Nice. Your not overbiked, your undertrailed.

He’s 20… many things are more important than a clean bike… and he is right.

I’m good enough to put a smile on my face, and I ride for smiles.

I like it when I learn new things or ride better… I get an even bigger smile.

I’ve broken nearly every frame I’ve had… and never through bad riding or crashing… all fatigue or poor build quality.

I’ve broken almost every non Nicolai frame I’ve owned. There was a large Argon FR in the for sale recently… don’t let the FR tag put you off, angles are not radical by it will be strong.

Homebrew were ace for me to deal with – I noticed the fact it’s a custom item and would take a few weeks. Bought what I wanted from the site. Email from them to say I had purchased and when to expect it. Email to say it had shipped. Arrived as expected and slipped through customs like a greased otter – no gimp suit involved 😆

http://homebrewedcomponents.com/

There was little difference in weight going from a coil pike to a Float 36… but the Rev is nearly a pound lighter then either of these.

I’m thinking it’s worth a try… my problems with the Reba might be that they are the simple SL version and it’s the damper getting phased in the gnar which makes the fork feel crap and flexy. Perhaps a Rev with blackbox will not feel so out of it’s depth and hence flexy???

I’m a walker/skier/biker, so I’ve been up most of these so I know which ones I’ll bother to take a bike round and which I’d rather do with feet/ski’s. I really don’t see the point in humphing a bike up something when the reward is to humph it back down. I’ll leave ticking boxes to when my biking days are done and it’s time for bingo.

Nice little ridge which can be ridden.

Here’s my Argon FR – lightish build

New pants please 😳

Ti = 2010 onwards. 2009 and before are the ones with issues.

I’m not an owner but have had a wee go on a friends. He has had them a year and is incredibly rough with his kit – these forks lasted longer than the frame! They still feel buttery smooth in that bomber way and he has no complaints or regrets.

As above. I expected to tear through the sidewalls of my non UST Betties and Rubber Queens… but both have been fine for nearly a year and make for incredibly light feeling big tyred wheels when run tubeless.

The hardtail to end all hardtails?

The hardtail to ride when you really shouldn’t be riding a hardtail?

The hardtail to have when your backs against the wall and the man is really out to get you and the only option to get the hell out of there is the route with a wee climb followed by a black maga gnar doonhall which eats hardtails?

Looks nice… I want one… I don’t need one… 😕

I use the flow rim strips and non UST tyres. They can take a while to seal and need a fair bit of sealant but they are light and work really well.

too much travel for uk trails

Yes… you are of course correct and none of the excellent trails we have in the north east of Scotland benefits from bikes like this… 🙄

Mincer or ragger?

Do you ride a huge XC loop or trail and play on all the doonhall bits hitting the rockgardens at full speed and launching the massive hucks with the stormtroopers and pyjama-clad-warriors?

or

Do you see the jumps and drops, and mince round the side?

My understanding is that there is no custom tuning with a CCDB – it’s the one tune fits all shock. Get-it, fit-it, tune-it-yourself.

Not sure what Stendec do to improve the shock a’la’ geetee and TLR, but I’ll probably give Dave a call once I’ve exhausted the fiddling options.

With TFT you will get all the bushing etc which is at a guess £20 worth. TFT also resized the black scuff-ring on mine as it was getting very heavily scuffed by the spring – not great in the mud 🙄

I quite like mine but I’m not sure it’s worth it over a tuned DHX. There is a slight dullness to it, it’s hugely composed and it certainly does it’s job really well expecially at speed in the silly stuff or in slow speed techy stuff; but on the more normal run of the mill trails it never feels great for popping off little rocks beside the trails and general faffing/playing – almost like it’s too composed and needs a kick up the bottootum to get the oil flowing and hence make it work all the time. It might be my set up and I need to open up the low speed compression/rebound a little… but I’ve mostly fiddled with the high speed stuff so far… beware removing too much rebound… it’s very easy to make the bike handle dreadfully!!! 😕

I had my AM in the forest last night and something did strike me. When I was on my own I was perfectly happy charging around on it and riding really well, but when I met up with a couple of friends on lighter bikes it rather changed my feelings. The downside of the bigger bike in these situations is that when you lose speed it’s slower to make it back up when compared to lighter bikes with less travel; when I was in front choosing the lines I tended to stay there and pull away in the gnar sections. But when they were in front I ended up drifting back after they slowed us all down in the gnar and then were more able to sprint away. I guess I could get the bike down to 28/30lbs and much of that sprint ability would come back. I noticed this a bit at the Macavalanche where racers who do all the enduro events were running incredibly light bikes with Fox32/Rev forks etc rather than the 36/Lyric – but of course the areas where the most speed can be made up in a race are the flat pedally bits rather than the gnar so a light bike will be a huge advantage… compare that with riding for fun in the mountains and the trade off is that you role the flat bits to enjoy the gnar… horses for course of course… and hence it’s worth noting that an AM is never going to be the most responsive bike for sprinting in the local forest or racing enduro’s; it’s home is the big mountains where the stability at speed and ability to not get phased in the gnar will be your friends.

Some of us also ended up at Nicolai after breaking lots of other bikes. I’ve just sold on a Nicolai I had for 6 years and I’d failed to damage it… and it never required bushings in that time… the Intense I had before that required new bearings every year, and in my ownership time had seatmast, seatstays, 2 x chainstays, and travel plates etc… only the main frame was original.

When I think about it the Nukey is the only frame I’ve never broken… and I just sold it 😳

I love my AM. I’ve had it for a year now and it’s still growing on me. I’ve got 160mm Float 36 RC2 forks up front and run either a TFT/Push tuned Fox Float R or a CCDB on the rear (2010 Long shock slack head angle version with 1.5 steerer). The tuned float is good enough most of the time but the CCDB does add a considerable level of control to the travel which does feels better, I swap between them depending on how I feel and where I’m riding.
A recent addition is a Reverb post which I love – but again it’s not on all the time. For gearing I have a HammerSchmickle up front with 9speed XT shifters and saint mech out the back… brilliant combo.

Weight comes in about 31-34lbs and is ace for almost all riding, for huge climbs it’s very good, and then it’s some serious gnar-shizz-going-down-bro.

I’ve tried a few of the travel settings with different shocks but since getting the Float tuned I leave it on the max, same with the CCDB. If your shock is working well why would you want less travel??? The different travel setting don’t change the geometry… or thats what Nicolai say… but… I like 30+% sag so when I use the different setting I did find that the bottom bracket was higher dynamically… this was good if your shock blew through it’s travel and you got pedal strike… but that’s the shocks problem and the different setting were a work around… By trying the different settings and shocks/springs I learned that for me it’s about performance and control, I’d rather run a well tuned shock on full travel than mess with different shocks and travel settings – getting the tune right is important… it took TFT two goes to get the Float how I wanted it (quicker rebound than they advised, and a modification to reduce the air chamber size). The CCDB I am still fiddling with but it’s far better than the Fox DHX I ran before. Be aware – the bottom bracket seems quite high unless you use lots of sag. When I first fitted the Float shock I needed 220psi to stop it blowing through the travel, this left me with 10% sag and a very high bottom bracket which felt wrong, it felt better on the reduced travel settings and I could run lower pressures and get the sag better – but I was working around the poor performance of the shock. I now run 180psi with about 30-40% sag in the max travel setting and the bb height is perfect. The Float fork is excellent, I doubt a coil would be much better (this is my first air fork in 20 years of biking… it is rather good).

Set up – short stem and wide bars. 745 bars for me and a 40mm stem, I ran a 60mm stem for a while but shorter is better. Wheels are Hope with Flow rims. Brakes – I had super huge powerful Hope V2 stoppers but to lose weight I went to Formula RX as an experiment… and I much prefer them. I’m running a 2.4 Shwalbe Big Bettie on the front and a 2.4 Conti Rubber Queen out the back – both non UST but tubeless – awesome light set up with bags of grip. I’ve not burst one yet which surprised me.

I’ve had to tighten a few of the pivots but that has been all – will give it a strip later this year but it’s got no wobble and it’s not tight so I’m not going to mess with it.

My ethos when building it was to try and keep the weight down and make it an all-day-every-day ride for where I live. I’m lucky in that I get to ride big terrain and mountains often, but even in the local woods this bike is great. Big mountains is where it’s at it’s best, but it’s damn good everywhere.

Bikes have moved on a lot in the last five/six years, back then to do what bikes like this are now capable of you needed a full on DH bike… progress is brilliant.

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Helius AM[/url] by thepimpmessiah[/url], on Flickr

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Glencoe chair. Macavalanche.[/url] by thepimpmessiah[/url], on Flickr

I’m close…

Urgh…

I sometimes get a warble on my stock RX’s but think it’s quite a cool noise. I usually get it after a period of intese use when the’ve been hot earlier in the ride but have cooled off a little. In the heat of the doonhall I’ve get better things to do than listen out for the noises my brakes are making 😉

A bit of squeek in the wet but it goes away much quicker than on other brakes (imho)

Cheersmin 🙂

I’ve ridden a Soda so that’s a nice datum. How is the bottom bracket height vs Soda?

Cruel…

How does it ride though?

Why has it taken this long?

Want 😯

*Don’t think about the weight*

CCDB = 500g + 500g for the spring = 1000g.

*Don’t think about the weight*

Float/RP23 = 280g

*Don’t think about the weight*

To spring will save you 150g… so CCDB and Ti spring = 850g

*Don’t think about the weight*

Is that what I said? Perhaps I should have said 120mm is optimum for the 456 in my opinion, but I used the word compromise to show there are good things about running 100mm or running 140+mm.

It’s called the 456 becasue it can takes forks of 4″, 5″ or 6″ travel… 120-130mm is the 5″ option which is in the middle and what I would say suits it best. Run 4″ or equivalent lenght rigid for XC racing and lazer accuracy, run 5″ (120mm) as an all round bike, and go 6″ if you want better DH and don’t mind the tail wagging the dog on long climbs.

Also – at 120-130mm I would go for an inline post to bring the seat angle back up a few degrees to help with steep seated climbing… just a suggestion mind 😉

Pretty sure LoCo’s diverse springs will fit as they are 36.3mm I.D. which is the same as Cane Creek.

http://locotuning.co.uk/dsp-titanium-springs.html

They will also still scuff on the stupid black plastic “protector sleeve” then

Up the west coast and down the east coast?

Skye: Sligachan and Quirang
Torridon – I’ve heard amazing things – hopefully this year
Glen Affric – Can’t help you here
Learnie Red Rock and Balblair etc
Monster trails – if your passing through and have time on your hands but not worth the travel IMHO
Royal Deeside – Fungle/Firmounth/Mt Keen/Loch Muick/Buird/Lochnagar, list is almost endless!
Angus Glens – Glen Clova/Kilbo/Esk etc

Whyte has huge mud clearance – easy enough for 2.35″.

I would say 120 is the best compromise on a 456… What Brant learned about fitting long forks to hardtails he took to Ragley… On-One are still producing a frame designed for 100mm forks which can have longer forks put on it (see also Whyte and many others)… but that doesn’t actually mean it will ride all that well if you do… all in my humble opinion of course 8)

Nowt.

That looks awesome. I have to say that all the alloy frames I have seen that have been repaired have gone on to crack further… but you’ll get some use out of it before it dies and that is all that matters. Hope the other frame gets sorted to your satisfaction.

I would say a dropper post is a must for a bike like this… and for now I’m a Reverb fan which means 30.9 or 31.6 only.

That Ti Alpine might knock the Brodie Holeshot off the top of my knuckleshuffle list.