I sold my hardtail and only have two FS now, one short travel 29er for races, and a long travel 26″ for the rest.

My reasons were:-
– I was faster and more in control on the FS, as I could pedal over obstacles, and had my back wheel in touch with the ground for more of the time
– The FS are only 1kg heavier, but I accept are more expensive to buy and maintain
– I bu@@ered up my back doing 100k and multi-day races on my hardtail, as after a couple of hours in the saddle I was too tired to lift my butt for every bump and jump. If you’re younger or fitter this may not be a problem – yet!

I have to say that all these tales of tubeless success leave me a little puzzled.

If you want tubeless to just work so you can get on with your riding – stick to proper UST rims and tyres. No faff, no burping, no rims strips and sealant – go up with a normal pump and stay up.

There is however a weight and cost penalty, and you’re limited to the few wheel manufacturers who’ve licenced the technology – currently only Mavic and Shimano I believe?

Take a look here for an explanation of why all tubeless systems are not alike…

perthmtb, I thought that the main points of tubeless was lower pressures and puncture resistance. Why would you not put sealant in if you then lose one of the main benefits of tubeless?

Yes, lower pressures, no more pinch flats, and tougher casings so less punctures – you get all that from UST without the goo. The extra protection goo gives from thorns depends where you ride I guess. Luckily there aren’t many thorns where I ride. I’ve been running Maxxis LUST on Shimano UST rims for a year now and only had one slow puncture in that time, and was able to ride home and mend it at my leisure, but I carry a spare tube with me just in case. So, for me the faff of sticky white goo just isn’t worth it, as I like to change my tyres regularly to suit different riding conditions. But if I rode in an area where there were a lot of thorns then I’d probably use it!

Hope you find the leak but more importantly where are you located that you are still using your pool and can we all come over to yours for a swim?

The clue is in his username :wink: Remember its summer down here, and Xmas means pool and BBQ weather…

After floppy ring syndrome with one of those easyset pools, I bought the one with a metal frame instead, and three years on its still going strong.

Not much help for your puncture I know. For that I’d go the soapy water route – my kids put much worse in my pool and the chlorine tabs and filter are none the worse for it.

DUMB QUESTION TIME! Why would you run tubeless without any sealant? If you rode over a nail or thorn what would you do then?

Now, let me think, what did we do before tubeless and sealant – oh, carry a spare tube – maybe that would work :wink:

Have both an Anthem 29er and a Trance 26″. I like both, but they are definitely very different bikes, and each has its pros & cons. The Anthem is faster, but the Trance more fun. I use the Anthem for races, flatish courses, and MTB touring. I use the Trance for everything else, and it really comes into its own in the twisty/turny/jumpy stuff…

Damn, got in late on another living in Perth thread, so most of it already covered…

Waves Hi to Marmoset – back healing well so might be up for some rides over the holiday.

As for Perth.
1. Great place to bring kids up, precisely because it is still living in the 1950s. They walk or ride their bike to small local neighbourhood school, play in the park or beach after.
2. Yes Australians are racist, but I think you Brits are over-sensitive about the topic – if the discussions here are anything to go by! Australian racism is basically just ignorance and a propensity to say what they think. Its not particularly aggressive or based on real hatred like in other places I’ve lived.
3. The driving is bad, but can’t say it bothers me as I commute by bike on a fabulous series of purpose built cycleways – all year round because of the weather.

To sum up – I’ve seen many expats come to Perth, some like it and some don’t. One of my best riding buddies threw in the towel and headed back to the UK just last month (common story – he liked it, wife didn’t). It all depends on your expectations and attitude. If you expect it to be like England just with better weather, and for the Australians to bend over backwards to help you fit in – don’t bother!

However, if you realise you’re coming to a foreign country half way around the world, leaving all your friends and family behind and basically have to start over again, then you’ll at least start with a realistic attitude. To get on here (or anywhere) you have to be flexible, like trying new things, make the effort, and be positive about what you’re gaining, rather than complaining about what you miss about ‘back home’.

I arrived on a student visa five years ago, now have residency and work on the waterfront in Freo, go mountainbiking every weekend, and camping in the national parks every holiday. Is it the promised land – no. Is life good – yes!

Two other countries I’ve lived in – Hong Kong and Australia – allow sockets in the bathroom, but both also have RCDs as standard. In Hong Kong the socket had to have a little plastic flap over it to keep splashes out, but in Australia they are just regular sockets. Mind you, this is also the place that allows gas heaters without an external flue 8O

As househusband said, the MT66 are not a proper sealed UST rim, and do require Shimano supplied rubber plugs, rim tape and sticky white goo to seal the spoke holes. Its why I scoured the Interweb for the last of the MT65s instead, which were basically the sealed XT rim with a slightly cheaper hub.

To the OP, I would give some proper UST tyres a go (assuming the ones you have now are just ‘tubeless ready’) – I use Maxxis UST on both my 29er M785 wheels and 26″ MT65s, and never had an issue with seating.

I upgraded on my Sony Vaio last week. Advice from Sony was to download and install all recent updates while still on 8 before installing 8.1, as there are a few fixes to drivers and suchlike that won’t install once you’ve got 8.1 on there.

Have I noticed a startling difference – no!

Does everything still work – yes!

I think the problems are with non-Microsoft ‘additions’ not having been updated to work with 8.1 yet, so if you’ve added lots of non-Microsoft stuff to your PC might be worth waiting a while for them to catch up. I had a pretty bog standard windows spec on mine so it wasn’t an issue.

Lower jockey wheel should not have any play in it, its only the upper one that has play to help with shifting. However, with the move to 10sp and clutch mechs Shimano have also done away with the play in the upper jockey wheel and that is now fixed as well.

In fact if you want to be pedantic about it (this is STW afterall ;-) )the term ‘jockey wheel’ only ever applied to the upper one, and now shouldn’t be used for that anymore – they should be referred to as ‘pulley wheels’.

Bought one because of all the raving on threads like this. Have had it for six months now and still haven’t worked out what its for. Clearly I’m not rad enough to need one…

As Loco is ‘in the biz’ I’d take his advice over mine anyday :wink:

I don’t really notice any difference between the propedal and open settings on the shock.

Propedal is there to reduce pedal bob, but you won’t notice the difference in bump compliance – that’s the point.

the lever doesn’t really seem to have a definite ‘click’ either way, it stays where you put it, but just kind of ‘flops’ into position. Not sure if that’s normal

Yes, floppy lever syndrome is quite normal on the RP2, and is no cause for alarm.

That’s not a toolbox…

THIS is a toolbox, complete with built in beer fridge and stereo …

Nice! But does it really have “hollow forged crank arms” like the CRC blurb says? I thought that was the only real difference between Deore and SLX/XT in that the former has solid crank arms whereas the latter are hollow. CRC has been known to stuff up their descriptions in the past…

Unfortunately, unless you’ve got a rib displaced and poking into something else, there’s not a lot the doctor can/will do about it – just tell you to let it heal in time.

You can’t really immobilise ribs to let them heal like you would a broken bone in an arm or leg, as if they did wrap you up tight in bandages or plaster you wouldn’t be able to breathe!

Just pray you don’t get a cold and cough/sneeze a lot – that and laughing is agony!

Current bike has XT brakes. Came with SLX IT rotors

No it didn’t. It’s the aluminium sandwich construction for better heat dissipation which makes a rotor “Ice-tech”, and that only comes on XT, XTR and Saint level rotors.

SLX rotors are RT-67 for centrelock, and RT76 for 6-bolt, and are solid steel. XT rotors are RT81 for centrelock and RT86 for 6-bolt and are Ice-tech.

Similarly, its the finned pads which make a brake “Ice-tech”, there’s nothing different about the calliper.

Thankfully, the rotors and finned pads are interchangeable across all of Shimano’s latest lineup of brakes, so you can mix and match to your hearts content.

Personally, I started with non-icetech rotors & pads, thinking it was all just a marketing gimmick by Shimano. But my brakes were overheating at the end of long descents, so I switched both bikes (one SLX, one XT) to all Ice-tech and haven’t had a problem since.

To answer the OP’s question – would Ice-tech rotors make a difference? Probably not in ‘normal’ riding, but given the small difference in cost it’s good insurance for that one time your brakes overheat on a long downhill!

As for sizes, I’m no lightweight and run 180 front and 160 rear on both bikes. The current Shimano brakes have stupidly strong stopping power, and I couldn’t see myself wanting more, unless I was heading off to the Alps – and then it’d be for heat dissipation again not stopping power.

Very happy with my XT 29er wheels. Proper UST too, so none of that faff using a compressor, tape, goo, burping etc. – can even seat them with my mini-pump!

Spare spokes are expensive tho’ about five quid each, and the freehubs have a reputation for failing…

I dunno, you could do a great tour within a month, such as what I suggested: in to Melb, bit of tassie, great ocean rd, adelaide or oodnadata, uluru, king’s canyon, fly to sydney.

I think you’ll find that’s what I said urm, right here..

So, take your time, explore a bit of the East coast and maybe Tassie

My point was that suggestions in this thread range from Kakadu in the NT, to Margaret River in the South West, Uluru in the Centre, crossing the Nullarbor, The Kimberley in the North East, Cape York in far North Queensland, Adelaide, Canberra, Melbourne, Sydney, Barrier Reef, Tassie, and everywhere in between! And while I agree its all great and worth seeing, the point I was trying to make was the same as yours (I think)- if you’ve only got a month you need to pare down your geographic expectations a tad!

When I did my first ’round’ of Oz as a backpacker many moons ago, the people I thought missed out the most were those rushing from place to place to tick as many destinations off the list as possible, but who never stayed long enough in any of them to soak up the vibe and enjoy.

Love my Lumia 720. I’m not heavily into the social apps/games etc – use it more for the business side – email, MS Office, timesheets, notes, where the slightly larger screen than the iPhone, and seamless integration with other Microsoft products makes it a winner for me…

I bought a whole M785 hub from one of the German online shops for 30 quid. Meant I had spare axle, cones, cups, ball bearings, freehub (that alone costs 30 quid by itself) and quick release. I know this isn’t what you’re asking, but sometimes it’s easier (and cheaper) just to get a whole donor hub.

Whoa boy! How many years did you say you had? All the suggestions above are great, but I’ve just two pictures to add…

and…

Would you expect to ‘do’ Europe or the US in a month? So, take your time, explore a bit of the East coast and maybe Tassie, and leave the best bits (the West and the North – but then I’m biased aren’t I) for next time :wink:

And anyway, most domain hosts will offer POP3 type email for pennies anyway. If yours doesn’t, move.

I think thats what I’ve got – if POP3 is the same as POP?!? Anyway, it won’t work with my smartphone (despite it offering POP3 as one of the options when setting up an email account)- just stays synchronising for ever. When I asked my domain/email host how to set it up properly, they said its a common problem with POP as it just wasn’t designed to synchronise multiple mobile devices all accessing the same email account, as it was built back in the dark ages. Hence their offer to ‘upgrade’ me…

Sorry, that’s a lie. It’s got a ‘on behalf of’ tacked on it

Ah, Ok, so the mail forwarding option discussed above…

I send and recieve mail on my phone through outlook.com (was hotmail) using my own domain.

Hows dat work den? Don’t you have to pay someone to ‘park’ your own domain name with them? Do Hotmail offer that service as well as free Anybody@hotmail.com services?

Clubber, someone suggested this to me but a quick Google suggested that when sending email it still shows as coming form Gmail/Hotmail whatever, so kinda negates the purpose of having my own domain/email address. Isn’t this the case?

Stoner, my company use Google Apps, and the boss has offered for me to piggy-back off their account, but I’m not sure if that’d work?

Ok, should probably mention I’m based in Oz, though these days that shouldn’t really make any difference, and for the last ten years my domain name has been hosted in the US…

To be honest, doesn’t look that much different to my old Trance (before they got stretched to 29 and then shrunk again to 27.5), except that the photographer’s a lot better! Oh, and my Trance probably cost about a third the price…

Fitted indicators to my commuter bike when I was a yoof. Much safer than taking your hand off the bars (and therefore away from the brake lever) to signal your intentions.

Might do the same again if I ever rode in traffic, but on an MTB…no!

Kids are like farts – you don’t like other people’s, but you really quite enjoy your own! :D

I lived in Asia for twenty years, and the fat middle aged westerner with attractive young Asian wife is a very common theme. But so what? He gets a doting young and attractive wife, and she gets to escape a life of poverty. There’s been worse reasons for marriage!

In fact, I’d go as far as to say that such a mutually beneficial arrangement is probably a more sensible basis for a long term relationship than a flush of hormones and short term madness that most of us call ‘falling in love’.

50 – will never ride a hardtail again – its FS all the way for me now. The constant punishment of my lower back due to 6hr+ and multi-day races on a hardtail resulted in a serious back injury, and anyway I’m actually faster and more in control on a FS.

I got meself a pair of these and have been very happy with them.

Shimano SLX proper UST tubeless for 150 quid has to be one of the best deals around…

great news … so the narrower guage chain runs fine on the 9 speed rings?

Yes. As Mackem said above, the internal measurements of 9 and 10 speed chains are the same, the plates are slightly thinner on the 10sp that’s all.

I was wanting to use a 9sp SLX double on my otherwise 10sp setup (preferred the integrated bash on the old SLX double), but had heard all sorts of opinions about the 10sp teeth being narrower, spacing of rings different, chainline different etc. So, decided to find out for myself, and after half an hour with one of each and a vernier calliper accurate to 0.02mm, concluded there was absolutely no difference!

Experience in use since then has backed this up.

No. Much as the likes of Shimano and SRAM would like us to believe otherwise, there’s no detectable difference between a 9sp and 10sp crankset, so you’ll be fine.

I’d heard a lot of opinions both ways on this one, so after half an hour with one of each and a vernier calliper, I concluded there was no discernible difference whatsoever, and that includes the rings themselves, and also the spacing between them when mounted on cranks…

1) let all air out
2) Take an adjustable spanner (or big socket if you have one) and undo the top of the lh fork
3) remove oil (I had ~40ml in mine!)
4) put in 5ml of float fluid
5) re-install top

Step 6) If there’s 40ml of oil in your air chamber, ask yourself where it came from as it only starts off with 5ml?

Hint: it came from the lowers, which seeing as they only have 30ml in the first place are now running bone dry and scoring your stanchions and wearing your bushings into dust, so…

Step 7) Give the whole damn thing a proper service, replace the foam ring with the new scraper seal, replace all the fluids, or if you don’t feel mechanically capable to do this yourself, send it to someone who can.

Has to be Life Cycles – can watch that one over and over! Even my non cycling friends and family like it, which has to be the ultimate test of an MTB movie :D