I’ve got some cheaper shimano ones that do that and a good dose of WD40 sorts them for a while and then they seize up again. From this is assume it’s result of a couple of winter’s use taking its toll.

You missed out the ‘once we replaced the wheels, tyres, forks and had the suspension custom tuned it was a great bike’ bit for one and the ‘this one had horrible grips and is a rubbish bike’ for the other part of the review.

oh well, thats my 11 month old Soul obselete now and devalued

Dunno, mine’s getting on for 10 years old now and still seems to work pretty well. I reckon you’ll be fine.

The signalling reason has always struck me as odd as if you’re going fast enough when signalling that you can’t control your speed with the front brake you’re probably going too fast for the situation.

If we can round up the bodies we’ll be going. Seemed a bit more low key last year in some ways but I quite liked that. And I really don’t think the climbs were that much worse than those at Eastnor.

As rocketdog says, if you think that course was a claggfest then you have clearly been riding under the protection of better deities than me :)

And hey, if there wasn’t moaning about the course, camping, stands, weather, wheel sizes, condiment provision and the colour of the course tape then it wouldn’t be Mayhem.

It’s a lovely bike. It was that or a Nicolai Helius AC for me and while the Nicolai is definitely better finished and so on it just wasn’t as much fun to ride. The Rocket feels like a get you into trouble bike and the Nicola was a get you out of trouble bike if you see the difference.

These looked a bit newer than that :)

Bear in mind with most of these once the rims wear out then you might well be throwing the wheel out because getting them rebuilt is going to be as expensive as replacing them. That’s certainly been my experience anyway.

I’ve got a fairly old set of maguras and they still run pretty well despite limited servicing. The only real flaw with them is that if it’s really muddy then the double arch is terrible for clogging. However, it’s only ever been an issue at 24 hour races when the conditions are above and beyond the norm.

No sense commenting on the actual suspension as mine are getting on for 7 years old.

I’ve got a specialized one and it’s pretty decent.

I have one. I love it.

And given the other bike I was considering was a Nicolai it was even cheap in comparison :)

Given the few tweets I’ve seen regarding 650B from Cy I think it’s safe to categorise a 650B version as on the back-burner.

I have a set of these

http://www.scott-sports.com/global/en/products/2184750001006/shorts-scott-helium-paclite-black-s/

which have been good and are not at all baggy. Not sure how easy they are to find now though, and also are a bit spend full price although I got them in sale.

There’s some stuff in the woods between Blebo and Kemback which does for a quick blast, although it gets pretty grim over winter. As others have said Pitmedden’s got loads of stuff but is something of a maze. Then a bit further afield there’s supposed to be some good stuff in the Sidlaws by Dundee and I think out the back of Perth has stuff too.

Otherwise there’s little patches here and there but it is mostly just bits and pieces that are hard to link up due to it being all farms.

The road riding is good though :)

I think it’s just personal preference, and what you’re used to. A while back I rode a friend’s Cove Handjob which I think is, in some ways, a similar sort of thing to the Chameleon and just found it far too stiff compared to my Soul. What you think of as responsiveness I might think of as harshness, which is fine.

And at least it’s going to be fairly easy to sell the Soul on round these parts ;)

Do you think the rocket is ‘too much’ for a do everything bike then?

I use it as my do everything bike and it seems fine to me, probably depends on what you mean by everything :)

I have a Rocket and love it.

It was ace chucking it down rocky stuff in the Sierra Nevadas and it was pretty quick round a lap of Mayhem this year which I think counts as versatile. On steep, techy climbs it’s pretty ace and it was fine on the long climbs to get to the top of the rocky stuff in Spain :)

Oh, and it’s just good fun.

( I should caveat all this with ‘My other bike is a Soul’ :)

I did one a few years back with Dirt School and they were good.

Anyone into patent stuff? – Can you patent something that is already released etc?

No, not once it’s in the public domain.

Ah, ha ha ha ha ha!. You don’t work in software clearly :)

Patent’s can get revoked if someone can demonstrate prior art or that something is insufficiently novel but that takes time and money and if BigCorp and their laywers are suing you it’s often easier just to give in as fighting them will be expensive.

There is an entire industry in the States of companies who do nothing other than buy patents and extract license fees from companies ‘infringing’ their patents, which are often either stupidly broad or blindingly obvious. Google patent trolls for a wealth of depressing info.

So, compared to that thick/thin chain rings that you came up with and actually make seems like a reasonable thing to deploy the lawyers over :/

I enjoyed the course. The climbs were certainly slightly steep in places and not rideable every lap by me but not impossible either. I personally don’t mind a chunk of nice double track as it’s recovery time for those of us that are, er, less competitive :)

I think that the first descent was probably more of a concern for the less experienced riders as, despite comments above about the course not being technical, by the end it was the sort of thing you only really get on black routes at trail centres. Fun for some of us but I think that was about the limit of what you can get away with at this sort of event before you put people off.

Not being in amongst the course while camping was did lose a bit of the atmosphere but the improvement in the camping area more than made up for that. A large area of flat, well drained, open land was just fantastic. So much better than Eastnor’s ‘hunt the least sloping area’. And it felt like the average distance to the arena was much smaller than at Eastnor.

I’d certainly be pleased to see it back there again next year.

Yup. It’s a lovely bike. Light enough to be quick on the way up but capable enough to let you try and chase down people on full suspension on the way down. In fact, it practically encourages the latter :)

Re: the spare mech hangers. As I’m a cautious type I got one before anything went wrong direct from Cotic which ISTR took a lot less than a week.

What I do want to get is the new bit that fits a thing for loosening it in to the non drive side of the axle to save me rummaging about for allen keys when I’m getting the bit in and out the car.

Pitmedden is definitely one to try and tag along with someone who knows it the first time you go as it’s not easy to find stuff and it is easy to spend a lot of time just trying to work out where you are. Some good bits there though.

Go and see a physio. It might seem a bit pricey but if you can get a recommendation for a decent one then it’ll be worth it.

As an example of why you should go a few years back I had knee pain in one knee and did all the faffing with seat height and so on to limited avail. I then went to see a physio who poked and prodded for a bit and then explained that years of slouching over computers was resulting in nerves in my back getting squished and inflamed and it was that inflamed nerve going past my knee I was feeling. He gave me some stretches, told me to sit up straight and did a bit of manipulation and I was sorted after a month or two.

Whatever it is though, trying to bodge a fix based on a guesses from the internets doesn’t seem like a sensible plan with non-replaceable parts :)

One thing to bear in mind is that if there’s a big chunk of sheet ice then ice spikes turn riding on it from impossible/terrifying to merely disconcerting. It’s sort of like riding on ground where the top wee bit has thawed and the rest is solid.

The other thing is do not stop till you get off the ice as your shoes don’t have spikes :/

Oh, and factor in a little extra time for your commute as they’re a bit slower.

Sage words :)

If you ride tech stuff get a 5, if you like trail centers go for the Cotic.

Out of interest what makes you come to that conclusion?

Well, as I bought a Rocket that’s not a tricky one. Not that I’ve ridden a Five so I can’t compare.

The main advantage that has been pointed out to me of a Five is less bits for mud to stick to. I suspect this only really comes into its own in the sort of grimness of this year’s Mayhem or SITS though.

I can attest to the fact that people wandering up to you and talking to you about your bike is something that happens if you have a Rocket, at least at the moment, so if you’re shy then maybe a Five.

Er, I might be wrong but “adaptations will have to be made to allow beginner and novice riders to use the course safely” seems to be perfectly in line with Chipps’ post saying they will add extra lines, signage etc rather than necessarily meaning they are going to tarmac it all. I’m certainly not sure that reading the worst in to the statement then encouraging people all over the country to pile on the council is a terribly effective technique for getting your point across.

I’ve just done this with a set of XTR shifters and it seems to have worked fine. I followed the instructions on the wee leaflet that came with the matchmaker clamps and all was well.

Do we really have to do this every time?

Yes, it rained, it was muddy, there was a chunk of pushing which is a bit depressing but no one made you go. ( And yes, no one is making me read this either ;) If you don’t enjoy it then don’t go, decide you’ll do something else next year but honestly, saying, “it’s like this every time it rains and it’s dull if it’s dry, why don’t they hold it elsewhere” after you’ve entered and turned up just seems daft.

I have a CDF from a few years back and it’s definitely not light. To be honest I sometimes think my Cotic Soul is lighter. I got it for commuting on a mix of on road and off and it was great for that.

Bear in mind for touring on it is that you’ll need to get a rack that was designed to go round discs.

I did a few cross races on it and it was fine as long as there wasn’t any carrying. As soon as you have to lift it up then you really notice the weight. I’d also say that the mud clearance on it isn’t all that great.

I started and pulled out about half way round the first year, and then got round the sunny year. Both times on a Cotic Soul. There’s loads of firetrack so unless it’s a racy full sus then I think you’d be regretting carting all the extra weight about.

If you can find someone to go round with then that’s good. I found that helped a lot in the second year as you had someone to chat to and keep your spirits up when you were struggling.

Definitely the hardest day out I’ve had on a bike but was great to actually finish it. And to know that having got round I felt no compulsion to go back and do it again :)

Cotic Rocket if you’re willing to do the frame only?

I’ve done mayhem and SITS for the last, er, six or seven years and probably will carry on. In previous years I’ve also done some of Kielder 100, 10 UTB, some cross races and some XC races or one of what used to Merida marathons. This year I also did Muckmedden as it was just down the road.

I suspect I’ll carry on with that sort of mix. I don’t think the price of the events is going up all that much, maybe a tenner in 8 years for mayhem which isn’t that bad when compared to the percentage increase in, say, a pint. The cost of getting there has though but it’s not yet at levels that put me off.

Cost of XC races has put me off as last time I looked it was at least 25 quid which seemed steep. I guess for hours on the bike it’s not too out of whack with Mayhem if you’re not one of the fast boys but Mayhem et al are a whole weekend on top of the time on the bike.

The thing that mostly stops me doing events is they clash with other things: holidays, friends being in town and so on. However, that’s mostly as there seem to be more events on so more of them clash. If not for that I’d probably have done at least one of glentress 7s and tour de ben.

I think there is a cyclical element to these things. I remember back in the early to mid 90s there were loads of XC races and they were mostly pretty well attended and then it all seemed to die out a bit as people moved on to other things. Then the 24hr/marathon events started picking up and we’ve not got loads of them and again they seem to be having a bit of a slump.

That was a bit rambling really.

It’s fairly flat, most of the climbing are draggy rises rather than grovels. It’s mostly a mixture of tight singletrack through woods and tracks along the side of fields.

It’s actually quite sapping if you’re going for it as there’s nowhere really to take a break simply because there’s not much in the way of altitude change.

And yeah, it’s not much like fun in the mud but Mayhem and SITS can’t both be awful[0] in the same year so it’ll be fine.

[0] Those are the rules, right?

Second contribution to thread but I finished building up this last night:

[/url]
Post first ride[/url] by mr_stru[/url], on Flickr

Bought from the fine and very helpful people at Cycleworld in Arbroath after testing, I think, the same bike as Metalheart and had most of the bits from the Soul moved over.

It’s very nice. And Orange.

That picture makes it look a lot like your garage has wood flooring.

Had a few dodgy moments on the Tay bridge but never actually come off.

I think this thread is also the appropriate place for this:

How come the Dutch are so good at riding in crosswinds?

I’ve not done a 24 hour solo but I know from doing them in a pair that you need to work out how to get yourself into the right frame of mind in order to keep plugging out the laps. All my best events have been more about having been in the mood for it than any training before hand.

Sadly I’ve no advice on how to sort that out though other than to try and make sure that if you are stopping everything’s set up to make it quick and easy to get back out again.

It was second hand and I could afford it, unlike the soda I had a test ride of :)

And it’s ace because even in these conditions it’s fun to ride:

[/url]
slightly muddy bike[/url] by cake_riders[/url], on Flickr