Sad times, £24 front mech it is :( Oh well, not the end of the world! Thanks for the advice :)

Yeah, not a lot brand new unfortunately so I would be looking 2nd hand. I think just because theres so much more available full bike wise I’ll be looking down that way, so once the frame bearings are sorted I’ll list it and see what happens – no harm in trying!

Nukeproof was what I was thinking as well, but I’m seeing a fair few more spesh enduros about – hearing good things about them, and they’re pretty cheap for the kit on them so will most likely go for one of those if I can get my bike shifted (big if).

Thanks a lot for all the advice guys

Good point chestrockwell, plus 700 puts me in new rocketmax territory as well which is a thought…

Yes to all the above weeksy.

Thanks for all the advice guys, I’ll definitely send an email to MRP when I can clearly say what happened to the forks – hopefully they can give a bit more insight in to what went wrong.

That probably came off a bit badly on the LBS, they were more just having a rant about how much can go wrong on air forks and the simplicity of coil forks rather than actually saying the forks were completely shot! They weren’t trying to sell me anything as they’re more of a workshop setup and don’t carry much stock.

As most people have said they’re great tyres, but unless you’re full on weight weeny xc racer I wouldn’t have anything less than GRID casing on the rear – I don’t weigh a lot and try and ride pretty smooth and have burst sidewalls on purg controls.

Really great value for money, and very durable if GRID, won’t be going to Schwalbe/Maxxis anytime soon.

No GPX to hand to throw at you but peaks wise, ladybower and edale are probably your best bets for dark peak winter rides as they both drain well. There’s a loop that starts from edale and incorporates Jacob’s Ladder on the ridesheffield website, whilst there’s plenty available for potential ladybower loops. Might be a bit of a trek from Stoke but well worth it if you’ve got the time.

I did something similar last May – broke student wrote car off on the way to trails, and had to sort something quick as I had exams the week after, followed by a ferry booked from Belfast back to Britain a couple of days after!

Picked up a focus estate that was in good nick for around 700 but you could get something similar for a bit less I reckon. Def recommend what I’ve got – estate so can fit my large 29er full sus in the back without taking anything off, focus parts are cheap and readily available so if anything goes wrong it shouldn’t be too hard to fix. I reckon I get about that mpg out of it, maybe a little less. 1.6 as well so doesn’t lose power when fully loaded with bikes and riders too bad. Focuses are pretty abundant as well so there should be a few knocking about.

I looked into a postman pat style thing as well but found even with sky high milage they were still pretty pricey unfortunately, so estates a good middle ground.

Thanks perchypanther – Found em for 7.69 so worth a shot!

I might consider going full enduro if I get into it a bit more but I can’t really justify buying a new helmet right now unfortunately!

I just want to discuss here rather than offer solid advice, so asking for others to correct me if I’m wrong:

Working on the premise that as you say, your mate isn’t dragging his brakes, the 2 things I can think of are either using a bigger rotor if he’s not already done that, or using one of the ice-tech rotors – as far as I know both of these things are supposed to improve heat dissipation and reduce the chance of overheating. As I said before, please correct me if I’m wrong.

In terms of whether the brake is rubbing, I can’t see how you wouldn’t notice that your brakes are causing drag before it would get to the point where this is causing them to overheat – it’d be like riding with your brakes on surely?

No experience with the ribbon, but I love my stage! Like a pike but with better small bump sensitivity, and the ability to essentially add bottomless tokens whilst on the trail!

One thing to consider though is Ison seem to want to do all maintenance in house, so you’ll need to have a contact in a bike shop or be very good at twisting their arm if you want to get hold of parts, seals etc. off them. On the flipside, they have very long service intervals so you probably won’t need to work on them regularly at all

Yep, but if you order, you can check the order status soon after – if it’s not in stock it’ll say “on back order” or something like that. If so, chuck them an email and they’ll cancel it and refund you quickly, with no hassle.

If you’re putting in excessive force and the pistons aren’t retracting, you might need to open up the system to allow fluid out – happened once on my old avids when replacing the pads with some superstar ones that were slightly thicker than avid originals. Only a couple of drops came out, careful not to contaminate everything, would probably be best to use a bleed syringe on the lever etc. It’s pretty unusual but I’ve seen on other forums it’s known to happen.

Also be wary they may need a bleed if the pistons have been pushed too far out, as avids like sucking air in from there.

Was up near there today – It’s okay-ish – flat and downhill snow is ok if you get your arse behind the back axle, but any sort of positive gradient wasn’t working for me with a Purgatory rear tyre on top of mam tor. Good to be wary of any well used trails as they’ll most likely be compacted snow and icy up top – the path along the ridge from mam tor to Hollins definitely was. Found that Win Hill was riding marginally better – mucky under the snow but you had more grip.

Yep, was slightly surprised by price tho:

http://www.chainreactioncycles.com/sram-maxle-lite-front/rp-prod54647?gs=1&pgrid=43646971904)&ptaid=aud-111606983596:pla-75099905476&utm_source=google&utm_term=&utm_campaign=Chain+Reaction-UK-PLA-PLA-All-DT-SE-Shopping+QLB+Manufacturer+Desktop&utm_medium=base&utm_content=mkwid|sfnwFyTlP_dc|pcrid|161845658788|pkw||pmt||prd|494381UK

Take it easy driving around the peaks – I just drove from Sheffield to Castleton and got… shall we say… “loose” around a corner on the A57… Saw someone else had crashed just coming out as well so I assume the ice is pretty widespread.

Oh and roads wise if you want some routes chuck us a PM with how far you want and what sort of terrain you’d want, or if you want a club ride with friendly locals go and meet Phoenix cycling club at 9:00 for A pace and 9:30 for B pace. Really friendly bunch of guys who’d be happy to ride with you and show you the local countryside :)

Castlewellan’s good fun, but quite pedally and you do have to work hard on the descents to make them super fast. I’ve never done it on a full sus but my old 100mm hardtail was more than capable so you might be a little overbiked if you have a rear shock. Rostrevor, as people have already said, is very much all up then all down, forest track climb at the starts a killer but the descents are real good fun (even if the trail designers don’t know what berms are…), and the views from Kodak corner are incredible (if there’s not too much weather coming in from the Irish Sea!)

If you have the time and/or inclination in C’wellan there are some trails they use for the first tracks enduro kicking about, but I’ve never ridden them and have no idea where they are, and may have trees down from the winters storms as I’m not sure it MTBNI maintain those ones. Same can be said for Rostrevor.

For C’wellan, there’s a free car park up round the back on the leitrim road instead of having to pay national trust as well, if you’re coming from the north it’s fairly easy to see but you might miss it from Castlewellan proper.

+1 for 2 layers of tape possibly causing issues – Have seen before tyres not seating properly due to excessively taped wheels – but more than 2 layers. You shouldnt need more than one layer anyhow so it’s probably worth a shot anyway!

I’ve picked up a couple of mk1 focuses for around that. I never needed to repair the first one, wrote it off before I had the chance, but the couple of things that went wrong with the 2nd one I have were easy and cheap to fix. Bit over budget but I paid about 700 for one with 95k on the clock – I maybe could have haggled down but was in a bit of a tight situation and needed a car fast.

I don’t really know a lot about the insurance though, I seem to be paying a lot on it but that might be because I’ve only been a named driver for just over a year, with no no claims and a write off in my first year…

Ooh the BBB one has a range of 2-14Nm, whilst mine is 3-15. Considerable overlap and I guess you just need to consider whether you’re more likely to need to torque to 2nm or 15nm…

I’ve got the X-tools Pro one. It’s great, feels nice to use, and seems to be the same as my Dad’s PRO (shimano) branded one but with X-tool’s written on – he paid considerably more for his. What does let it down is the selection of bits it comes with – no T30 which I need for changing chainrings, whilst I only use a 2.5 for the brake bleed screw on the lever (not torqued). Deffo worth going for if you don’t mind buying some extra bits for it, but yes – the BBB one is likely exactly the same unit but rebranded.

Haha, cheers fergal, good advice, I just need to get out and ride more and it’ll be fine. Thanks to all for the insight, I’m sure it’ll be great once I’m there!

Thanks for the advice guys, I already paid a few days ago so I guess I’m just gonna have to suck it up no matter what it is! Sheffield based so won’t be able to practice on nearby trails but very spoilt in what’s available to me so plenty to go and do

Cold isn’t too much of an issue, I’m going with guys faster than me so as long as they don’t ditch me for being too slow I should be moving enough to keep warm. I’ll take 2 pairs of gloves though!

Vid on youtube from last year doesnt look too bad – some steep stuff that I’ll just have to hold my breath and send it on but it’s complemented by a lot of mellower flowy stuff that I’m more than happy.

I’ve done the nan bield pass without any tripoding – I can see this’ll be sloppier, but is it much harder/steeper than that?

Yeah hit send post twice by accident… oops!

I did exactly this last week – had to move one spacer over from driveside to non-driveside (73mm bb shell so only one spacer), then space the chainring a further 2mm inboard.

SJS for chainring spacers – even with their postage it works out cheaper than ebay.

If it’s an XT M785 double you’re using, the chainring bolts for the inner ring will fit on the 2mm spaced outer ring fine – saves you buying more!

I’d agree with Joe – looks like dropped chain damage, but would be impossible to tell for certain if it’s gone through without the x-ray machines etc they use to determine cracks.

Also, due to the nature of it, Giant might just come back to you and say the warranties void – damage caused by the chain dropping rather than a welding defect :(

Have you tried shining a torch through it to see if it goes through?

Penetrating fluid might just need a bit more time to soak in – leave it a couple of hours then see what happens. In my experience cartridge bearings take very little force to fall apart so it’s not too surprising the bearing fell apart first before the outer race came out!

You can always buy only a top part of the headset and keep the bottom (more expensive) part – as for replacing the bottom bearing if you measure the dimensions there are plenty of places that will work out the bearing for you from the dimensions.

Cane creek in my experience have always been very painless getting bearings in and out of the cups when the time comes, and I think a little cheaper than hope as well.

As long as you have QR end caps in the hub it should fit – haven’t specifically checked that a Diverge definitely has 135mm spacing but i’ve seen pro4’s in lots of cross/road bikes so I assume if it’s disc it’ll be 135mm. You might be hard pushed to find a tyre that wouldn’t have a really weird profile on a rim so wide that will still clear the frame though…

All might not be lost if you can’t warranty it – SJS do the lever unit on it’s own for £23. Not ideal but less than a new whole resevoir bundle… Exploded view shows how it all fixes together so you should be able to figure it out.

I was thinking that underneath the pivot might be an allen bolt as seen for reach adjusting deore brakes but the fact that this doesn’t show on the exploded view makes me doubt that… If you can get it apart to have a look and find an allen bolt that might be a cheap fix?

https://www.sjscycles.co.uk/brake-levers/shimano-deore-xt-blm8000-lever-member-unit-right-y8mx98010/

http://si.shimano.com/pdfs/ev/EV-BL-M8000-3853A.pdf

Cotic rocketmax?

Steel has carbon in it…

As splash-man said you could try shorter bolts, or whack some washers between the top of the caliper and the bolt heads to take up the slack space. Depends if you’ve already done that and how many washers you need to put in though…

Vortex – in what way? I had it with no spacing but the chainline was awful and the chain would just dump down the cassette when back pedalling on the lowest gear – still not perfect but better than it was.

Yep – was on a set of m785 2x cranks so had to space the chainring in 2mm to get the chainline right. BB spacer behind the cup as well.

It’s a 36t so is quite big – bigger diameter means the edge is closer to where the chainstay comes out so it could be that

The more expensive one will work from the box but unless your son’s bike is an XXL 29er there will be a lot of excess hose – to get rid of this, you’ll need to disconnect, cut down to appropriate size, install a new barb in the hose then reattach to the lever with a new olive – you may also need to bleed it after doing this as well but it can be done without. It’s not the hardest job in the world as long as you have the right kit (cable cutters, something to clamp the cable in to when putting in the barb, mallet, bleed kit), but it depends how handy you are.

You can always just run it with a really long cable though – won’t harm the function at all, might just not look that neat!

So this happened to my Dolan Preffisio work bike/commuter/frankenbike the other day: https://imgur.com/a/PABJv

Have an All City Macho man to transfer parts over, replacing drivetrain at the same time.

Not as ambitious as other projects posted but still fun all the same :)

Onedpete – thanks for the advice. Just because of lack of daylight, Minehead’s probably just too far but getting up to dead woman’s ditch should just about be ok. I normally do Great Wood stuff if I’m there though, so will get on trailforks and strava route creator and see what I can conjure up! Thanks all for the advice, hope it’ll all be good :)

You’d have no bother driving to the peaks as long as you stick to the main roads and park up at ladybower/hope/cutthroat, but Stanage was a no go last weekend due to the snow and would assume roads haven’t been cleared up there yet. Was great fun last weekend jumping in to snow drifts! Might be a bit muddy by now…

Nope, most likely a seals gone or just a bit mucky. If you’re handy with bike maintenance it’s not too hard to take apart, clean and reassemble, plenty of videos online, just might need the correct wt oil etc.

For me, the combination of tires scrabbling when hitting a berm fast with that hope sound. That or the unclipping from spds followed by locking the rear wheel when drifting a corner properly (far too rare an occurence for me…)

Thanks for all the advice guys, i’ll try going tubeless as soon as i can – £21 is grand for all the kit needed but i don’t think my tires themselves are tubeless – at least another £30 for one of the 2-bliss suggested…

PJM1974 (or anyone else reading lol), you suggested putting sealant into a removeable core – i use the continental inner tubes so i should be able to do this – is it just the same technique as tubeless i.e. empty into the tube and spinspinspin?