I would personally try to avoid putting my mobile online in any way shape or form. You’re opening your phone up to all sorts of scams. At the very least you are opening yourself to phishing scams. If you are on Facebook instant messager people can search Facebook by your mobile number and see what you post there. And with all the emails, messages, info you might have on your phone why take the risk.

I insist people email me first then I’d send them my number. This can help weed out the real ****s. But even then, some of the emails are jaw droppingly stupid.

phutphutend

What we’ll get:
-New ‘standards’ for increased stiffness,
-Bollox pseudo science;
-More gears;
-Less resistant materials;
-Electronics;
-Geometry shifting suspension;
-More things to go wrong;
-More things to buy!!!

Look at what we’ve come from though, bikes are better in every way.

PJM1974
Here’s my predictions for 2024:

SRAM will release another new groupset to “sit above X0” called SRAM -99. The cassette will be cost a grand and will be 1.3g lighter than X11. There will be 137 groupsets that sit above X0 and only two that sit below X0. X0 will continue to mirror XTR rrp.

If you adjust for inflation my old Scott would cost about £550 quid today, so still little more than an entry level hardtail. So prices haven’t gone crazy by any stretch, as much as we all might imagine they have. A super expensive Sram cassette might cost you £650 rrp in 20 years time.

As I understand it, she was moderately famous as a society brat until a sex tape she made was “leaked” at which point she became very famous, gaining her a reality tv show to promote herself and her foul, braindead, vacuous, selfish ignorant horrible f*cking family.

My wife watches it and it is genuinely car crash stuff. Imagine if you will a group of people who have every possible advantage, every conceivable privilege, and yet all they do is bitch, moan, snype and back stab everyone, all while being completely oblivious to the real world.

nickjb
How about electric transmission? You pedal a dynamo and the wheel drives from a motor.

I was thinking about something like that, like a hybrid car where you’re replacing the petrol engine.

I suppose carbon nano tubes might give us much lighter, stronger bikes, wheels, forks etc etc. Maybe some sort of on board telemetry to set up the suspension better for a given trail, then linked into gps.

dirtyrider
nah

Absolutely. Consistently timed over a few years. Talas fork puts the HA at 68 degrees, steepens the SA to over 75 degrees. Same tyres, same engine. The only difference is the hardtail is slightly lighter, but the full suss grips better on a very steep section of the climb.

rewski

I’d love a pair of these though

hatter

Those Point One’s Podiums are amazing,

Amazingly fragile. I had mine replaced twice under warranty. When the third set died in under 6 months they didn’t have any stock to give me another pair. Lovely feel to use up until the point where the pedal body decides to just slide off the axle mid trail.

Also, your best avoiding anything with magnesium imo.

Yes it works, but it starts to get messy after multiple correspondence. It definitely attracts the lowest common denominator in terms of iq though. If you want to be tortured by ignorant, ill mannered, illiterate haggling f*ck wits…..Gumtree.

fudge9202

XT 11-36, 26″ transition bandit, decent fitness do around 80-100 miles a week on roads, problem is terrain, one is very xc orientated Castlewellan, the other is Kilbroney loads of climbing then all downhill back to carpark.

34 then.

Cassette size, wheel size, fitness, type of riding and size of hills to be tackled?

somafunk – Member

If he lives 100yards away from you yet you only know him through Facebook then that suggests to me you know the answer i’m going to give you, unless you are willing to commit a considerable amount of your free time into pandering to him and his mental illness with no happy outcome – it sounds like he’ll drain you of every emotion apart from frustration and anger.

He needs medical/psychological assessment as above, walk away from him.

Exactly this. He needs to check himself in somewhere for a while until they can get him the correct medication.

If you’re buying one I’d say go big or go home. I’ve got a 25ltr I bought years back for airbrushing and whilst I can use it for tubless I find it lacks the pressure/volume to definitively, properly set up tubeless the way I’m used to with 200ltr workshop compressors. Blast them up in a split second.

Instead of the wee compressor I prefer to use an old fire extinguisher which I pressurize with a track pump and seat tyres with that, then finish them off with the track pump. Quite often I can get away with just the track pump which is just a shitty Airwave. If it’s just for seating tubelss I’d sooner spend £60 on a high volume track pump and save some money.

If you did buy a big one you could use it for reciprocating saws, impact drivers, media blasters, respraying cars etc etc

CaptainFlashheart – Member

More batteries – Electronic shifting, travel adjust, dropper adjust, and possibly even geometry adjust.
More internal – Belt drive and gear/hub set ups will grow in popularity.
More integration – GPS systems included to control the likes of gearing (Automatic gearbox type set up, anyone?) and perhaps even pre-set dropper, travel and angle settings.

I could imagine at some point the UCI might come in to say xc and ban some technological advances.

Kryton57

Typical STW, find someone to pick on without thinking and flame away. My turn today huh?

Sorry Kryton, if I was flaming you. To clarify my logic

all mountain / trail riding

All mountain(or enduro) is generally categorised as 150mm/160mm. Trail I took to mean something between 140mm – 120mm.

Alps trip

again I take to mean somewhere between 120mm- 160mm.

Love my On One 456 hardtail – long and racey, so prob need something with a long cockpit

The 456 being a 140mm to 160mm bike, again led me to believe the op would like something in this travel range. And by long and racey I took to mean enduro racey.

The op saying he’s a weight weenie and loves climbing is a bit of a moot point since there are some crazy light bikes in those categories and they clob very very well these days.

I have to ask, why wouldn’t AC/DC be okay to play at work? (assuming the op doesn’t work in a christian bookstore or something).

Part time drummer of a rock band famous for singing about sex, murder, hell, booze goes off the rails and is arrested for possessing drugs and making threats of violence. I don’t see how that would really taint or stigmatize the bands music.

It’s not as if they’re a band of predatory pedophiles who sing about peace, love and healing the world.

OP should by a Stumpjumper. Close thread :-)

mrblobby

Finally something we can all agree on

:-)

Kryton57

I was merely attempting to refute the fact one might label an Anthem 29er as only capable for the atypical “XC” remit.

The other thing Kryton57 is that you’re using your ASR as a benchmark. Now I’m trying to be friendly here so remember it’s just my opinion, but I think they are horrible pieces of **** :P .

Yes they are expensive, yes they get good reviews, but in my humble opinion, woeful. We’re also not considering bike set up, componentry , damping, sizing, geometry, tyre choice, your fitness levels etc etc.
You going faster on a certain section on strava, tells me your new bike is better for you than your old one, but it doesn’t convince me that the Anthem is much more than a capable xc bike. Sorry.

And yes, I am an opinionated asshole.

Okay, I just edited that to imply more humour and less derision. I’d believe a stopwatch before Strava though. More and more I find it woefully inaccurate by a factor of 15 to 30 seconds.

I smashed all my strava records

:lol: :-)

mrblobby
I think I must have too! Maybe he’s having a bad day.

Sorry lads, don’t take it personally. No insult is intended but I’m going to call you on something if I disagree.

trail” seems to have sprung from a desire to differentiate from it.

Or perhaps it spung from the desire to have a bike that’s just a bit more forgiving than an xc bike.

I guess what I’m trying to say is if you want to be competitive in a race series then it’s sensible to look at what’s successful in that series when choosing what to ride. If you’re not racing and it’s more about fun then it’s less relevant and you pick something that will give you personally the most enjoyable experience on the terrain you ride. The most fun bike over an “enduro” course for you may not be an enduro race bike.

In a horribly confusing way, we are in agreement.

mrblobby – Member
I think XC is now generally considered to be lycra clad riders on 100mm hardtails. Trail is 120+ travel bikes for riders in baggies, probably riding exactly the same terrain as XC but slower.

Sorry but when was xc not lycra clad riders on 100mm bikes? When the bikes were rigid perhaps.

EWS is a race series though, isn’t that a bit like looking at XC racing to see what your average non-racing XC rider should be riding?

XC is a race series too, so I am baffled by your comparison. Thisisnotaspoon stated that 130mm was an enduro bike. If you want to see what works as “enduro” look at what wins.

thisisnotaspoon
Have I done somthing to personaly upset you? Just my oppinion, I’ve gone back to ‘XC’ bikes from big trail/enduro bikes. The OP said

Absolutely not. If I contradict you or my post is missing smiley faces, doesn’t mean I am attacking you. Only disagreeing with you.

thisisnotaspoon – Member
Anthems are far more capable than they have any right being on decents,

I’ve ridden one. They are good for an xc bike. That’s it.

thisisnotaspoon – Member
really “trail” is just the sexy marketing term for XC.

No, it’s not. I understand there are a lot of marketing buzz words and bullshit about, but having different terms helps differentiate. It’s better than just having the word mountainbikes. That would be more confusing. Something like a Anthem SX, Meta Hiphop or a Ghost AMR might have 100-130mm of travel but they are not xc bikes. They are trail bikes. There’s a big difference, you are wrong.

thisisnotaspoon – Member
Anthem has 100mm more travel than that, but only 30mm less than an enduro bike.

Lets look at the EWS to see what constitutes an “Enduro bike”. Ah, it’s 160mm across the board pretty much. Okay. That’s that settled.

thisisnotaspoon – Member
You can ride a HT in the Lakes,
Having said that, for the Lakes a Trance would be even beter.

So which is it? 140mm or 0mm? Why does the Trance even exist? What is it? Is it an XC bike? Could it be a trail bike? Isn’t “trail” just a sexy buzzword for XC? Who would want one when the Anthem descends so well? It must just be cynical marketing bs. Maybe the op just wants more travel.

TheNorthernMonkey

This one for “all mountain / trail riding”

Kryton57

Grab an Anthem 29 from Pauls Cycles for £1500.

So an XC bike for “all mountain / trail riding” ?

OP, what’s your budget? Your average sub 2k “am/enduro” bike will be about 32lbs – 35lbs with silly paper thin tyres and ultra light tubes. Obviously the more you spend, the lighter it’ll get. You can get a 160mm bike down pretty light and still keep it reasonably tough. It’s worth remembering that 650b wheels and tyres will be considerably lighter than 29s.

ugbydick

So: just me, no bikes, and a pair of muddy trainers in the boot

Do you have to put the seats down to get them in the back of an A4 avant :lol:

The only weather forecaster worth listening to is Franky McDonald

Yes. End thread.

Absolutely no chance, certainly not with an Auto, which the Outbacks all are. Over 7000 miles actually measuring the consumption on my 3.0 Rn Outback it has averaged 20.72 mpg. Best full tank has been 25.42mpg. It’s never even shown over 30 average on the car computer on a long trip.

Plenty of guys getting 30mpg averages on legacytrackworld. Probably driving like a saint to get that in fairness but I believe it. I test drove a 3.0R spec B before buying the GTB and the trip displayed 20mpg with me trying to thrash the nuts off it. Inaccurate yes but a reasonable ball park I thought.

The Spanks feel really nice but the bearings that sit at the crank arm are poor quality and not up to the job. Which is crucial. I had three sets of Point ones. Best feeling, worts lasting pedal ever. Total shit. Proof magazines and websites never tell you the truth.

I’m currently wrecking some hope F200s. They are still going strong. I wish the pins were sharper but otherwise great.

isto
It takes no time at all to secure the bike to the roof, especially with 591’s. I would say the difference (if any) is minimal.

cp
I find putting it on my roof racks – Thule 591’s – faster and way more convenient than putting it in the car.

Put bike in boot, close boot. Done. I’ve used roof racks. If you believe it’s quicker to put a bike on a roof rack, and lock it on a roof rack, than it does to place the (complete) bike in the boot then you are deluded.

Marginal difference in mine. Type of journey has WAY more impact.

Two bikes on the roof can half mpg. A bike in the car will not.

Less likely to get damaged on the roof IME – bike slides around in the back of the car, stuff falls onto bike that you had to pack around it. The wheel you had to take off falls over and puts a big scratch in something or bends a disc rotor. Your mates bike goes on top of yours, they slide around and get damaged. Yes you could pack them well, but that takes time.

I don’t have to take the wheel off my bike to put it in the boot. Stuff I had to pack around it? helmet and camelbak? Yeah that’ll destroy it. If I am giving a mate a lift I’ll throw in a tarp between the two bikes. A friends Demo (on a thule roof rack) slid down till it was sitting at 90 degrees…very nearly endued up bouncing down the motorway. He may have secured it incorrectly, or it might have worked its way lose as he was driving aggressively. Either way, that can’t happen when the bike is in the car.

Mine lock to the roof rack. Always try and park the car where I can see it whether the bikes are in or on it.

You go to the toilet or turn your back and this happens

Roof racks work, and are very useful, but if someone owns an estate car and they are going for a ride on their own, and they don’t mind putting the bike in the car then you can’t argue against it.

The “shorter is better” noise keeps things as short as possible much of the time. Recently two things have happened which might change that tide.

Chris Porters article IS being read by people in the industry.

Chris Porter brags about riding DH bikes as trail bikes years ago. He’s done little more than build an enduro bike with DH bike angles (with a few exceptions). I rode a Mondraker Summum last year on one of my local trails, a looong, low, slack bike if ever there was one. It had 450mm cs if I recall and a 62 degree ha. The bb was insanely low. It was totally flawless on big, rough terrain and ponderous on tight twisty stuff, as you would expect a dh bike to be. I wouldn’t want my 160mm bike to feel like that.

Quite a few companies are doing it right already, or very close.

cp

I have an ’04 Legacy. Have you tried one? The clutch isn’t that bad, in fact, driving most other cars feels like they’re toys – the controls feel too light!

Legacy’s are nice cars, prefer mine to a colleague’s ’61 plate 5 series.

I’d agree with that, although I will admit that the clutch on my GTB is heavy for sitting in traffic. All the controls are nicely weighted for driving. An auto would be a viable option. Huge boot, much faster than the equivalent 2wd germanic estates in the real world and totally unbeatable in snow and ice. Economical they are not though.

You might see 30-35mpg from a 3.0spec B or Outback on a long run. Life’s too short for dull cars though. Smiles per gallon’s where it’s at.

isto

I’m also not sure why you would want to put bikes in an estate. That’s where the people and dogs go.

Because you might be going for a ride on your own. Or meeting friends at the trail. Because throwing it in the car is much quicker than attaching a towbar rack or putting it on the roof rack. Because a bike in the back wont have an impact on mpg the way one on the roof will. Because if you want to drive in a spirited manner on a B road a bike in the car won’t be a worry like one one on the roof or one on the rack. If you stop for food etc the bike is locked in the car, not adorning the roof like a big expensive thief beacon. Need I go on?

I find MBUK to be total guff, but that seems like a strange reason to throw your toys out.

It’s possible that someone had a valid criticism of the bike and it’s something Marin are going to address. My experience of Marin was that they were a very small rider focused company. They were always at pains to point out that they were a tiny company compared to the likes of Trek or Specialized and didn’t have anything like their budget for r&d or pro riders. So maybe they value feedback and respond to it where possible.

Years ago one of their reps asked me why the quake was selling so badly and I told him honestly what I thought was wrong with it. I was blunt as possible. He asked me to write down the geometry changes I was suggesting, which I did. A couple of years later the new quake came out with almost the exact geo I’d specced. Do I think they changed it on my account? Absolutely not. Is it possible someone saw it and took it on board? I guess so. The bike was better but still awful.

Mountain Equipment Bastion. Just an incerdible piece of kit.

Paceman

No need to increase chainstay length unless the wheelsize gets bigger. You wouldn’t put longer forks on on a size large frame than you would on a medium frame would you.

Think about that for a second. Are you suggesting that a rider of 5ft nothing and 6ft 8 will both have correct weight distribution relative to the bb and rear axle? As frame size increases and seat tubes get longer the rider will be placed further back. Assuming the same seat angle, the bigger rider is considerably further back than the smaller rider, changing their weigh distribution, but they still have the same cs.

It would mean on a big enough (albeit giant) frame the rider would be seated above the rear axle.

toby1

Walking Dead season 2 dragged, but it does improve, trust me.

It was dire. Absolutely dire. They sacked Frank Darabont and the show took a nose dive off a cliff. And what’s unforgivable is that they dragged it out purely because they knew they had a cash cow, most of it wasn’t in the comic. Absolute pap.

This sums it up perfectly, and made me laugh my ass off. Skip to 17mins in for season 2. I picked iyt up again in Season 3, but then it stalled really bad again, I can’t remember when, season 4 maybe?

Norco, Ghost, Liteville and a few others I’ve forgotten do have size specific chainstay lengths in their range. Generally it’s the same rear triangle, just mounted differently. There are plenty of bikes out there with adjustable geometry or swappable dropouts which allow you to shorten the effective chainstay length.

Personally I really like bikes with short stays (assuming of course they have room up front). I’ve not ridden anything yet where I thought the chainstays were too short or had anything other than a positive effect on handling. I have noticed that shorter stays will have a detrimental effect on a bikes climbing, especially out of the saddle, but nothing so extreme that it couldn’t be managed by correct body position.

Hands down the best piece of marketing for monster I’ve ever seen. I want a can. And I’m a Rockstar man!

For boots I would recommend Lowa and Meindl, but as above I reckon an approach shoe or even a trail running shoe might suit you better.

Over the last 3 years I’ve had Salomon s-lab XT, Salomon Speedcross 3cs and Brooks Cascadia. I found the Brooks to be far more comfortable and more durable in every way than the Salomon which seem to fall apart after 9 months to a year.

The Brooks were comfortable for all day walking wear, trail running and walking about muddy mtb trails.

If you are going to be doing more off road hiking and walking than on road, or you want something tougher I can strongly recommend Merrell Moab GTX. Mine are about 5 or 6 years old, and while they are on their last legs they’ve outlasted a lot of other shoes. I’ve been up plenty of mountains in them, great for anything where you just don’t need the upper ankle protection and extra stiffness of a boot.

paulevans

Think I’ll give The Walking Dead a go.

Oh you poor bastard. You deserve a medal if you get through season two.

I’ll recommend Game of Thrones, Vikings and True Detective which imo trumps everything above. It’s better made than 99% of films.

McHamish

But which is better? Cast iron, or a combination of cast iron and steel?

It would surely depend on the grade, thickness and application of the material. If you plan on burning house coal I’d advise going for the thickest, burliest stove that you can as it can reach some insane temperatures and could crack lesser stoves.