If it looks good, I’ll buy it, subject to finance. Woudl require some pretty serious negatives to stop me taking a punt. I’m probably an idiot, but it’s working out well so far……

Hopefully Friday’s delivery of a never-seen-in-the-flesh frame will continue the trend!

Are they XC4 brakes, look like Enduro or M4s to me, both of which were pretty powerful back in the day. Fork adaptor is dodgy though isn’t it, it might be ok, but I wouldn’t trust it not to squeal all day long until it snaps off.

I too have one of those Syncros Carbon posts, and no, you can’t have it.

Although it had crossed my mind that I could swap one between several bikes, the reality is that I would end up with 3, 4 if I start using my DH bike on the trails again.

Cool, all good answers so far and lots to consider. My main consideration is that if they’re indispensable once purchased and I have 3 bikes, that’s £750. Which is a lot of wedge to spunk.

With the crowns setup at their minimum distance they had 175mm of available movement. With them at their max there is 190mm of available movement. I can’t move the crowns from the 175 position as I’ve rounded a bolt. But putting them back together they will compress until the lowers hit the crowns. So that’s 175mm, and I can’t see why they wouldn’t have 190mm if I could move the crowns.

Interestingly, there doesn’t appear to be any sort of bump-stop in the forks. Which implies that it’s the springs being fully compressed that provides the bottom-out control and therefore restricts travel, but it can’t be if they’re 170mm forks as they’re the same springs on both versions of the fork.

Looking more likely that they’re 190mm, but will find out for sure I guess when my new springs arrive. If I can then get travel all the way to the crowns then I’ll have to saw that bolt to get the crowns off and then maybe fit some flat crowns so I get all the travel without raising the front of the bike.

Exciting times.

To be fair my friend broke a spoke doing something fairly innocuous, and 2Pure sorted him out with a new one and a handful of spares no questions asked.

They’re not the same as 24 spoke wheels, because the 2 spokes are together, in fact looking at the pictures I can only see 11 spokes pairs, so the gaps are massive compared to 24 spoke wheels.

A friend has these, I’ve seen him pick up sticks twice in a handful of rides, both times on the rear wheel and both times the sticks were minor and either twisted or snapped.

Apart from the price, I’d already decided I wouldn’t want these, no matter how good they look for exactly this reason.

I just looked on ebay for my Primera kit, paid £90 for it, fitted it myself in an hour, sorted. It would probably be more expensive for a later car if it’s got Can Bus electronics.

Whatever you do, insist that the Fog light pin is wired in as a lot of people/places don’t bother. But, it’s going to be part of the MOT from next year and not having this done will be a fail.

I would guess that the reason why this hasn’t cropped up before is that most people are using 1+1/8th” non-tapered forks, that’s what I’ve fitted, simply to make swapping forks to my other bikes easier.

It’s also ace if you’re ebaying stuff, you can just order items individually and get a stack of cardboard boxes to recycle!

It does seem counterintuitive, I presume there’s a lot more to the environmental impact of the postage process than just the volume of cardboard consumed. Eg, bubblewrap plastic, energy used by packing machines etc.

Wallop, you’ve just described the perfect way to half your budget!

Another way to look at it is that no one wins in an arms race! You’ll have lots of bikes, she’ll have lots of shoes, but there’ll be no food in the cupboard!

I’ve managed to convince my missus that I do need a 5″ trail bike, a 7″ DH bike, a trail hard tail, a singlespeed and a road bike. She’s not bothered, so long as she gets first choice of bikes if I take her out and don’t fall off too often.

Yeah, just do it!

Complications are usually the gears and shifters, you usually need to re-set the gears, but you won’t have that problem with a SS.

What you really want though, is shifters that you can removed from the bars without taking the brakes and grips off. I’m not sure who makes those (?) but if you can figure that out, you would just need to drop the shifters and unbolt the brake calipers, cut the cable ties holding the hoses on. That would then let you move the stem and bars etc as one. You might need some stem spacers for one of your bikes.

You’ll need a bag of cable ties off ebay and I would have two seat quick releases.

As everyone else has said, you’ll end up collecting spare bits and own tow bikes eventually. Your best bet to get around the missus is to only own one set of wheels. Or to get her riding your second bike.

I’ve always used the cheapest ghetto tubes I could find, never had a problem with the tubes.

And for those hassle-mongers amongst you, I’ve just done one in about 15 minutes that included drilling the valve hole to take a proper size valve. Awesomes.

I’ve worn out a rear RQ 2.4 in the last 12 months, fitted it ghetto and haven’t touched it since. Run at 20psi no burps, just loads of grip. Prior to that most rides I was getting pinch flats. Best thing I’ve done to the bikes in the last year.

Put them back together withbthe circlip in a different orientation and it was finevriding tonight! Odd.

I did wonder that too.

Maybe i should just apply silicone rubber under the circlip to seal them back up……

Spitfire with Lyrik u-turns I reckon.

I tried googling, but got nothing for the 44 RC3 Ti, maybe my powers were weak.

Anyway, looks like I’ll be able to make some headway with it. I had a look at them properly at lunch time; they’re leaking oil from the top of the right hand fork leg. Not from the oil seal around the stanchion, but from under the Rebound adjuster. On that side there is an air cartridge and the rebound adjuster. I took the air cap off and exposed a circlip that is holding the adjuster on to the fork. Oil is pumping out from the gap in the circlip.

I haven’t had any air in the air pre-load cartridge as the forks didn’t need it. I tried putting some air in and it appears as if this was slowly leaking from the air cartridge as there was some bubbling of oil out of the circlip, but the evidence wasn’t conclusive. I let the air out of the cartridge again and some oil came out with the air.

So, looks like it is a blown cartridge that is effectively pumping the oil through the fork, though I need a proper look inside to confirm. Next job is to pop that circlip off and have a proper look about…..

It doesn’t need anymore fixing, you just have outer cable in the bits where normally you’d just have inner. 4 cable ties to the back of my Bullit. Converting doesn’t require cable ties at all though, you just drill out the cable guides and use them as they are. I’ve never had to replace a full-length cable because of water or crud getting in.

Aesthetics could be a down side, but it’s not significant, and i speak as a chap that rates aesthetics.

Cool, good point Three Fish, I knew I was doing the right thing.

So why do bikes not come with a single length of cable? I’m struggling to see a disadvantage that isn’t the extra few grams?

I bought a box of 50 Jagwire inners on ebay for about £25 about a year ago and a pack of 100 ferrules for about £5 and 15m of outer cable for about £10. That’s me sorted for the next decade.

I’ve been to several LBS in South Manchester and been told “That’ll be expensive!” when I’ve asked for 3m of outer cable. Well it is if you charge £5 a metre for it! From the various reactions they don’t sell very much of it, it just gets added to the bill when asked to “Sort my gears please”. Ken Fosters in Chorlton I even had to explain that I wanted it to run full length cable, then explain why I wanted to do it as whoever was completely baffled by the concept.

(It’s to keep the Peak District out and to stop the cables getting water in and freezing in the winter. Yes, I know there’s a tiny bit more friction, but there’s a lot less after a couple of months when the various bits are full of grit and rust and my full length is still nicely sealed at both ends!)

Anything constructive to add? How about a link to an exploded diagram of the forks?

The manual is pretty piss-poor, 16 pages to tell me how to fit a maxle and what air pressures won’t work, but nothing on how much oil I want in them or what seals might have popped.

Rest assured the savings amounted to more than the cost of a few seals and there appears to be an EU warranty with the forks.

I think it would be a great all rounder, depending on how you build it up. If you run your tyres without tubes you can run very low pressures (I run about 20psi) which will give you loads of grip on techy climbs etc and will remove any harshness from the frame. Next spec your forks coil u-turn, so you can run them low for xc, racing, etc. Wind them out for smashing stuff up. Lyriks might be too heavy, Sektors perhaps? (I run Lyriks, weight doesn’t bother me)

The main benefit with the Tranny though is if you want to travel with it, it’ll pack up small. You can achieve the same with lots of single pivot FS bikes though. Other benifit is you could run a bling belt drive singlespeed or geared hub.

Yeah, good, but what are they actually for these bikes? Give me numbers!

You make it sound like that was a bad thing?

Looks more like my Transition TransAM than the Sovereign.

I tried the Ragley site to find out what the various new frames were for, but it’s a bit of a mess, so didnt get anywhere. Anyone able to tell me what they’re intended to do? Ta.

We crossed over somewhere around Smithymire Island, should we have cross further up, Blackmoss Pot perhaps?

I think there was an element of being absolutely bolloxed about it as well, it had been a tough day to get there.

Have you ridden up Greenup Gill or turned right at the bottom of Stockley Bridge descent to get back up to Angle Tarn?

It’s black magic David, and who doesn’t want to ride a bike made of black magic!

I’m with Donk, but now I feel pathetic, so will have to go for another go. Easter?

Stake Pass side of the river anc? That’s where we were.

wtf anc! It’s horrific, I remember it being 10m of pedalling through energy sapping grass and/or bog, followed by 5m of pushing through an unrideable section, then repeating the process for miles and miles to to the bottom of a cliff. Then going up the cliff. I say again WTF!

DONK, it’s Langstrath that you write about. Ditto, don’t know why I thought that was a good idea! Up Rossett Gill (2 dabs from the very top? Trials skills?) down to Stockley Bridge then back over Stake. Some of the poor chaps I was showing around wanted me dead on the climb out of Langstrath.

CRC have been very good with me when it comes to refunds. They’ll take stuff up to 12 months after you ordered it so long as you’ve not used it, which is ideal for me as I can never be bothered to go and post stuff.

But they also refunded me a bottom bracket recently that I damaged when fitting a set of cranks that they’d sent me that were too tight. I cranked up the bolts to fit the cranks and stripped the BB threads before getting the cranks all the way on. A lot of shops would have refused to refund the BB and argued that I should have realised the cranks were faulty before trying to force them on, but they didn’t.

Refunds have been timely and included my postage costs.

There’s loads of routes on the Garmin Connect website from Hayfield if that helps?

I’ve got a 456C and a Transition TransAM. Both are brilliant, 456C a bit longer, probably climbs quicker, TransAM feels better on descents. But both are built very differently, so it’s difficult to really pin the differences down to the frame rather than other stuff. Both I’d highly recommend.

But, most people would say the same about a lot of frames, I don’t think there are many bad options out there. Just buy whatever you think looks best, that’s what I did. Sorted.

I’ve got the 2010 44 RC3tis, they’re absolutely brilliant and light too. Only negative is that they’re non-adjustable and don’t have lockout. But you might not think that is a negative. I’ve also got 2009 Lyriks, which are longer travel, but not quite as good as the RC3s. There’s not much in it, but the Lyriks are faster due to the extra travel, they’re also fully adjustable and very versatile as a result, but also heavy.

Mythic Spitfire?

One dab on Rossett Gill?

Great. It didn’t like you either. Thanks for coming though.