You might find the shock has more length but is being shortened by the top out bumper. Put the shock back on the bike and get someone to pull the rear wheel down to see if you can extend the shock enough.

They have always been silver alloys nipples for me. They are also slightly cheaper from their eBay store, have been on sale for ages.

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/363914971569

I have an Exposure Joystick, beautiful, light, but not cheap and not the brightest.

I also have a Chili-Tech Capsule pro, which is a little more spot focused, but great mounting as easy to adjust angle, very easy to carry a spare battery and almost as good as the joystick for half the price. Worth waiting for them to be on sale if in no rush.

https://www.chilli-tech.com/bike-lights/helmet-lights/Pro-CREE-Capsule-For-MTB-Helmet

160x14mm hub I think. Good luck finding one! You might have to go custom, whilst not ideal a pro4 has a 12mmID 17mmOD axle, so would probably be ok opened out to 14mm with a custom NDS axle and disc spacer.

I do have a copy of the Vtopo guidebook for the area. The trouble with it is half of the routes are full of boring fireroad and loads of the good routes into Switzerland are now forbidden to bikes.

Glad I could help. I tried the footpath from the very top of Mt Chery, was quite fun but very steep and quite a few walkers.

I also rode the full direct ridge from La Bourgeoisie to Verchaix, which I haven’t done in a while but was good to redo that one. Back up via the very steep fireroads to the chapel Jaquicourt.

These are great little tools for tight tyres/inserts:

https://www.printables.com/model/38269-bead-buddy-for-bicycle-tire-installation

Otherwise most stuff I’ve done is prototype stuff, although my Exposure Joystick mount is working a treat.

I made my crowns with some cutouts in and they are a nightmare to clean, can’t imagine doing a whole frame like that!

I rode the route highlighted in yellow today to see what it was like going up and over. It’s a pretty big climb up to the ridge and the descent was pretty dull fireroad/ski run, so I wouldn’t recommend it. Good view of Mt Blanc today. I may try the footpath from the very top, looks pretty steep though. I don’t like cutting off the col and going straight to Les Paquis, you still have to climb a fair amount and it misses the good views and feels less adventurous.

The hardest part is the start of the final descent. After you traverse then hit the big fireroad and turn right onto the trail. Can easily be skipped though by doing the fireroad for a small bit.

It’s a easy route to follow, Enduro red trail is marked to Encrenaz. Climb up is obvious. Only one option from the top so easy to follow. Back up fireroad going straight on to start of good descent. Follow fun fireroad down until suddenly heavy braking point at junction. Go left hear and follow traverse to meet fireroad. Turn immediately right onto cool singletrack to the bottom. The last bit is back onto fireroad after river, there is no good bottom section to miss. I go down through Essert, taking left the right no-through down to river. Follow track back to Super M carpark.

I wish I’d done this sooner: I had 25mm stud with 12mm plasterboard onto brick, on the wall I wanted to hang bikes on. I cut 40x300mm cutouts in the plasterboard where the bikes were to be mounted, screwed lengths of 4040 aluminium extrusion directly to the brick, the mounted the wall hangers to the extrusion. It’s so much better being able to easily adjust the height of each bracket.

Go ride your favourite downhill with no chain and you’ll find out.

It would have to be seriously cheap for me to consider the 1st gen. The 2nd gen carbon has some decent upgrades such as better charging port and 540WHr battery, and there have been some great deals on these. The 3rd gen is even better but significantly higher cost.

I think the pro2 is similar to the pro2 Evo, couldn’t find a diagram for the non Evo. The spacer sits between the bearings and is centralised by an o-ring. If you take the o-ring off the QR endcaps, the endcaps should slide into the bearing and spacer easily.

Are you sure the spacer between the bearings isn’t just misaligned?

11spd for me, XT shifter and mech, SRAM XG-1150 10-42 cassette and PG-1130 chains, steel 34T chainring on a Bosch CX system.

Bargain, cheers. I ordered a rear to match the crazy cheap front I got from CRC for the wheel set I don’t need.

Surely that would be clearly against the existing rules, so disqualification, as opposed to clarification of the rules forcing them to remove it?

This is my freshly built compensator, purely for the Alps:

Cheap simple SS DH bike made out of old parts, CRC bargains and a few custom bits. However if I could only have 1 bike out here, it would always be a decent Enduro ebike. The Orbea Wild I was riding to Samoens is pretty amazing for most situations.

Glad you enjoyed the ride, it was a good day out. The boys did well pedalling in the heat. We took the public bus (2€!) up after the first run which was great but limited spaces. Bike shop taxi for the second run, 5x the price, almost 5x as fast with Sebastian Loeb behind the wheel.

Sunday’s thunderstorm in Morzine produced some pretty serious hail. More storms tonight, it was so hot today, even up the hills.

The problem you’ll have is modern derailleurs are designed to move the top jockey wheel away from the cassette as you move into bigger gears. This requires the chain length to be set well. If you drop down to a small chainring, the chain length is too long and the mech hits the cassette. This is why GRX mechs are two quite different designs, 1x for large cassettes and 2x only work with close ratio cassettes.

On the ebike I often return from Les Gets to Morzine via the ‘valley of dreams’. This probably fits into your rooty DH category and has a fair bit of pedalling, but is much better than the crappy red around Mt Chery.

This black Enduro trail past the church has some good sections, quite pedalling fire road for the first half though.

If the ridge you are talking about is this one; I rode it once in the damp and it was mostly rideable but hard. One bike carrying climb but only short. Don’t try the route marked in red, the climb to the point is crazy steep, wasn’t worth the effort!

Quite the opposite, I’ve ridden MTBs for decades, but mostly ebikes since the 2018. Last year I was using an E8000 Shimano motor which was much better at high cadence, so used 32T with that and much more use of the 42T ring. The Bosch CX I find feels inefficient when spinning, it’s tuned for more like 70 than the 90 rpm the SX/Shimano motors are tuned for. Another option is use one of the many 104BCD spiders available and any old 104 chainring. Doesn’t look as clean though.

I tried a aluminium Rotor 32T on my Bosch but it didn’t last long (6 months), second chain was noisy on it. Currently using a steel E13. There are very few 32T options. I’ll probably go up to a 36T when I next need to fit a new ring. I tend to do 1 chainring + 1 cassette and 3 chains over 2 years before replacing the lot.

On a Bosch system I’m running 29″, 34T and 10-42 cassette. The 42 is very rarely used; a 10-36 range would be fine, so low gearing isn’t a requirement. The advantage of a bigger chainring is the ‘power’ gears that get the most abuse, 16T, 14T and 12T could be bigger and hence last longer. These three gears always wear out first. The 10T isn’t an issue because you are above the speed limiter.

I’ve lost a lens a couple of times riding and it’s pretty bad. Messes up my depth perception so makes it hard to jump.

I sweated like a trooper last week stretching a cushcore and downhill tyre on. Went to pump it up and found I’d forgotten to fit a valve! Turns out it’s even harder to get a Cushcore’d tyre off than it is on.

I did this on a new Orbea Wild, swapped everything except frame, electronics, headset, seatpost clamp, tyres and cranks. Most parts were from a heavily upgrade ebike. Used the original parts to rebuild the old bike and sold that complete.

That looks great. The bike is very similar looking to an Orbea Rise, shame the dropper insertion length looks a bit short. 3.7kg for an 800Wh battery is a good 0.5kg lighter than the Bosch 750Wh battery. All they need now is a MGU version and I’m sold.

Those brake levers are way too close to the grips, don’t forget to adjust them for small hands as the reach is also massive on them. I see so many kids riding with badly setup brake levers. For a ‘small’ person you probably want to cut the bars down a bit as well.

Hillman Minx maybe? I used to have those style Alleycats on a Imp.

Something like a triumph herald convertible? It’s got (actual) wing mirrors and a screen but nothing to the rear above the quarter panel.

Sadly I’m away camping this weekend. Weather looks great, have a good ride.

9 is when they introduced good stabilisation so I wouldn’t go older than that. I think the 10 was better for heat management and minor improvements with the 11 so maybe aim for a 10.

I’ve ridden at least 5 different ways back from Samoens on ebikes. Col de la Golese is the best and has some good singletrack on the way back, but is quite a climb. I’ve done it on 500wHr but only just. The decent to Samoens is worth doing twice to sample both good ways down.

That method of pushing the pistons back with the pads in feels brave to me as I always worry the hose to the syringe might pop off!

I did a bleed, although the back still feels softer than the front, still super powerful. Pushing the piston back with the cap off was a bit messy (bleeding topless with just an open lever reservoir). I’ll try again on the back using the technique in that video to do a calliper end bleed with the lever held down.