Are you mostly sitting? If so, I’ve had that when my saddle is too far forward.

You mention “the trails have got harder and faster”. That suggests not sitting.

Things that work for me:
– fatter grips (Lizard skins North Shore, Ouro)
– rotating bar forwards and a bar with more sweep (currently I prefer the Burgtec shape)
– fork settings (fast rebound as a starter)
– brake lever position (inboard/outboard and flattening them in general)
– getting the skills so I’m braking less – fewer white knuckle moments means a relaxed grip

Any fit recommendation needs to take into account everything that’s currently going on with your fit so needs

with zero psi there’s about 70mm of stanchion showing and if I compress to full travel they just come back up.

That sounds pretty normal. “Zero” is “zero on the gauge relative to atmosphere” so actually you have atmospheric pressure in there at the point you vent the schrader valve. When you compress them you’ll end up with a ~2.5:1 compression ratio on the positive spring. i.e. 2.5x atmospheric pressure absolute (~22 psi gauge) and the negative will be fighting it too.

You went from 30% sag to 20% sag in your test rides and didn’t like either. That may be a pretty big jump and sag is not a precise measure. I’d say keep trying. These aren’t coil forks where the change in a coil is a jump from one linear spring rate to the next one up (both of which might be suboptimal). 5 psi is a significant change and if you’ve just changed them by 30 psi you’ve had a lot of opportunity to miss the sweet spot.

You’re getting all sorts of advice about tokens. Honestly, leave them with the factory token installed until you have a feel for what the fork is really up to.

FWIW, on a 160 Lyrik with the latest air spring I’m running ~95psi and am 86kg riding weight.

Having an expert give them a once over sounds like a good idea to eliminate a genuine dud fork from being the issue.

30% sag on a 170mm Lyrik is likely too much. IME 25% (as a maximum) and closer to 20% has worked best on Lyriks. This is a coil vs air thing. Because the top out into the ramp of the negative spring is non-linear you don’t need as much sag for an air spring as you would with a coil. The big negative air chamber on the Debonair spring is (in effect) a pneumatic top out.

If you’re finding a sequence of bumps makes it feel locked solid, it is packing – rebound is too slow: more air pressure; faster rebound. Keep going with faster rebound until it spits traction mid corner (scarily) and then add back one or two clicks.

You can afford for the rebound to be on the quick side and the spring will guarantee you’re not getting harsh top outs. Tokens can fine tune this but the least number of tokens that soften the top out is the correct number of tokens usually. Much more than this and you get nasty rampy behaviour deep in the travel.

After that you’re juggling LSC and HSC as your main tune-to-taste settings.

I had a KOM on my commute from a few years ago. As an (ahem) older rider I still get days when the legs have it but they are fewer and farther between and motivation is a big factor. I used to spot the segments on my commute and see if I could put in solid efforts on one or two of them every few days.

With a massive weather system driving a gale force westerly I got a notification that my KOM had been beaten by 1 second. I got out my good road bike and specifically went out to get it back. Good road bike had a power meter on it showing an average 687W for 34 seconds and I had the top spot again with a clear margin of 2 seconds.

My commuter bike runs flat pedals and every time set on it would have been carrying a laptop and a change of clothes. Kind of disappointing that clipless, stripped of weight and with a the strongest ever tail wind the difference was 3 seconds. A 687W (average) effort is probably me on one of my best days so if anybody beats it now (four years on) I won’t be likely to challenge again.

I thought STWF lore told us there was a bad early production run of M8000 brakes and thereafter sorted. Could never swallow that myself.

I’ve got a mix of Shimano and Formula Curas across the family fleet of bikes and even a Shimula at one end of one bike. I’ve had M8000 and M820 calipers go bad while others have stayed good. I’m pretty sure that age has made the seals a bit lazy in the remaining M988s (they’ve done a few years); one M988 master cylinder sprang a leak. I’ve got good M675s (low mileage, bought 2016).

Latest strategy for recovering any caliper to best working order is to pump the pistons out a little and use wet wipes to get the dust off.

Latest strategy for bleeding is Shimano bucket at MC and a syringe without a plunger at the caliper. Raise and lower them relative to each other to gently flow the fluid first one way and then the other; it gives you multiple goes at getting stubborn bubbles out with zero mess.

Monarch was only sold in traditional imperial sizes. You’ve got a Giant Reign, haven’t you? I’m guessing existing metric shock is a RockShox Deluxe RT, trunnion mount.

I don’t like so many adjustments that you get lost. I greatly dislike the concept and execution of pedal platforms over a proper adjustable LSC. I like to service my own kit when possible. I like piggyback designs because of long race stages. Rockshox bullied the industry into metric but came up with hard and fast improvements like increased bushing overlap. Fox didn’t do the hard yards to design to the metric spec and just spacered their existing designs as far as I can tell.

I have been running a Super Deluxe DebonAir RCT. The RCT spec was OEM only last year but I think the Super Deluxe Ultimate is now the aftermarket model with the same features. R=Rebound, C=Compression adjust, T=Threshold.

I’m sure experts could quite capably critique every product from RockShox and explain that other options are superior. But… I can get rebound on the correct threshold setting and then dial in the chassis control on the LSC. The proof is hitting 60kmh rough descents on flat pedals and not getting bounced around.

In SRAM single ring implementations the chainring is either 0mm offset (non-boost) or 3mm offset (boost). You can change a non-boost to a boost with the correct chainring. Third party chainrings follow the same convention. Other brands may vary

If the pressure is building after only a few pump strokes the zip tie thing is a red herring but in opening up the fork to work out what’s going on with the air spring you’ll resolve it anyway.

Out of your two bikes I’d take the Reign. Comrie is rocky; at least all the good bits are. A rigid bike would probably restrict you to the blue unless you’re super gnar-core

The original argument walks like a duck, quacks like a duck.

When you turn up the stage start of an enduro stage you aren’t an xc rider or dh rider. You’re a competitor. Simples.

I’m a fifty year old. 27 years ago I was a half decent roadie who bought a mountain bike. I committed every single BITD sin. 150mm Atac stem. Suspension boing bits made of rubber. Saddle at optimum height for pedalling. A complete dirt roadie who entered the dh stage at one BITD event (as you did) on the bike I had because it was my mountain bike.

Didn’t clear a simple titchy gap jump for 15 years. Took me until 2007 to try full suss.

These days I have some skills downhill. Came to it late in things but love the process. Race enduros.

Practice makes a difference. If I have a sense of the terrain and I’ve got my confidence in a good spot I can turn a good result. If there are much more skilled /practiced riders they will always beat me. So what? Until you’re between the tapes you have no sense for how much it is a race of not screwing up. The satisfaction /frustration quotient is almost always in my own head. It is cool. I find ways to ride at my best. By racing I’ve got better which is amazingly rewarding in itself.

Give it a go. Let it change you. Enduro is a journey.

Sorted this out with two hanger alignment tools.

The attachment on the Park DAG 2.2 is a threaded grub screw that you can remove. The captive bolt can then be tightened to the Park (or similar). Any cheap generic hanger alignment tool can attach to the other end. You can then orient the bracket at all points of the compass and get it aligned.

I don’t have any experience of 45mm internal rims and I’m a chunk bigger than 65kg (81kg wet). In setting up my GF’s bike going low on pressure has been a proven factor in taking confidence away from her riding.

A couple of years ago I had to fly back from the Alps for a business meeting and GF was left to her own devices with a track pump, digital pressure gauge and the knowledge that we’d been setting her up at 20/22psi. The track pump gauge overreads so it was somewhat predictable that, saving the fuss of using a second pressure gauge, GF went riding with lower pressure than normal. Hated it. Unsafe. Squirmy. We’re talking 16/17 sort of thing with tough tyres.

So that gave a data point for too soft tyres.

Between 2010-2013 when I first started riding tubeless, I’d love the low pressures in winter but every spring as things dried out I’d get more confident, push against the tyres more, burp the tyres and full body dab. I’ve since gravitated to the more enduro-brah side of the sport which has been a mindset shift in tyre choice, tyre pressures, suspension setup all combined with riding style changes. All setup is compromise; e.g. grip vs support.

I’ve been reading this thread because rim protection is something I have no experience of. I sense a whiff of snake oil about it, just as “stuff your fork full of tokens” is shorthand for “koolaid trumps science” but (with no experience) I can see it aims to introduce progressivity into tyre response. Good or bad thing, I cannot tell. I like linear suspension but the frequency range encountered by the tyre tread is completely different compared to spring/damper systems in our shocks and forks so maybe different rules apply. I do kill rims from time to time but not in any circumstances where it didn’t feel deserved.

If we’re talking FS bikes, lots of pinch flats can come from the suspension being set up too soft. Bottom out means the load has to transfer to the tyre and you get pinch flats and rim dings. If HT, then riding soft is down to the rider.

Consider the multi-faceted aptness of the phrase: “hedging your bets”

on a trail bike
…the alps
…carbon rims
…mixed conditions “trail” tyres
…not too heavy
…Budget ideally <£50

Being in the alps doesn’t necessarily mean you wreck gear but wrecking carbon rims is a non-trivial hurt.

My own experience is of:

1. Inexplicably discovering (seriously) dinged (alu) rims
2. Punctures if my fun quotient (confidence) gets up

At the end of several months last year I downgraded from Bontrager G5s (DH tyres) to Wild Enduro front and a Bonty SE4 out back but the riding had become more uplift assisted back country than uplift and park plummet. I’d taken those tyres off the bike months earlier when the puncture occurrence got too high.

Bike was a 170/165 enduro bike. Key thing is to have enough air in your suspension. If your suspension bottoms out, all the load goes into the tyre. That’s always going to get you rim dings and pinch flats. Then decent tyre pressure; nothing mad; at 85kg I was 24/28 psi. Rebound fast; packing down feels godawful and that feeling also ends up loading into the tyres. LSC adjustment (if you’ve got it) to dial down the liveliness of that fast rebound.

FWIW, I find thin casing tyres really pingy in Alpine terrain and that gets worse with tubeless so I managed reasonably well with those tyres on tubes. More than likely YMMV.

I’d wondered about making up an adapter to use a hanger alignment tool. If you just have the bracket attached to the hanger it would end up straight but knowing my tendencies I’d have a bent hanger compensating for a bent bracket and I’d keep having goes at it to get everything straight up to the point of snapping something.

1987 Cannondale SR500. Had the p!55 royally taken out of me by my 531 and 753 riding buddies (crash replacement for a bent 531c frame) but from the first pedal stroke it was apparent that all energy pushed the bike forward. I won a load of hillclimbs on that bike (6’2″, 78kg).

When I sold it (by mistake; purchaser came to view a different bike but liked the Cannondale and I was broke), I attempted to recapture that feeling with its replacements. Never achieved it.

If you can produce an FTP of 3W/kg, do you do so on the steep hills several hours into a sportive?

Some other things spring to mind.

When you’re plugging your way up a hill, airflow drops and cooling drops. Your body has many innate protections from overheating so if you generally wrap yourself up for your rides, an incline can tip you over the edge and performance drops away quickly. When you’re on a big stretch of a ride like the Fred (without hilly centuries being part of your regular programme) you’ve got a lot to factor in just in terms of managing your stamina. Sometimes you need to go slower to go faster.

The great thing about hills is that you can go up them slowly; going slower moderates the effort within your capability. It can take some practice but, while a hill can give you an urge to strive against it, constantly striving is probably an above FTP effort and you’ll blow quickly like that and actually manage better from doing something that feels like soft pedalling. Low gear. Decent cadence. No surging through the power stroke. No lunging on the bars.

Hills can defeat you mentally before they defeat you physically. You are going slower and it doesn’t feel like you’re going well. That eats away at you. Option A is you respond and overcook it and then blow up. Option B is that your mental game prevents you from just plugging away and you despair and blow up. Option C is that perceived difficulty makes you lose form on the bike and you don’t even perform to your potential.

3W/kg isn’t nothing but also isn’t a big number. You’ve got to be realistic. Your perception of 3W/kg may be “I’m slow”. A plan to grow that 3W/kg will always help but consider mental factors also. Just remember, you’re on your bike; what could possibly be better?

Bought an end of 2018 season 29er with GX Eagle (and Codes). Swapped the alloy 175mm crank in the shop for a 170mm X01. Sold the rest of the SRAM gubbins on ebay as I already had an XT/XTR setup with lots of life remaining and almost new Formula Curas that I really like. Got hold of an XX1 11 speed cassette (non-black so won’t show up wear) to go on the XD driver.

I’ve compromised range at the bottom end vs both Eagle and Shimano 11-46 but this setup keeps me on kit that I know functions really reliably and for which I have spares.

Eagle would give me one lower gear.

Wildcard option: Propain Tyee

Vauxhall bridge is pretty unpleasant to approach and cross. I’d cross earlier, probably Lambeth which doesn’t segregate you from the traffic but it seems to be over and done with quicker.

I’ve done this route a few times.

4 months in the Alps last year with two piston brakes. Changed out the 180 rear rotor to 200 pretty quickly. After that everything was fine.

Damping dissipates energy. The higher the shaft speed, the more the energy. Energy not dissipated ends up stored in the spring.

All setup is compromise.

The slow shaft speeds of a g-out (berm, lip, landing) offer alimited opportunity to dissipate energy. If you crank down the lsc, it may not be enough and it may compromise other areas of performance.

The better compromise may be more air pressure and allow more energy to be stored.

I’m your height and inseam.

I’ve made enduro bikes work for me from 432mm reach up to 483mm reach (limits of my experience so far). Important to note that I have raced down mountains at high speed at both extremes of this range and they both work.

Looking up the Recluse, the size L reach is 460mm. Modern thinking says this is at the low end of the range for your height but, as above, I’ve made both shorter and longer bikes work for me. There’s a lot of nonsense about short stems that you have to ignore and just make the bike you have fit but at this point I’d have a preference in favour of the reach on the XL (486mm).

The XL seat tube length (515mm) is not the best. I went for a frame with a 510mm seat tube (too long really) but have managed to cram in a 185mm drop BikeYoke revive dropper. The BikeYoke was an expensive option but has a very shallow seal head and clamp so it ekes out the millimetres. There is a more mainstream 160mm drop version that would fit you no problem. Many other brands use much more space (Reverb is particularly bad) so make sure you get all the measurements before committing. The wrong brand of dropper would likely restrict you to 125mm drop.

If you can’t get full insertion on the seatpost, all bets are off. On some designs the kinks in seat tubes are at the same height across frame sizes, so this can be very bad news. Getting hands on with the frame and your intended dropper is probably needed before dropping the cash.

I run 170mm cranks.

BS behaviour by buyers has led me to buy it now sales only. I used to list items with no reserve but spoiling buyers have boiled my pi55 sufficiently that I now set the price and wait. The actions of the few do restrict options for the many.

I’m in Stirling!! PM sent

The name’s out of date. Scotland these days.

Just entered all rounds of the Scottish enduro series (Grand Vets) with the Ski-An-Duro and Macavalanche thrown in for early season injury potential.

I think, technically, you have answered my question.

Modular-e bikes. The motor and battery can be optionally removed and replaced with standard BB and cranks.

I had this anger at everything back in 2003; it had been building up for a year or two. Focus subjects ended up being dodgy dossiers, David Kelly and an intense dissatisfaction that my work had any positive effect (ill thought through government technical programmes that just seemed to fritter away public money)

In the thick of it I lost my job but bounced back by going to work in a ski resort for two seasons. I felt healthy on day 1 out in the mountains but it still took years to get back to pre-crisis normal, bouncing in and out of regular employment and alternatives. Positive aspects are I filled my life with adventures.

Step 1. Get outdoors, regularly and often
Step 2. Don’t prop yourself up with drugs (alcohol, mary jane esp.)
Step 3. Make time and take time
Step 4. Work with your hands
Step 5. Never, ever go to Ikea

Fifteen years on, I now *enjoy* a job where I don’t believe my work has any positive effect.

I’ve taken the view that MTBing as a sport is a massive exercise in developing a mental game alongside the physical skillset.

Most of the injuries I have had happened when my mental game was weak; doubts crept in.

The current Lyrik RC2 is easy to dial in too. Leave LSC and HSC open, set sag to about 25%, tweak rebound to taste

The BS I particularly hate is when one specification from a manufacturer is seen as the second coming; especially flagship models. Lyrik Rc2; anything with kashima.

My answer? Lower leg service every two weeks. Consistent settings that you refine with experience and time.

New bike has a Charger2 lyrik rct3. I upgraded the spring to the latest spec and really don’t think I’m going to get on with it. Excessive sag for marginal gains I don’t care about. To do a lower leg service you have to depressurise the spring; so much more faff. I’d refined my setup on the previous gen to the point where it had answers for everything but I’m now on trend with a boost 29er so that fork is no more.

But this is mostly me. I’m commenting that “new is different”. All equipment is a learning curve. I’ll work out this new stuff eventually.

I looked at it on my long list. Not ridden one but it is reputed to be on the soggier end of the pedalling spectrum. The linkage design analysis suggests this although other reviews (Dirt) say it is good enough to pedal back up (vs. a DH bike). I had it down as a very specific bike; not an all rounder; bike to satisfy coil-curiosity; bike that was cheap enough to take a chance.

These are the thoughts I went through in my long listing / short listing process and I ended up elsewhere.

Track saw definitely.

The internets is biased to the american home woodworking scene where table saws have been seen as mandatory in unfeasibly massive permanent workshops. They’re evidently good for repeatable cuts on multiple parts but that isn’t what ripping a sheet is about. I’ve just been through quelling my table saw envy.

I have a track saw, router, router table and a router track adapter plate. Does me for most things. Clamping and bench dogs make it safe and quick. A couple of Peter Millard jigs will see me sorted for cross cuts and the like.

Why not wireless?

The walls are 1 metre thick stone.

Just out of interest why did you run optical to the outbuilding rather than cat5/6 ethernet

Honest answer is that it was a vanity project. Some concerns about surge protection for buried conducting cable.

Have you determined the correct supply for the load, do you have any redundancy in your supply

I checked back on this last night. The psu is a modular unit that attaches to the kit it is powering. It is rated to drive three units but I am powering one.

When it failed yesterday the media converter was warm to the touch. I ran it powered on the bench with no load and it didn’t get warm in the same way.

I’m reviewing the thermal aspects of the installation. I suspect I can use one less channel for link aggregation and drop the thermal load by ~25%.

Thanks for the good advice. I’ll at least get a call on record with the retailer and probably the manufacturer too.

The kit is a niche, proprietary, plastic optical fibre network so not easy to substitute out and not easy to rely on future supply. I did it like this to terminate an outbuilding office straight through to a network rack in the main building roof space. This was a wife-friendly way to have an invisible installation. Not so wife-friendly when I have to tear out the walls (again) to replace the cabling runs. Wireless is a no-go in these buildings.

I work from home. My phone calls go through it. My remote desktop goes through it. I designed in redundancy except for this single component. When it is working for months on end without issue, it is brilliant. On days when it drops repeatedly it puts my livelihood at risk.

Longer term, my office will be relocating to the main house. If I can get one more reliable year out of this it will have served its purpose. I’ll get some spares on hand. I will reconfigure the kit I have to spread the load a bit better. That should get me through.

Why is single crown important in this spec? Interested as you don’t mind the weight

But other than that, as above, 8mm hex impact socket and a breaker bar… It’ll come loose, trust me!

On my Brendogs (and the other set of DMR Vaults I own) that would be a neat trick as the hex is 6mm.

Yes. 6mm is an issue that reviewers should mention. In my experience, in any crank, anything other than fresh grease before each fitting means it is touch and go whether they’ll come out again. With breaker bar I have had 6mm bits snap explosively on me. I have had one long allen key snap on me putting me in fear of getting the jagged sharp end of it in an artery or eye. On top of which the bearings are shyte and fail to stand up to a month from fresh before they’re audibly in need of servicing.

*I* *hate* *these* *pedals*. Overpriced garbage (that I bought twice).

Last year did Bourg, la Thuile, Aosta/Pila, livigno, St moritz, lenzerheide.

Bourg remains an amazing option. La Thuile is on my list of unfinished business because I arrived there with a broken bike and working through getting the replacement bike set up robbed my confidence when I needed it most on challenging terrain.

Aosta has a good bunch of people running van uplift as well as the pila bike park. The bike park is limited (very good for what it is) by being just a park off one lift. However the return run to Aosta was amazing – think of it as an interweaving set of Black 8 alternatives but half as long again.

Livigno has an exceptional park using a lot of the mountain. Did some big days but again a mix of van and pedal power for the off piste.

St moritz is a fake biking destination. Some of the big mountain routes are amazing but they are ten to fifteen years behind and the prices (single espresso 4.5chf) are a bad joke.

Lenzerheide has a deal with neighbouring Arosa and Chur. You can get a day pass for an 80km loop using 10 lifts but it is a pretty prescribed route and less off piste than you might hope for. Still brilliant and a fave from the trip. Also you get to share Strava leaderboards with Nino Schurter, and the odd Wildhaber.

For absolute best weeks on the bike, guided hols have always been best for me. Trail addiction, as was both in Bourg and Beaufort. Slovenia a few years back was amazing either with Bike Nomad (ews hosts) or Jon in Luce.

Going to big mountains and having lift system access to interlinked off piste is tough to do without tapping into local knowledge IME. Bourg Les Arcs has the benefit of operators having been active there for many years and the park has a good approach without being a PDS-alike refuge for the gnar-bro park rats.

Tignes for a day was a dust fest and the trail system felt under maintained but I’ve got a mate who keeps an apartment there who loves it. The lift pass system was a bureaucratic joke wasting hours for no reason like they didn’t want visitors to have a good time.

[geek mode]
I have four bar/stem combos from the parts bin that I’ve been looking at for my LLS bike.

I’ve found I can set up each one consistently by placing the grip area of the bars on a flat surface and measuring the angle of the stem. My preferred angle (picture) is ~127 degrees (180 – (90 – head_angle) – 28.5 ). This is a consistent method of setting up bars between bikes with varying head angles and for bars with different backsweep and upsweep ending up minimally different in feel.

The datum for this magical angle is as though the bar were installed rolled back until the the grips sit in a horizontal plane (no upsweep / all backsweep). My preference of 28.5 degrees is rotating the bars back close to their book figures; some bars are a little bit rolled back from their book figures and some are a little rolled forward; my preferred rotation is happily in the middle of where manufacturers think normal should be: Renthal (5 upsweep, 7 backsweep) would need 35.5 degrees to be on book figures, so is rolled back a little bit; Burgtec (4 upsweep, 9 backsweep) is rolled forward from its natural 23.8 degrees. Easton Havocs would be on book settings pretty much perfectly. Set like this, all the bars are angled in the same plane where my wrists feel most relaxed. The Renthal is still a “less swept” bar than the Burgtec but the difference isn’t huge.

I have then measured the bars to work out the different stem sizes and spacers to put the grips at the same reach and stack (having taken roll angle out of the equation, this is now a determinable calculation).

A) 30mm rise Renthal Fatbar in a 42mm stem with 30mm of spacers (actual stem 30mm, fit -12)
B) 40mm rise Renthal Fatbar in a 41mm stem with 17mm of spacers (actual stem 35mm, fit -6)
C) 20mm rise Raceface Turbine R in a 47mm stem with 33mm of spacers (actual stem 40mm, fit -7)
D) 20mm rise Burgtec RideWide DH in a 55mm stem with 28mm of spacers (actual stem 55mm, datum fit)

In practicality (with the stems I have in the parts bin) I can swap between bars to fine adjust the fit of the bike while keeping the feel at the bars negligibly different.
[/geek mode]