Turnaround is very fast.

I removed and sent of a customers forks on Thursday and they were back here yseterday. Far quicker than Mojo’s current 2 week lead time!

Yes they did replace it….i sold it soon afterwards.

Pawsy: Lapierre’s are better finished? Really?. My Zesty carbon rear end snapped behind the main pivots and the alloy extrusions the bearings sit in came away from the carbon….oh and the top and down tubes parted company!!!! The carbon rear end was far from blemish free. Mine wasn’t the only one either. Bad example there i’m afraid.

Credit the dealer and you get a refund?

In my experience, ATB Sales customer service is superb. They work hard to sort problems as and when they arise.

Whyte won’t replace it because they can’t! There are bugger all 146’s available.

As a dealer we got 2!!

Snap! Well, in frame colour at least! Had mine a few weeks now and absolutely love it….sooooo much fun to ride.

This:

So i just managed a last blast along the old quarry trail at 7:30 this morning!

The wall trail was blocked off too this evening(just after the hole in the wall to 50 acre) although nothing has been done along that section.

We spotted these signs a few weeks back….needless to say we ignored them! If the path to the Trig point carries no RoW status then how can one user group be banned and not the other!!

I recall some attempts at better drainage on the path leading to the masts a few years ago. A night time blast down that path, having not realised they’d done anything, nearly resulted in me flying over the bars! They drainage channels were filled in soon afterwards.

Offset shock bushes would give the Heckler slacker angles. I may try that for my 3 week Alps road trip this summer! As they are though i feel they’re perfect for the riding i do in this country. It was the slacker angles that took away the 5’s great all-round abilities IMO.

Thats a fun loop…did it solo just a few weeks ago. There was still ice in the shady parts of the climb up Y-Das. It looks lovely and dry now too!

The 5 is special in that there are no longer many true single pivot designs around these days (for good reason some may argue!).

However, i’ve just re-discovered the joys of true single pivots having just built up a 2011 Heckler. I really regretted getting rid of my 2007 Orange 5 (with the steeper HA) and after a few linkage bikes i came across the Heckler again via a customer at work and decided to get one. The Heckler is pretty much identical in geometry to that 2007 Orange 5, which i thought was a fantastic allrounder.

I bought a 2009 Orange 5 after that first one and hated it! The new slacker HA just didn’t suit me at all and only in the Alps did it start to make sense….so not really relevant to riding at home then!

True single pivots are fantastic fun, not perfect by any means but no suspension design is. You either like the simplicity and just get on and ride or you don’t.

EDIT: Jeffus….think you’re confused. I’ve been riding a Nicolai Helius for last few months, by far the stiffest bike i have ever ridden. In comparison the Heckler isn’t that far of in lateral stiffness terms. The Heckler is certainly stiffer than either 5 i owned.

I would go Spicy, they climb superbly and the weight difference over a Zesty isn’t much.

I took a Zesty 514 the Alps last summer….it was on it’s second swingarm already and came back with a cracked main frame!!! Where as our guide had no issues with her Spicy.

Don’t bother with an adjustable seat post. Utterly pointless in the Alps if you ask me!

Don’t know what/where you ride but i ride off-road several times a week as apart of my commute, up to 15 miles each way.

I don’t wear stuff out at anywhere near that rate!

Got to agree with TJ on this…God help me!

We have no right to complain when this happens to trails built on private land. That area is very popular with the equestrian lot and they are more vocal than the MTB community. The gap jumps in question are across tracks frequented by hore riders and, as i understand it, there have been near misses lately so what do people expect?

I did this solo yesterday and loved it. The awesome weather helped too. I parked in Myndd Du (the upper car park) and then rode back down the road to the fire road opposite the lower car park (Pont Cadwgan) You can ride up the fireroad and then follow the bridleway round to Fford-las-fawr and then push up the bridleway until you get to the second fireroad crossing. From there you can ride up to the fenceline and out onto the ridegetop path towards Crug Mawr. You then get the great descent down into the valley and then it’s country lanes past the Hermitage and up to Pen Trumau.

The push up to Y-Das is a bugger, for sure but it’s certainly all rideable (as a descent) but thats dependant on skill level!

The Grywnne Fawr descent is okay but isn’t very technical but that’s no bad thing if you’re tired!!!

I’m using 2.1 Double Defense, set-up tubeless, on Stans Crest rims.

I think they’re pretty good, certainly seem capable on my local Bristol trails which are more mud than anything else right now.

I have a used once Dakine reservior (3L) for sale, should you be interested.

Email in profile.

That looks like the standard 32 tooth XTR ring to me.

Rode it solo last summer on my Zesty with no problems whatsoever….the best ride i’ve had in the UK so far!

Rode/walked up in 1 3/4 hours and wore my Xen,661 pads and some arm guards too…..the same as i wear in the Alps, no different in my eyes.

I can recall two sections that i didn’t have the balls to ride but i plan to do it all this summer.

Just to buck the trend, i actually really like the DHX Air on my AM. Been riding it since i bought it in November (Mine has the new geometery and longer shock) and absolutly love it!

I find the abililty to apply a good dose of Propedal a really great feature for sustained climbing (i run the piggyback at maximum pressure of 200PSI) and then just flick it open for the descents. I’ve done all sorts of riding on it from local stuff to 30km in the Black Mountains and don’t find the weight an issue whatosoever. Mine’s weighing in at around 32lbs at the moment, if that’s important.

I have no experience of coil shocks but the DHX Air is the best air shock i’ve used and i’ve owned most Fox RP shocks since 2006.

I would like to try a coil though and consideriing we’ll be in the Alps for 3 weeks this summer i’ll certainly be getting one for that trip.

oh….and welcome to the club 😀

I have to say it’s not exactly a huge loss. I didn’t find it very challenging at all but just wanted to tick it off the list so to speak.

It was a very easy way to climb to a decent height and enjoy a fun descent on the other side.

The flatten section is in fact a small percentage of the overall ride after all!

Nevermind Krag….should have done it last weekend then…sorry 😉

We met the JCB at the point at which the descent becomes pretty much a double track. He had already smoothed over a 200m section further up.

Just give it a few torrential downpours and it’ll be back to how it should be.

Just realised this must have been done for vechile access, as you can no longer get to the Gap from the Talybont side due to the heavily eroded gully near the upper most reservior.

We encountered the JCB about half-way down the descent on Monday afternoon. I can’t believe he actually went that far up!!! It was the first time we’d done the route so i have no idea what the part he had already ‘smoothed’ over was like before but at least we got to ride the upper section which i thought was great.

Has this been done to improve vehicle access perhaps?

It was a fun route and a great way of getting in some great views…..well….i guess they would be great views. It had snowed up the top when we did it and we arrived at the Gap in a blizzard so didn’t hang about!

The bridleway just through the narrow gate at the end of the Gap descent was actually better than the Gap itself, i thought.

Madison are certainly not doing any trade-in deals that i’m aware of at least.

BTW…$225 for an upgrade to the Seca 1400 is a bargin considering it’s £500 at rrp!

We’ll be returning to the area for the third White Room Backcountry week in a row this year. Our first trip to the Alps was to here and we loved it. It was challenging at the time but that didn’t change the second, even on trails we rode the first time. You just ride them faster and clear the sections you couldn’t the first time!

The variety of riding is vast and the some the descents you can do are massive. The La Varda trail above Les Arc 2000 is awesome and had it all from smooth singletrack at the top to very tech towards the bottom with some very exposed switchbacks in the middle. We always go out of season so don’t ride any man-made stuff so can’t comment on that.

David: If you’re ever passing Clevedon, North Somerset then pop into Bikestyle and have a word with Phil there. He’ll give you all the advice you need on a ASR5.

Wow, i go for a nice ride in the Black Mountains and come back to 28 responses to my thread.

There’s certainly a mixed bag of opinion on this. For the record, money isn’t the issue here at all. The advert in question makes it look like the forks might have been new to the seller when in fact they’re third hand and now no longer work as well as when i sold them. Also, Sleigh62, the lock-out did work after i serviced them.

I never seem to quite judge the mood of this forum correctly at times. Must be because i don’t spend enough time here 😉

The new Camelbak Octane is what you saw JimSu.

Steer well clear people.

We had these in as stock a few months ago…..about a week later they were re-called as under heavy braking the hoses popped out of the lever body 😯

I did Snowdon solo last summer. Only extra stuff i wore were my leg and arm guards simply because i didn’t know the trail but knew it was very rocky! Cleared all but one section of the Rangers path and even the climb up the Llanberis path was pretty easy.

Even with zero visibilty and driving rain it was awesome, scary but awesome 😀

This summer i’ll be starting from the Rangers station car park, up as far as Telegraph Valley, down that and then over to Llanberis and then back down the Rangers.

Skyline has it. Due to the extra material around the BB shell (to take the press-fit BB) Lapierre specify their chainsets with slightly different innner rings as ‘normal’ inner rings are designed for clearance around BB cups.

Would the fit of a press fit BB cup become very loose over time? I mean, a headsets bearings can be replaced without removing the actual cups. If a BB cup was as they currently are then the relatively frequent replacement might become an issue.

So thats the view i missed! I did it solo in driving rain and zero visibility last summer…..must try again this year.

Some BB’s are press fit!

Well, it’s certainly not the Surrey Hills is it 😉

Which bike BTW?

Sounds good as long as the trails are well designed, which under Phil’s guidance they should be. In regards to ‘flow’, i only ever do Ashton Court the ‘right’ way round. But then i do it as part of my commute from Lulsgate to Bike in Clifton so it makes sense to do it that way! No traffic to contend with at half 7 in the morning either 🙂

These trails are hardly the only ones in the area though are they? Some of the best stuff won’t be touched so be more positive Kingtut.

Just looked up the Edge 800. Looks perfect especially as it’s available with just the OS mapping, as i’m also not interested in the Cadence/HRM stuff either.