leave the vet until 11pm. I cannot think of a better place for a loved pet to be buried. I still pass his grave twice a week on my mountain bike rides.

Lisa

Micah and Mollie at home

On my experience working as a mechanic dealing with 100s of bikes with BB30 / PF30 and BB problems in general. I’ve used greases, anti-seize, bearing fit compound, epoxy adhesives and other ‘fixes’ but customers kept coming back with creaking BB’s, this was also my own experienced of BB30 and PF30 on my MTB and road bikes

If going down the Shimano HT2 crank route, I’d avoid using press-in adapters and switch your bike to a proper conversion BB (Wheels / Praxxis) because it provides large diameter, outboard bearings (=more durable) and wider axle spacing (=more axle support, less load on bearings).

This is the Wheels Manufacturing PF30 conversion BB I am using in my mountain bike, with Shimano HT2 XT crankset.

I’ve also previously used the Praxxis Works BB30 conversion BB, which I rate more highly due to its ‘expanding collet’ design which grips the inside of the BB shell to stop the cups ‘walking’ under load. Praxxis was not available in PF30 when I built up the new bike, so I went with Wheels, which several months in seems fine.

not just cheap headsets, but cheap BB, cheap wheel hubs, cheap cabling,cheap chain/cassette, anywhere where they can “get away with it” because the product manager at the bike company knows riders concentrate on the more visible items when making purchasing bikes

Witness the practise of “speccing a bike for the showroom with a high end rear derailleur”

When in reality a reasonable rear mech with higher quality shifters actually provides a better shifting bike, and makes tears less likely when you smack the rear mech on a rock and brake it!

@mtbel

riding a badly maintained bike, that does not work properly or makes horrible noises, is a waste of good riding time 😉

Thomson stems

Specialized BG saddles

Specialized control tires

Shimano hydraulic discs

Shimano Hollow tech ii cranks

Sram xo shifting

Odi lock-on grips

Shimano SPD pedals

Stans no tubes sealant

@rob Hilton

Many carbon saddles use ovalised rails for strength, but you end up with a larger clamping cross section, typically 7 x 9 mm, whereas round section cromo rails typically are 7 x 7 mm

As long as your seat post can accommodate the larger section it will work, try the seat post manufacture’s website should list the info.

I’d get 6800 mechanical and spend the difference on wheels/tires or getting a better bike / frame

I run 90mm stem on my medium Defy and it feels spot on in terms of bike fit and handling, I am 5’10” with 32″ inseam

I had a reverb for 8 months on my devinci and only issue was snagging remote lever on my shorts when standing up to climb, and snapping lever clean off. Remote was mounted upside down on LH side as I was running 1×10.

SRAM were great and replaced it FOC.

when we tried to build ‘Esher X’ bike park on the site of the Esher Shore bike park, the first duty was to build a ‘metalled’ road suitable for the fleet of lorries bringing 20 tonne loads of hoggins to the site.

This was a huge task. It involved us stripping out the existing loam to a depth of 3 foot, then filling with a base of sand, then tonnes of crushed rock, which was spread by hand, and then compacted using a ride-on powered roller.

After this, I would never take a fireroad for granted, ever again!

just been out this morning riding in the mud.

On the rear of my bike is a Specialized Control 29″ ‘The Captain’ tire. One of the guys at work asked last week why this tire was named so.

Told him about ‘The Lung’, ‘The Captain’ or ‘The Boss’ as we used to call him in XC racing.

I remember him racing a National XC event in the UK in the 90s and we saw him disappear off the start line, never saw him again. He did turn down the 1st place prize for the Pro class, which was a classy move, he gave it to the next guy.

@epicyclo

@teethgrinder

To cut a really long story short.

We could not get our frames made in the UK, we tried a dozen different fabricators over 14 months including motorbike builders, engineering companies and small machine shops. The UK could not produce aluminium alloy frames to a good quality in any capacity.

The prototypes were easy to build as I used the facilities at the University of Northumbria, bribing the engineering department with whiskey to cut/mitre the tubing, and a welder in the 3-D design department with beer. We had a large Alcan distributor up the road, so I could walk in and buy 6082 T-6 off the shelf. I did the heat treatment myself in the engineering building. But this was not suitable for production.

We ended up working with a factory in Cairns, Australia, that had built a good reputation for contract work for a number of other brands including Ozziroo and Living Extreme (the first ‘mail order’ direct bike brand in the USA). The bike in the photo below is a sample frame they sent over to the UK for me.

I went to Cairns for a few weeks to sort out production which included our own tubeset, and everything looked good until our production frames failed to arrive on time, and phonecalls to the factory went unanswered.

During this time I was finishing my industrial design degree and built the prototype “D3” bike in the UK.

We employed a local solicitor to visit the premises in Cairns and found out that the owner had disappeared with our money, and money from the other 4 brands he was working with. The cost of attempting to trace the owner and recover our money was deemed to be too high.

During all these production troubles we had been running our Factory Race team with the Weavers, Adam Robertson and myself and test rider Chris Markie, but this was costing a small fortune and we had trouble keeping things running.

Bombproof Bikes Ltd. ended up in administration as we ran out of time and money; I moved back to London and my business partner concentrated on his financial services business.

What are these “rocks” you speak of?

When I think of all my riding in the South-East its loam, mud, wet leaves and tree roots

@samunkim

don’t bother doing 1″ of concrete, it just cracks the first time you put pressure on the trail

I tried this years before and ended up with ‘pancakes’ of broken concrete everywhere, as mugsys said it also has a very detrimental effect on the local environment

if you look at how something like a skatepark is built from concrete, it involves a huge amount of prep work with rebars and ties to keep the structure stable enough to support the concrete, the concrete is very thick

my contribution from my company “Bombproof”, based in Newcastle during the 90s

@molgrips

Zoom was a brand name of HL Corp in Taiwan, who do huge amount of OE business with design/marketing “brand” owners

AMP Research– Horst Leitner (Mr. Horst Pivot) sold the FSR rights to Mike Sinyard at Specialized. AMP (a product design house) continued making cool automotive stuff like custom interior parts for Mercedes, etc. last time I looked.

Syncros – Pippin Osbourne (one of the founders) left the business when a customer in Canada became paralysed after a stem failed, and went on to co-found Banshee Bikes. Syncros later changed hands again, going to Ritchey Design Group.

Iron Horse – all ended in an accounting scandal / alleged fraud by the father/son owners, including a raid on the employees pension fund, and off-invoice stock clearances through an on-line retail store owned by the same family. Interesting reading on the US forums, from some understandably bitter ex-employees

Kore – co-founder Bob Morales did a deal with Riteway (GT) doing lots of OE business in the 90’s, but left the business in the in late 90’s. Its been relaunched several times with a wobbly product focus, but currently doing some good business on mtb side

KHS – very little prescence in the UK (no current distributor), compared to the 90’s where they did good business with their Montana mountain bike range made from True Temper cromoly steel.

@matt007

the only problem with the tarmac SL4 is the non S-Works frames are porky piglets, and feel soft / dead under power.

Otherwise its actually a great handling frame with a sweet fore/aft balance.

My Tarmac Elite SL4 frame was over 1200 grammes when I weighed in on digital scales before building it up (it was a warranty frame so came “naked”).

The reason is that the non s-works frames are made from a lower grade carbon fibre, with a higher ratio of resin to cloth, meaning its heavier and less rigid. I’ve ridden a good number of S-Works tarmacs, and its night/day difference.

@mrblobby

thanks.

I admit its a brand for years made me go “meh”, until I actually rode one of their bikes, and then realized they are damn good.

Perhaps their marketing is a problem?

here’s some more shots of the same bike:

Climbing on a Defy?

depends which Defy you are talking about?

After a test ride on a 2015 Defy which exceeded my expectations, I sold my Specialized Tarmac SL4 54cm, and got a medium 2015 Defy Advanced Pro 1

Its a much crisper ride under power, yet more stable climbing bike, despite being the same weight (bang on 8kg with pedals)

I’ve removed most of the spacers, chopped the steerer and flipped the OD2 stem to -8 degrees.

Feels great even on nasty short climbs like Swain’s Lane in NW London which is 18% at worst.

I actually really like climbing, and spend a lot of ride time climbing, so speak from experience.