For navigation purposes you don’t need to look any further than the Edge Touring. £140 ATM on bike discount. Works flawlessly and even gives you basic data, speed, distance, elevation etc and can be paired with HR sensor if you want. Good sized colour screen that gets compared favourably to the 800s.

My 9HD came tubeless ready with the conversion kits included, email bike discount and ask they usually respond fairly quickly.

Got Saints on me current setup with some SS Nano Thrupins waiting for a bearing service and some Kona Wah Wahs as my backup. Someone above mentioned Saints being tall, not sure about that, they do look chunky in photos but in the flesh are no thicker than Nanos or Nukeproof. They do have a smaller contact patch though but big enough for size 10 Five 10s.

Radon Slide 9HD, only arrived last week, one ride old and no pics yet!

I got a slide 9HD last week, I paid a charge of £50 over and above the bike price, think that was partly for delivery. Bike came by DHL in a week.

Great bike to ride very good on the up for a150/160 bike, I think the high end are 160 and entry 150 up front. Seat angle good for pedalling, longish ETT, shortish chainstays and wheel base. 67 degree head angle which is perfect for 650b IMO. In the flesh the frames are gorgeous, almost straight TT with a hint of a hump like a Mondraker or Spectral, nicely curved downtube bit like a Giant but not so pronounced.

Crossroc wheels, monarch plus rc3, pike rct3, reverb stealth, guide RS brakes, x9 shifters, XO group with Carbon cranks. RF Atlas bar n stem just a smidge under 2k.

I find Cardiac sets you up nicely for the rest of the loop, gets the legs n lungs going nice n early!

If you don’t know where the cheeky trails are you won’t have enough time to find them and have a decent ride in 2 hours. Just do a lap of the Dog n Monkey.

Compared to other, larger, more established retailers Giant do have reasonable value but compared to the German online retailers not even Giant offers good value.

Of course there are disadvantages with buying the bikes online but I know with Rose, Canyon and Radon they do have shops you can visit to test their bikes, Radon is in Bonn and Majorca and Canyon and Rose are both in the UK now too. I’m not sure about YT.

Component for component there is no competition between these retailers and the established big players or boutique brands. That leaves the frame and overall design to question. Bikes from all the online manufacturers score very well in the press, Radon are probably the least well known over here but they are fairly large on the continent and get good reviews in the German press, plus their bikes are designed and welded in Germany.

In terms of All Mountain ive owned a Five, Alpine, Nerve AM and a Spesh Enduro I just bought a Slide 9HD, component spec alone is amazing for £2k and it’s the best bike I’ve owned in terms of its ability. But I was able to test one before purchase.

Here you go;

http://www.bike-discount.de/en/buy/radon-slide-27.5-8.0-238536/wg_id-10074

Have a look at the YT Capra also.

First time out on the new MTB and first time on any bike in 5 months. Not lost as much fitness as I feared but leg endurance needs built up a wee bit again. First 10 mins or so was a bit hesitant but settled into it again quicker than I hoped and it was soon like I hadn’t been away (except for fitness levels!).

@andyr

Nah mate I’m Sprite, wouldn’t be seen dead on a Carbon Spesh Clown Bike like PBM, lol.

Hope he doesn’t read this as he gets round the chase a fair bit and might stop to run me over with his Huuuuge wheels!

😉

@Skeetsgb

Lol mate it sounds exactly like Richie and I think he’s signing just to piss people off even more. From the couple of sentences I exchanged with him I’ve no doubt it’s defo him .

Yup Richie is going for it. I’d imagine a ban hammer may come my way as I exchanged pleasantries with him. Even Doogs has got a bit hot under the collar, probably the most pleasant level headed, all round nice geezer on the forum.

@^^^

MTBR? That’s the one ain’t it?

Yup it is a very busy site, it gives active browsing figures for each forum. The 29er and, more recently, 27.5 forums are always very busy proving the popularity of bigger wheels over there.

Gunner’s Day;

Wakes up
Deletes some posts
Eats brekkie (paid for by subs)
Digs empty energy gel wrapper outta bin (members lottery prize for this month)
Deletes some posts
Photographs bikes against a fence
Lunch (paid by subs)
Postage deletion
Fence photos
Cycles 300 miles
Deletion
Dinner (Subbage)
Deletion
Bed (gets wood over dreams of bannage and subs)

Bike radar and PB and sometimes that American one with even more sub-forums than MTBE, can’t remember it’s name. 🙂

Lol at Mrs Toast – I’d guess a fair few of us have been using STW for some time.

It’ll be MTBEmpty soon enough!

MTBE always seemed to me the place you went when first starting out and you were too scared to come on here. That’s what I did. The more I learned the more sites I registered with and the less time I visited MTBE, I’d hardly been on there for months.

There was sill a decent community who stuck around though but the first warning sign was Richie getting banned.

Watch out I hear Gunner is dusting off his STW mods boots and is gonna kick you all in about 5 mins !!

Mwahaha.

@Kedmun

I think reasonable time has well and truly passed in this case. FYI my Reaction was 6 months old when i noticed the first crack, took it back straight away.

Squeezing through at Cannock this morning.

I had hairline cracks on the TT of a Reaction GTC. It took Cube about 4 weeks just to acknowledge they had looked at the frame. After 6 weeks I requested a different bike from shop . They agreed but then give me an 8 week wait for new bike so I asked for money back and got full refund.

I used the ‘reasonable time’ argument, think after you have had the bike for so long you have to give them this time to repair or replace. If it passes reasonable time then you can request refund. They can then pay full or partial refund depending on how much use you’ve had of the bike.

I’ve had a bike on 0%. I have the savings to buy it outright, but it doesn’t make any sense to blow your savings and loose the interest you get. As said above if things go wrong I’ve got the money to pay off the bike. IMO it’s always best to go for 0% if you have the savings to cover your purchase.

Ta for tips. Am going 1×10 Zee shadow plus, blackspire NW, XT crank and shifter. I’m in the process of heli taping the at risk areas before I start building. Ran out of tape. Lmao, new stuff on way from CRC!

okdokey, ta for quick responses, think i was having a blonde moment, got it fitted;

I ended up with this (and badly broken collar bone) after being hit by a car at a roundabout on commute from work. Neck was stiff and sore for about 2 weeks and tender for about another fortnight.

Defo get it checked out, there’s so much going on in that part of your body. Get a new helmet too.

Im 6ft 4″ and have a 2014 Large (19″), wouldn’t want it to be any smaller.

I’m not a great fan of 32 stanchions TBH, but thought at 120mm that was all i could get, so am now leaning towards the Trace RL2.

That ups the budget to around £490 so just having a mooch to see what else is out there up to that price.

Just seen some RS SID RCT3 for about £450, even more over my budget. Keep coming back to Slides and Reba both about same price for 2014s ATM.

Now looking at the Marzocchi 320 LRs too!

Email Cotic, Paul sent me the tracking ref when I asked.

TNT

My Solaris frame was dropped off about an hour ago, fanbloodytastic!

Oooooo^^^^^^nice Alpine i got the RS at the end of last year you won’t regret getting one of those.

My next bike will be a lurvely Solaris, frame arrives tomorrow, Thompson inline post, X4 stem and XT 10 spd triple (will be stripped down to single) arrive by Saturday. Let the fun begin, months of mooching for the next part, fantastic.

6’4″ and I ride a large 19″ Alpine. Had a nerve am XL 22″ before that and a 20″ Cube Reaction before that .

After my Nerve I realised I really don’t want another XL frame. My Alpine fits me very nicely, im comfortable on it and after a few months with it I feel at home, can ride it well and it’s never caused me any discomfort in any area. That’s the real test IMO, does it cause you any pain or numbness or does it affect your abilities negatively in the mid to long term? If the answer is no then you’ve got a bike you can use.

Of course this is no use when buying a bike as you only get a short test ride, but I wouldn’t automatically assume you need an XL just because you are 6′ 4″ .

Been there every weekend for past couple months, first section was closed off (isnt it always !?) and the section after ‘between the trees’ (two sections after cardiac hill) was closed also. Will be back on Sunday so hope they are both open again by then.

As for mud the worst parts are the straight after ‘stoneybrook climb’, and the 2 sections after that, before and after the first boardwalk.

2014 Alpine, it’s gotten considerably dirtier since these pics which were taken the day it was delivered.

Do your research, make a short list of bikes. Go and try em, have a decent test ride and taking into consideration your riding style, most ridden areas and what you like the most select a bike and buy it.

Go out and ride and enjoy.

Wheel size shouldn’t matter, follow the above and whatever bike you end up with will have the right wheels.

I was there on Sunday. Trails were fairly wet, to be expected suppose but Cannock dries up fairly quickly if it gets a few days without rain but I’d imagine it will rain in Staffs this week. Trails are still very rideable though, even when wet. If I was going to travel 150 miles to get here I’d be looking at making it worth my while so would want to get a full loop of both Reds, dog and monkey and I’d probably head up to stile cop after your Lower Cliff run for some fun on the DH trails before continuing and completing the loop by finishing the dog.

I never posted mine 🙁 , never miss an opportunity to post a pic 🙂