Looks like he needed a few more clicks of compression.

Mikey, take a look at the Cateye Nano Shot plus or Volt 300 for the front. Get yourself a Knog Blinder for the rear. All are USB rechargeable.

The Nano shot plus is nice for the road as the twin beams give it a good spread and good road presence without it being super powerful, the Hyper constant mode is good too as it gives a solid beam with an intermittent flash over it, so you don’t have to choose between flashing and constant. The Volt 300 is a smaller neater option if you need to pocket the light.

I’d personally go for an exposure axis/diablo but if you’re concerned about them being too bright maybe not for you.

I used a Knog Blinder for a full year’s commuting, in all weather. I was concerned about it’s weatherproofing but it’s been perfect, very bright and it’s shape differentiates it from car tail lights.

I’d rather have a lev.

Easton.

rickon
Interesting indeed, the narrow beam was the reason why I’ve always stalled with the Toro.

Don’t. I’m still very happy with my mk2 Diablo. I use it on it’s own for “proper dh” at night. Very few people ride these trails at night, I don’t have a problem with them, even with a mere 900 lumen spot.

I’ve recently had a lend of a mk6 Diablo and had a play about with some of the other models in the range. The toro and diablo are classed as spots, but you are still talking about a central beam of maybe 12ft or more, with a huge bleed off that.

The newer ones do have a wider beam. I wouldn’t just class it as much of a flood as a maxxd though. I don’t know if they’ve changed the optics or if just because of the extra power. Same for the Diablo.

An exposure equinox sounds exactly like what you’re after.

Yes, but because the accelerometer always needs to be on, to detect the rotation, should you want to switch it on, it’s never quite off. It won’t store a charge for as long as other comparable light in my experience.

I like to turn my light on and off during the ride sometimes, for example when going through parks/towpaths/off road then on again when re-joining the road in order to save battery. With any conventional light I can do this on the move. It’s nigh on impossible with the see-sense.

It’s got a lot of good ideas but I think the see sense just crosses the line in terms of trying to do too much and be to clever. An on/off button would make the world of difference to it.

Andy_B

These look interesting. Has anyone tried them yet?

see sense

Yup. A really good light when you get it working, but the whole button-less thing results in a lot of needless faff. You have to rotate the light to turn it on, rotate the light to change modes, it’s a bit like playing a really shit game on your phone. I could forgive that if it was totally sealed, and say, magnetically charged, but it’s not. So I don’t see how a button would have been an issue.

Also means the light is never really off, so it’s using battery, even when “off”. It means you can’t turn the light “off” when cycling along for example….

tomd

I like the robustness of the design but I think these are a bit of an overkill. Riding in town I don’t want to stop in the advanced stop box, burn the driver behind me’s retinas out so that they then veer off killing scores of people.

I don’t want to stop in the advanced stop box and have someone who’s driving along texting kill me. I’ve not got a Hope District (knog blinder) but I don’t have a problem with bright lights when you’re the most vulnerable road user.

iainc

for those with nice Ti frames in 26er guise and a few yrs old, do you reckon you will be able to get forks and wheels in 3 or 4 yrs time ? genuine question

Consider that probably 99% of mountainbikes ever made over maybe a 30 year period have 26″ wheels. The pre installed user base dwarfs the other wheel sizes.

And even if the major players decided to ignore the size in order to part more fools from their hard earned, there would soon be smaller manufacturers springing up to cater for this “niche”.

Remember the first time you heard about fat bikes? Well someone, somewhere was making parts for them. Remember when 650b was just some obscure crackpot tweener size? Well you could still get parts for them. You can still get tyres for 50 year old wheel sizes so my answer would be yes, I think you’ll get parts for them.

Well, shock horror, there’s a disagreement on the internet. Anyway, I used to love the whole super slack thing, I just found that as top tubes got longer and longer it became less of an issue to me.

om_W1987
Yeah, they aren’t really meant for full on dh tracks. Neither are 150mm forks

I disagree Tom. Looking at the geometry of the scout I’m inclined to wonder what the hell else you’d do with a bike with a 66 degree head angle and 420mm chain stays. If you’re not showing some steep, fast technical stuff then it’ll handle like barge, in relative terms.

The fork was an ’05 Marzocchi 66. 150mm travel, 35mm stanchions, 20mm bolt through axle. Pretty much built for dh.

Lofty

I’m about to order a Nukeproof Scout comp. It’s seems to do everything I want in terms of spec, geometry, focus. Any thought for or against?

Well, your needs and wants are obviously your own, and I don’t doubt that you’ve thought about this, but personally I’d say if you needed 150mm of travel, then you need a fs. If you don’t need 150mm of travel, then surely a shorter travel ht will climb better and corner more sharply. For that money you could buy, just for example a Vitus Escarpe VR, or indeed plenty of seriously capable fs bikes.

A few years back I built up a hardtail with a 150mm fork when I became sick of breaking bits on full suss bikes (through ignorance and lack of mechanical sympathy). I thought it was the dogs danglies until I spent a few weekends doing some proper DH on it, which to be fair, it could handle. My body, however, could not. After the first week, I thought I’d wrecked myself in a crash. After the second week, I realised it was just the sheer beating I was taking trying to keep up with guys on dh bikes. I literally couldn’t walk right for a fortnight, my knees, ankles and hips were shot.

Eight or so years on and I’ve not had another ht. Can’t imagine I will unless it’s a CX bike.

molgrips
Your mate has no idea what he’s doing then.

molgrips

It’s the driver. I find it amazing how some people mash the pedals into oblivion and think it’s perfectly normal driving.

Just so you know, you are coming off like a condescending prick. Firstly, my mate who has no idea what he’s doing, worked at the main dealers and knows the car inside out. As it was used occasionally as a customer car it was serviced and checked on pretty much a weekly basis. The car had a dsg box which was in auto. I was a passenger in it plenty of times and saw how he was driving and what mpg it was returning.

As for the clutch flywheel wear on the leon, the first one needed done at 88,000. About 2k after I bought the car. The flywheel started to grumble about 25k and the clutch started slipping about 5k after that. Considering it was my wifes car and she drove like (a proverbial) woman and I probably put about 5k on it in total I’d say it’s down to the notoriously fragile dual mass clutch and flywheel set up on those cars.

honourablegeorge

and 25 for having a Red Bull helemt

So Semenuk not scoring highly as highly as some thought, but being a RedBull athlete would be down to what exactly? Or Zink winning in 2012 for one trick, despite being a Monster sponsored rider? Or Kyle Strait last year?

Or what about Lacondeguy getting 4th last year when many people thought he should win?

Personally I don’t think who the athlete’s personal sponsors are has any bearing on it. red Bull sponsor the DH world cup too, how come Josh Bryceland won it? He’s sponsored by Monster don’t you know.

wrightyson

Any thoughts on sizing and actually how it rides?
Thanks in advance.

I’m 5’9 and rode my mates large which had a 60mm stem and 780mm bars. I would be okay with large with a 50mm stem and 740mm bars, but as it was, just a bit of a stretch.

Geometry was good but I felt the ride uninspiring. Suspension performance felt a bit analog coming from a horst link with a rp23. Not bad for a cheap bike though.

molgrips .

That’s really not incredible any more! Dozens if not hundreds of cars out there that can do that, including my 8 year old automatic Passat

It was to me molgrips because instead of simply advertising it, it could actually do it. I know there are many many cars out there that claim those figures but in the real world they fall far short. Herself was getting 60+ mpg without trying or thinking about it. In contrast she had a diesel clio before that which advertised some very high mpg figures but even on a motorway cruise it got nowhere near.

Another example would be my mates 2013 passat bluemotion 1.6 which could apparently do 80mpg. A figure he could never achieve, and in the real world it returned closer to 50mpg. When driven briskly (not agrresively) it was more like 30-35 mpg.

Lacondeguy definitely deserved to win. I felt he deserved it last year too. His run was clean, smooth, stylish and he hit the biggest features on the course by some huge margin.

Zink’s run was good, but it went to pieces after his 360 drop. He hadn’t tried to trick that feature prior to the finals and he obviously didn’t have enough exit speed to complete his run, he spent half his run pedalling along a fire road.

The judges were consistent too, Aggasiz scored a 94.5 in qualifiers on the same line as Lacondeguy, so I guess the judges saw something worthy in hitting a 50ft drop followed by an 80ft drop.

We’ve just sold a 2008 1.9 tdi Leon reference. My wife loved it, I hated it. Reliability was okay, engine and ancillaries were all fine but it would eat flywheels and clutches for breakfast lunch and dinner. It also had a few eletrical gremlins. MPG when the wife was driving was incredible, on a long trip I worked it out at over 60mpg. With me driving, nowhere near that.

Driving it was an uninspiring affair and I found the engine to be gutless and frustrating. The cabin was plasticy and cheap as well as incredibly noisy. Very little sound proofing at all it would seem. I also found the central locking system infuriating. The cabin is roomy but it has gigantic blind spots due to the A pillars, merging on to motor ways is a terrifying prospect sometimes. Bootspace was also very very poor in my opinion, then I am used to estate cars. Something about the shape of the boot means that it’s difficult to carry much more than a pram, and even our single pram wouldn’t fit without the parcel shelf out. Cant say I was a fan.

tomhoward
I’ve yet to meet anyone who finds the D3 genuinely comfortable.

*waves*

I meant in the flesh Tom. I don’t doubt there are people out there who they fit but in four years selling them, everyone complained about the forehead pokey bits. I would venture to say that a lot of people buy them based on the look and the name, with fit and comfort a secondary or tertiary concern. Not you though, obviously.

I’ve yet to meet anyone who finds the D3 genuinely comfortable. They tend to poke into the forehead. IMO the Fox Rampage carbon is a much more comfortable helmet and is built to a far higher standard (at least on a visual inspection).

The Bell Transfer is DOT certified and quit comfy and well worth a look but doesn’t really have the bling factor of TLD or Fox. The Nema Player Carbon might be worth a look too if you can find one. Lovely looking in the flesh and very comfy, albeit not as plush as the Fox.

I’ve had time and training with two professional bike fitters who make a living from fitting road bikes. They do the whole Retul £250 fitting thing.
After spending a day discussing road bike fitting I asked about the differences in fitting a mountainbike and both said there was none.

After a brief conversation I realised neither man knew that any form of mountain biking other than xc racing existed. So I certainly wouldn’t pay for a bike fit on an mtb from a “professional” unless he was mtb focussed.

On road bikes there is something of a convergence in terms of geometry and purpose which doesn’t really exist in mountain bikes. I like a long top tube, but short chain stays, and I’d go up a bike size to get the stretch I wanted.

Euro – Member

‘Bout ye James. A mate of mine just used two child seats on his hardtail. One that attached behind the seat and another that fitted over the top tube. When his youngest got too big for the top tube one they were promoted to the back seat and he got a tag-a-long for his eldest. Worked a treat and didn’t cost the earth.

How the hell do you get them on and off safely though marty?

Word is they may have to postpone the event due to weather.

Thanks for all the answers and feedback guys, this is a whole new field of cycling to me that I barely knew existed.

mrblobby

Xtracycle freeradical conversion kit with some child carrying accessories? You could go for a Weeride and a Hamax combo, may be a bit top heavy. Trailers are great but ours is a pain on the nursery run as bike paths round here are not very trailer friendly (narrow barriers etc.)

Thanks mr.blobby, I think that xtracycle is so close in price to say, a ute, that I would rather have a dedicated bike, which might be useful for something else, rather than taking a bike out of commission.

I never thought about a weeride/hamax combo. My only worry would be that it wouldn’t be as stable as the bigger utility bikes, and I could see it needing a big stand fitted to get the two on and off.

Lardman, T1000, I think the yaba is out of my budget, but definitely looks the part. I can’t see them for anything less than £1600, but that’s an electrical one.

Snowboard goggles will probably steam up on you unless you can cut away some foam and get some air moving around. My advice would be to take it easy during practice and be careful not to tire yourself out. For the timed sections get as close to your limit as you can but not past it. You’ll be quicker staying clean and tidy and not crashing as opposed to balls lit and crashing.

That drop.

Most carb supplement drinks contain the same amount of elecrolytes (torq, high 5 2:1 etc) but also have calories, to actually give you something. The High 5 zeros are one of the best value electrolyte tablets out there but they have zero calorific value and contain aspartame, so….

Which 5.10’s?

My freeriders are coming upto 3 years old and still fine. Bit soft for riding in all day, but some ‘sports’ insoles added an Ok ammount of stiffness.

Presumably impacts/sam hills/karvers. As above my red barons dry out very quickly and are still going strong after two years of solid abuse. Non of the new crop of five tens suffer from the sponge like characteristics of the old impacts. The next pair I buy will be the freerider elements.

dirtbiker100
I’d just get a different bike.

As blunt as that sounds, it’s spot on. I used to sell quakes, you can spend three fortunes on it and it’ll never be a great pedalling bike. Virtually any of the current 160mm bikes will wipe the floor with it in terms of DH ability whilst much much better for all round trail riding.

Maybe not what you want to hear, and yes, I realise a new bike isn’t always the answer, it’s too handy a solution, nevermind costly, but i’d sell the quake and get something else if I could. I went through many revisions of my sx trail, at one stage built it down to 32lbs in order to make it more versatile. it was an excercise in futility, an expensive one at that.

Enduro,stumpjumper,Mega,Meta,Remedy,Trance,Reign etc etc etc

trail_rat
Wouldnt buy any other brand of lights now.

Same here. My diablo is getting on for five years old now and has never missed a beat. Five winters of pretty regular night riding. Used as a torch all year round, a fair bit of commuting ( 2 hours a day 3 – 4 days a week) and I even caught my dad using it to hammer bits of mortar out of a chimney breast he was working on.

It still shades many so called 2000 lumen (or more) chinese lights. Working in a bikeshop I’ve seen dozens of of people brag about their chinese lights only to have them fail, often multiple failures. Buy cheap, buy thrice.

The E:I is very interesting. Does it work? absolutely. Is it reliable? generally. Is it necessary? absolutely not.

I’ve seen a few E:I shocks with sheared gear teeth on the servo and I’ve seen a few head units go on the fritz but no pattern of problems. I’d say it’s reliable enough but it’s another layer of complexity/redundancy.

Over recent years I’ve learned to run my suspension firmer and firmer, and with the right bike, right shock and right tune you can set it very firm but it’ll still have compliance but it’ll pedal great. Same goes for a good fork.

F’rinstance I had a Ghost AMR+ Lector 7700 with rp23 and top of the range 36’s and i was able to compare it back to back with a higher spec E:I version of the same bike. Basically the non ei bike was a much better performing bike everywhere, except say, a sustained climb, where I could just flip the pro predal lever over on the rp23 and then no difference.

My current bike set up totally negates the need for E:I in my opinion, as it’s got no electrics, no extra weight, no servos, and when it’s working it works better than E:I in terms of DH performance. E:I is still just a monarch shock, good, but there are better performing shocks on the market.

It’s an average shock with a lazy mans lock out. Lets not even talk about the zesty.

The bearing upgrade is only applicable to wheels produced after a certain date with a certain serial numbers, which if memory serves end in 15 (someone remind me). So the ones being sold on CRC may or may not be upgradeable.

Even with that there are still some sealing issues that could be improved. For the riding you describe Havens would be more than adequate though. Great wheels when I’ve used them on demo bikes but I’m glad I don’t own a pair.

Ha!

Pawsy_Bear

Any Zesty or Spicy 2013 Ei users care to post their views? Looking for actual experience not opinion.

Currently 2010 714 Zesty but looking at the new 2014 AM Ei version

thanks in advance and happy crimbo

I have actual experience of a 2013 Zesty 514 having owned one. I also have experience of the XR529 E:I and the XR729 E:I and the Ghost AMR Plus lector 9000 E:I. However, I have not had much experience of the Zesty 514 E:I. Perhaps I’m not qualified to post my views?

honourablegeorge – Member

Syntace Megaforce 2. About £50 on EBay, Ti bolts standard, lighter than Easton, Thomson, Raceface or Renthal. Tested for DH with 800mm bars. Includes top cap.

After learning the hard way with the Easton Haven I’ll not be scrimping or gram counting in the stem department again. The 60 grams or so difference between it and the Thomson are hardly a big amount but one is almost comically flexy, the other as stiff as you could ever want.

Thomson X4 is a thing of beauty. Better made than anything else on the market. It might cost £60 but you’ll easily get £40 if/when you ever decide to sell it. You can buy replacement face plates too. Fair enough the 3mm bolts can be a pain if you leave them but an upgraded bigger bolt will sort this out.

The Renthal is nicely made but somewhat flexy, and a pain if you need to work on your cockpit in a hurry, say at a race.

An Irish person went on holiday to England? Are you sure? Perhaps they went into the pub to ask for directions to Scotland.