Do the Hope Hoops 29er come with white Crests?

Prebuilt wheels are generally better value and my Hope Hoop 29er Crests are fine on the CX bike.

kettle of mackerel, obviously

Hmm, interesting. Must try that for my next race.

No issues with Maxxis Raze on Crests here. Been running them for 6 months now. Inflate pretty easily and after the initial sealant has done its thing (after doing the Stans shake and lying the tyre on its side to seal the sidewalls) they stay up well.

Seemed to be losing air last week (had to top the rear wheel up daily) but having added some more sealant through the valve, all seems grand now.

PS – Last week’s slow puncture is only the second I can think of. The first one sealed up at the side of the road after stopping for a few minutes to let the sealant flow to the right spot.

Tyre lever on the old pads before you take them out, and tyre lever on the piston too (carefully).

I have also been known to run one new pad and one old pad for a few weeks when new non-original pads have been quite chunky.

Solo only area at start finish trackside. Toilets + water + enough area to drop kit and quickly pick it up. No trackside solo area? Then I set my own up on the course because its quicker than traveling to transition.

+1

Last year at GT7, I (and another solo racer) just left boxes of kit after transition at the top of the road into the car park. Worked okay as I could pull into the side of the course and stop to grab some food etc out of my box. Only downside was that my stuff got wet when it started raining when I was half way round a lap, so one of the covered tables would have been nice. More space the better to save tripping over other riders and their kit please.

No difficulty with the toilets last year – I nipped into the portaloos in the start/finish area once or twice. Would be good to ensure that there are some similarly accessible ones this year.

Just to feedback on this in case anyone else is interested, I plumped for the Topeak Drybag. Big ride on the hard tail yesterday and it worked well enough. It does rattle a bit, but seems secure. I wasn’t riding anything technical, but it got bumped around a bit of rocky fire roads and some fast descents without complaint.

Thanks. I know what you mean about the 2nd hand Garmins, but inevitably I would only want an 800 eventually, so I’d rather just spend £30 or whatever on a phone mount just now.

Is this the one you have? Gets a shoddy review on CRC but I’m not going to use the headphone port, charger or camera whilst I’m riding so I can live with all of that.

+1 VW Scirocco.

Mrs PixelMix and I have one. Can get one (or two if need be) bikes in the boot just with front wheels off and the back seats folder. I also have a roof rack which gets put on for bigger trips away when we will have 4 people in the car. Fun enough in the twisty stuff and our diesel one does 45-50mpg easily.

You should be able to pick an early one up for your budget now.

A few folks have mentioned the C30. I quite like it but my folks have one as a second card and Mrs PixelMix’s folks have one too and it is definitely not as big as the Scirocco (boot space in particular) so might be a bit of a pain coming from an A4

Missing colour on our site? Go look at the forum NOW. :-) only for 5 mins…. [From Twitter]

:lol:

RR? Ridiculously Rapid?

Based on my experience with the Maxxis Raze, Crests will be fine with CX tyres. If you want to regularly run quite narrow road tyres then you might wish to look elsewhere.

Yes – I edited my above comment. Spacing is indeed 135mm so MTB 29er wheels will be fine.

Looking forward to seeing one of these built up in smallish sizes with suspension forks.

If 29ers do genuinely turn out to be quicker on my riding (I plan a few demos to check that out), then an FF29 would be a lovely replacement for my XCPro3 in a few years time.

Running Hope Hoops 29ers here (Crest 29er rims) without issue. Come in at around £300 – The Bike Chain got a set for me very quickly when I was building up the cross bike.

As above, if your frame is 135mm (I would be surprised if it isn’t) then these will be fine. [Edit:- just checked your name – the spacing on the Pro6 will be fine]

I have Maxxis Raze tyres on at the moment run tubeless with a length of yellow tape. They are quite quick on tarmac as they aren’t too knobbly. Not amazing in muddy races though! I run them between 30 and 45psi depending on what I’m using the bike for.

I think my longest ever day ride was Edinburgh – California – Moscow and then home.

That was 200km.

Love it! Having just acquired a road bike, I might need to give that a bash soon. I assume you have photos fromo each sign?

What rim/tyre combination are you using? Have you tried any road tyres on there?

I’ve had the Crests run with Maxxis Raze since new – run tubeless with just a length of yellow tape, and also briefly with a tube in at one point. No issues at all, and they sealed up fairly easily.

Not tried road tyres as I decided to get a proper road bike. I’m sure you would be fine with 28mm or so though although you’ll want to be careful not to ding the rims. When I asked the same question a while back (when I was considering using my CX bike as a road bike too), I was pointed here

Have you shopped around for the drivetrain? I got Rival bits for Apex money when I built up my Pro6.

For wheels, I’d recommend Hope Hoops (Pro IIs with Stans 29er). Not terribly cheap but I am running mine tubeless with regular Maxxis CX tyres – ace for low pressure without the punctures. If it is that or a custom build, you would probably find better value with the pre-built Hope 29ers. And yes, white tyres would be too much!

I’m not sure you get a choice of colour on the road BB7s do you? I could be wrong though.

I don’t use mapmyride, but I do use garmin connect. I occasionally export files from Garmin Connect and then upload them to the Strava site (mainly if I have been out for a ride which includes some climbs I’ve done a few times before and I now include segments).

If you can export from mapmyride (for example as a .tcx file) then you can upload that to Strava quite easily.

Also interested in the build kits folks have used.

Mine is Rival crank arms, shifter and rear mech with a 41t chainring and a bash guard from BBG. Hope Hoops 29er wheels (run tubeless with seatlant with regular Maxxis Raze tyres) with BB7 road brakes. Finishing kit was mostly from the classifieds – mid range alu stuff. Total cost was about £1,500 using a mix of good internet prices (Merlin etc), a couple of small bits from the LBS and the classifieds.

I started off with a 44t chainring upfront but have now gone to a 41t after churning away in some muddy races. Similarly, the rear mech was a SRAM X7 until I damaged that in a muddy race, and I now have a Rival one instead. Hopefully that gives you a few ideas to get started.

If you want to do it more cheaply, you could probably save some money on the wheels, get a cheaper seatpost instead of my 2nd hand Thomson and so on.

crosslight looks tidier than disco IMHO, no idea if any dif in weights?

Not sure of real life Dirty Disco weight but my 51cm Pro6 came in at 1550g and the fork was 550g before I cut down the steerer. I wanted something I can use for racing and also occasional loaded touring so plumped for the alu frame rather than the carbon.

As Antigee said. It isn’t an issue 99% of the time, but I occasionally notice it in really slow and tight turns. Probably a feature of most CX frames in small sizes.

That is the only feature which would make me think about trying a 54cm frame instead. Having had this frame for about 5 months I’d probably still go with the 51cm, albeit I’ll eventually swap my crank arms for a slightly shorter version (167.5 or 165mm rather than the 170mm I currently have).

I’m bang on 5ft7 and ride a 51cm with a 90cm stem. I get a bit of toe overlap in tight switchbacks but that’s mostly because my cranks are longer than they should probably be. I find the sizing fine now, and although I was a bit unsure at first, would probably buy the same size again.

54cm frame with a shorter stem could probably work too, but I reckon mine will be spot on if I get around to swapping out the 170mm crank for 165mm or something like that.

You’d be welcome to have a shot if you are around Edinburgh?

hmm, quite liking the white, or even the red…. who has it in stock?, I feel a bike build coming on!!

How do you fit front guards to it? it isnt obvious from the pics?

I don’t think you’ll get it in stock anywhere right at the moment – pretty sure the first batch sold out and the next lot is due this month. Dom at Kinesis seems a friendly guy (very helpful when I ordered mine) and should be able to give you an update.

I got mine through The Bike Chain in Edinburgh – they all come through upgrade bikes.

PS – you can see the fork eyelets better here

which one has this:

disc brakes (preferably BB7’s)
no panic brakes
a bottle mount
ability to run some kind of mudguards for commuting duties
preferably SRAM gears

Sounds exactly like my Pro6 above! Obviously I built it myself so the SRAM gears and lack of secondary brake levers was my own choice. I’ve got mine set up as 1×10 with Rival levers and cranks and a SRAM carbon brake lever on the left hand side for the BB7. I’ve not put mudguards on it, but it does have mounts.

Admittedly the Pro6 isn’t going to be as cheap as some of the off the peg items, but it does let you get the spec just the way you want it from day one (no Genesis pun intended).

You’ve mentioned the Crosslight already – very happy with mine. :)

[/url]
Kinesis Crosslight Pro6[/url] by pixelmix[/url], on Flickr

nextdaytyres.com are often amongst the cheapest.

Snow? I’ve just hung yesterday’s mountain biking washing out in the afternoon sun here in Edinburgh. :)

I’ve racked up a reasonable number of road miles on my Maxxis Raze – fairly low profile knobblies. I just stick an extra few PSI in if I am doing a ride with lots of road in it.

Bumpity bump. Anyone been up recently? There hasn’t been much rain of late although there hasn’t exactly been lots of warm sunshine either to dry the place out.

Worth a ride this weekend?

As above, I have the Niterider ones front and rear to supplment my other lights.

The rear one is the Stinger and my front is one of the single LED jobs. Handy for days when I’m taking the CX or MTB to work instead of the usual commuting bike, as they can quickly be swapped over. No issues with either thus far.

As above, the small lights are really an addition to other lights – I use my front Niterider on flashing while I have a helmet light or a bigger bar light set to “on”.

The Stinger would be bright enough on its own, but I run another light on my rucksack anyway.

No plans to be down that way any time soon I’m afraid. Hope you find something.

I have one such wheel in the garage. VERY low mileage but nothing fancy. Came off my wife’s Cannondale hard tail which she barely rides.

Wouldn’t post but where are you located?

Can dig out some details if it helps.

the BBB jockey wheels do need the seals to be pulled out and proper grease inserted when new to get a decent life out of them, imo.

Noted thanks. I’ll be replacing the original Shimano top jockey with the BBB and will give it a good greasing before it gets fitted.

Hmm, as I thought. Might need to have a look at it.

The teeth on this one have plenty of life left but it is a bit stiff to spin (not totally seized, but certainly nowhere near as free as the bottom jockey wheel).

Wear rate isn’t an issue in the present situation – if it only lasted a month then it’s still a month more than I would currently get out of it, as it is about to go in the bin anyway.

I’m not local but found my way round without any difficulty – all well signposted and you can’t go wrong. I think I looked at this map before I went.

You’ll want some waterproof boots for Penmachno if it’s been raining. I rode it in July and whilst it wasn’t muddy, the trail was basically one long stream. More interesting than Marin but a bit damp!

Why do you need a screen grab in the first place? You know you can link to co-ordinates on google?

This is what you were trying to link to I believe: linky

If you really must post a screen grab, you could upload to flickr or something

Binmen Rubbish collection technicians bumbling around Bonaly when I cycled home at 7pm this evening too. New schedules caused by the introduction of the food bins? I’ll not be loosing sleep over it*

* As long as I don’t want to be in bed at 9.15pm

as above – 2×9 setups retain granny don’t they?

Strictly speaking yes, 2×9 setups generally use granny and middle rings, although the new granny is often bigger than a standard granny which is what the OP was getting at.

If he needs advice on what to buy, I’d suggest getting something from the LBS, as they’ll be able to help him out with servicing, warranty issues etc, which it sounds like he might benefit from.

IMHO, £1,000 hardtails are all much of a muchness – you can’t go too far wrong. The Canyons etc are good value but as you mostly pay list price, a sale bike from the LBS will be similar value.