Terrible
gonna post some of my dry trails when i move back to Ardeche in a coupla weeks : )

as well? or only?

thanks a lot for all the replies.

this site was good for general info and leads:
http://www.alpsun.com/mtbbike_en.htm

most of the good options seem to be around Briancon:

Vallouise valley has a lot to offer between Puy-St-Vincent, Pelvoux etc:
http://www.paysdesecrins.com/espace-vtt-ffc-pays-des-ecrins-2013.pdf

then there’s Serre Chevalier valley a bit to the north:
http://www.serre-chevalier.com/en/summer/lift-accessed-recreation/bike-lift-rides/ thanks B.A.nana

at Briancon apperently there’s a decent from the top of Prorel cable car – 14km!

But then, a bit further south, (and nearer for me : ) is a great looking bike park at Les Orres:
http://vtt.lesorres.com/espace-vtt-lesorres/bike-park

that’s where i’ll be off to then i reckon. 2.5 hour’s drive from my granny-in-law’s! happy days : )

oh aye, and montgenvre there’s a bike park too:
http://www.montgenevre.com/summer/fr/activites/vtt

how about the Nukeproof Mega TR which is 130mm back but will take more out front?
not re-checked the geo but i think it was fairly slack HT. etc.
i’ve been toying with a similar idea for a while:100-120mm at the back and geo built for 140-150 forks; not an XC ride.
when is someone going to make a frame like this?

chrs nuke. thought as much. do you ride yours liek that? does it work?

hey northwind, what do ride that’s 120 back and 160 front?
is it ‘meant’ to be?

aye, i had the same experience with my pitch.
32lb for a small 2008.
i wasn’t expecting it to be light but still.
some heavy bits on it which don’t really need to be so beefy.
makes me ask myself everytime why i need such a heavy bike.

the old Nerve AM has been updated this year. head angle sorted and geo generally brought in line with others of this sort.
canyons always have great reviews.
its a standard ‘horst link’ suspension system as used by specialized, lappiere etc. so no worries there, good place to start anyways.
but read the reviews on their site.
also lots of reviews of it’s wee brother around, the standard nerve AL
eg on bike radar.

and yes, agree with mikewsmith, 2nd hand can be good. but you have to be sure of supension’s history. also, many good second hand bieks are not only £300 less than the canyon

thanks mama, tidy!

i’d go straight for a canyon nerve AL+ for that money

http://www.canyon.com/_en/mountainbikes/bike.html?b=3039#tab-reiter2

can’t beat the spec. i’d try to swap ou the talas tho possibly…

thanks a lot fellas.
i’ll try to be more open minded about and give it a try : )

my brother was in the passport office in glasgow.
there was a neddy type whose kids were called Maison and Antwanettey (think it was actually spelt like that, and was pronounced with a ‘netty’at the end)

apparently Maison is in some kids’ names books

‘bonjour, je m’appelle House…’

just keep buying them.
she’ll give up eventually

and you can definately justify another one if you’re commuting on your BFe

i run slime in a regular inner tube. haven’t got round to tubelessing the rim, ‘ghetto’ or otherwise.
haven’t had a punture (or one that didn’t fix itself)in 2 or 3 years : )

aye, ACTUAL LOL Rob Hilton, thanks : )

aha. that’s what i’ve heard too from a reliable source

You read that thread and still think what you are after has anything to do with 4X

well no. just found myself agreeing with what a lot of folk were describing there; what they thought might be good.

Best way to go would be a service/tune and shaft shortened/limited on your current shock

aye agreed, if it worked well, but it’d be worth trying out with the wee spare shock i’ve got

Indeed. If you don’t need 150mm, why buy a Pitch in the first place?

because it was the only frame that had a short enough headtube and not a fox triad shock and i could swap my bits straight onto. and it was dead cheap and i was on a budget. and i wanted to try it. and it’s well good.

Slight contradiction in that you don’t ‘need’ 150 out back yet you’re ‘lumbered’ with 130 up front?

if i could afford new forks of course i’d put longer ones on and balance up the bike. aye i don’t need 150 but i do appreciate it and enjoy having plenty of travel. but i already have a spare shorter shock that with some sort of stroke reducing and some mounts/bushes i could put on.

‘well why don’t you just try it then?’ yes.

You’d need to check the stroke length on a replacement shock. Its probably 50mm stroke on your existing 200mm shock, so if you got a 190mm eye to eye shock with a 50mm stroke, you’d still have the same travel but probably mess up your bb height and geometry?

well aye. not to mention completely bottom out the frame! i thought i coverered that. it’d be shorter stroke so bottom out was in roughly the same place as other shock, travel-wise.

so non of you lot have tried it clearly?
running more sag be worth a try but that means things being more spongy and more likely to bottom out shock a bit too often

Or,
could i just put in a purple spring from a set of 140mm vanillas?

thanks johnellison, i’ll give that a go. wish i hadn’t sold on the soft spring

and thanks b45her, but i don’t agree.
they are linear but that line is not horizontal on a graph so to speak.
it still takes more force to compress eg 10mm near the end of the stroke (when the spring is more compressed) than near the beginning.
from another forum:

the red line is a linear shock, the blue a progressive.
‘X axis would be how far into the stroke you are and Y axis being how much force needs to be applied. All shocks, no matter if they are progressive or linear, need more force to compress them the farther they go into their travel’

that means johnellison’s trick with a spacer would work because the spring is already more compressed at any given point in the travel than it would have been otherwise, requiring more relatively more force than before to move the same part of fork travel.

[and that is why preload affects sag.
the spring can be made more or less compressed at a given point in the forks travel or conversely, with a given force acting on the system, it can be made to move more or less depending how far through it’s compression the spring is.]
anyway blah blah blah. that’s my understanding of it.

but it’s got me wandering how far you can space before the spring becomes fully stacked before full travel. not much danger of that i’d guess…

this is great; i’ve got loads of things to be pissed off about that i hadn’t thought of!

snobbery pisses me off. i’ve finally convinced myself that deore is actually fine. if you’re a pro maybe not but for a lot of us…
also aspirational culture. a lot of juicy (and often presumably good, though not always) products dangled infront of us which a lot of us can’t afford to be spunking on, though we’d definately like and appreciate the engineering. some developments make obvious sense and probably don’t cost more to manufacture than the old style, but are charged at a premium.

If they can’t be @rsed before I’ve spunked my wad…

snigger : )

thanks but no thanks xiphon. i don’t need that much fork and got another project on the go to swallow my cash. stuck with them for now : (

and yes before anyone says it, i do know my chain is the wrong side of the stinger in the pic!
took me a while to notice tho : ))

mine:
[/url]
mine[/url]
built on the cheap.
NEEDS a longer fork – running only 130 at the mo but still works. possibly helps me up some climbs and only 9mm lower than the original.

When you stay off the brakes it really comes alive. way more bike than rider but great fun. aye, bit of a sofa/tractor.
first ride i climbed a tricky stretch i’d never got up on anything, hard-tail or FS. great traction, but you can’t really tell; that’s my only gripe. not enough feedback. guess it’s an FSR thing.

RP2 shock MASSIVELY improved by Loco. was already pushed but he stiffened up the propedal so now no bob at all. just need to sort those forks…

yeh 29ers are harder work vortex. i’d stick with the 26er if i were you and i can take that cumbersome 29er frame off your hands ; )

26er does actually look better of the the 2 IMO

So if both Sram 9 and 10 speed are both 1:1 (cable moves 1 unit the jockey wheel moves sideways buy 1 unit) how are they incompatible?

i guess it could not be the same ‘1’ to the same ‘1’ maybe?
ie 9spd could be 7mm move to 7mm cable and 10spd 6mm to 6mm.
just guessing. don’t aktchly know

a 24″ wheeled steel frame town hack bike, ie geo not like a jump bike. built as heavy as a Soul or similar; can easy take steps but not for dirt jumps/jumps parks. 3-5 gears light and simple, disc brakes and rigid forks. rag it around town, walk it staight onto the train and takes v. little room. handy. and fun

also +1 for the ragley full sussers!

bump

thanks all for replies :)
i get the picture
jimmer

looking good with the exotics Vortex. that’s what i’ve got waiting.
how’s the handling?

i’m after a 16″ shep, but had seen that aye :)
i also know there’s a 16″ unit lurking out there for a good price, but still working out the cash…

aye it does. i’d be splurging on one of them if i had the cash…

is it deffy same frame Shep? units have cable routing too i think so i guess aye, it will be the same.i’ll get that on my saved searches too then :)
seem to me more units around tho. they stopped the explosive for 2011 looks like (?). bringing it back in 650b for 2013

never thought about a Cube but i saw this, and thought YES:

http://www.bikeradar.com/mtb/gear/category/bikes/mountain/product/review-cube-bikes-stereo-super-hpc-160-sl-46706
but just saw yr budget so that’s probly out then!

and second the YT or the new Canyon nerve AL+. they’ve updated the geo.s etc of the old nerve AM and it looks bang up to date. great specs for the price too

Are you insane? why would you do that?!!!

cos i don’t have much money, helps me work out what i can get away with…

but ideally:

I haven’t a clue, as I’ve mentally purged the details of that from my consciousness

aye!

talking of army goretex, these are well good

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/170432333938?var=470000864955&ssPageName=STRK:MEWAX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1423.l2649

i’ve had the short ones for years. and they work a treat. worn them in leaking wellies full of water: feet warm and dry. worn them up the cobbler in 3′ of snow in crappy trainers, feet warm and dry.
been thinking the long ones would be ideal for real ming.

a ha ha ha!
mine saw my spread sheet of potential bike build costs ( :oops: ) the other day. similar line about did i really think another bike etc but didn’t mention divorce. i guess it helps we’re not married…

oh aye? that’s what i want too. tho i had more or less decided start building up an inbred with better forks. hmmm. now swithering again…

bump for this
it’s now late 2012 and early model year 2013 isn’t it?

like to know if they’re ever coming. decided a while a go i don’t need much at the rear but would be good to have goe to take a longish for without knocking other things off.

cheers awb’dy for the prices and pics.
oh dear, want one even more now…

looks like splurging on frame and forks and cobbling the rest together with cheap stuff.
or get an inbred and save a whole lot of cash?

i’d like to see some budget-built 29ers.
anyone built theirs up from 2nd stuff off here?
Hmuch?

cheers, starting to understand
thanks for taking the time
looks liek you’ve got yourself another customer ;)