The thing which made the trailstar feel like a trailstar was the relatively slack seat angle with a steep head-angle. It made for a short wheelbase bike which was very maneouverable. The current crop of hardcore hardtails is nothing like it, the angles are at the opposite extremes, they favour a riding style which is up over the front pushing weight through the bars to load the fork.

Why do you need a new bike? another trailstar? If it suits?

Wish I had decent photos.

COTIC soul

DMR trailstar

JONES boring.

Would like to add a surly crosscheck to the list.

Driven a large unloaded diesel transit around the work carpark on the clutch. but no, not really.

I’m reasonably convinced that a 90deg head tube with reversed forks is just as stable and rideable as the conventional setup, it’s a biomechanical reason that normal bikes don’t use it.

Stable yes, rideable is debatable.

According to the calpoly uni 2wheeled vehicle chassis design course atleast … the steeper the headangle (for a given trail and COG) the less force will be exerted through the handlebar to allow you to feel for what the bike is doing. Holding the bike in a steady state turn, straightening the bike and turning harder all exert different forces at the handlebar. These forces are important for the rider’s ability to control the bike.

a 90degree headangle will result in a bike with no “feel”.

I can only assume this means a negative headangle will result in the forces which allow you to feel the state of the bike will be reversed.

I messed about making a bike with a 75degree headangle and 15mm rake fork, it was a fairly wicked thing to ride at times. Turned on a dime, which is what I wanted it for, but the steering didn’t give very much feedback and it was a difficult to ride. Other bikes with similar trail and more wheelflop handled a lot more intuitively.

The issue with a lot of the analyses above are that none of them are attempting to put the human into the equation. Hands-free stability theories will agree with what you are saying, Ben. But when you have a human rider as the control of a closed loop system the best bike examples have feedback that comes from wheelflop from a non-vertical headtube.

disagree with jairaj. I’m pretty light on equipment, but my rsp plummet barely lasted 6 months. Badly made rubbish, the section that holds the bushing stretched and it had huge amounts of play because of it.

I would understand if i was a larger person, but I’m a skinny light student, not someone who breaks things.

pdw has it right. It’s tyre design, not anything else.

On a knobbly tyre you get the most cornering grip from the inside edge of the outside knobbles. The same reason downhillers sometimes cut the transition knobs off between the centre tread and outside tread, to allow more dirt to get rammed in there and grip more. Push these knobbles into the ground more and you get more grip.

Road bikes and road motorbikes don’t have to lean the bike for edge grip … so don’t.

A cheesy video. But this guy does the same thing for invisible joints (in glass but).

Glued together. A glue with the same refractive index as the plastic will be invisible.

been lusting after one of these.

Tall bikes are fantastic for riding really slowly, so easy to balance due to their height. Impossible to wheelie though.

I like this video when he struggles to fit under a freeway bridge.

Hated butterfly bars, the shape of them was a lot less useable than flats and bar ends were.

Really like loops.

I have an rsp dropper. It’s taught me that I never want to ride a bike without a dropper again, it’s also taught me never to buy a shite one again.

The main bushing wobbles nearly a mm in the housing, which means the saddle has a solid 5mm forward and backward play. a bunch of rotational play. I think the alu housing is stretching under use, loosening up around the bushing. I’m waiting for it to fail spectacularly.

AVOID

Steel is £600 from biff

XACD one is a couple or three hundred and can be spec’d to anything you want

Out of curiosity i just spoke to them. £375 they want. Too much to risk on ti without a warranty, atleast for me.

Really like the ride of my jones and want a truss to see if it’s as revolutionary to the ride as the geometry and bars have been, but after getting a jones steel fork and headset it ends up costing more than what i paid for the complete bike. Are they that good?

Mielec (polish) for aluminium? bit agricultural in the finishing, but way cheap.

Anything with a bent seat tube disqualifies itself

and then you post a photo of a bogging bent downtube?

Get some custom dropouts machined so that you can run a set of 29er wheels without raising the bb. And a shorter set of forks to match.

How tall are you? it looks fairly large.

Really not a fan of tensioned leather saddles. The claims about them shaping to your arse is true, they sag at the points of highest pressure (your sit bones) and means that over time the pressure is even across your entire nether region.

But this is really NOT what you want. The same amount of pressure on your gooch as on your sit bones? Naw pal.

This is the reason you see brooks riders recommending tipping the saddle nose forward after they’ve been broken in. Less gooch pressure.

Unless you’re looking to set up a traditional looking bike just buy a modern saddle that fits you well and be done with it.

Any equivalently respected chinese (or uk) places that work in steel for not too many pennies? 4130 Steel truss would be nice.

High stong!

They’re using really big looking tubes in them. Any way you could get some wee skinny tubes like the jones wans?

maxxis ardent or on one smorg and chunky monkey for trails

ralphs for going well quick, not usually fitted though in scotland.

sad I missed this.

I don’t think they have changed much from their first incarnations.
most bikes are still designed around the double triangle design.

it is still the most common design and has been since pre 1900

precisely BECAUSE any further development on this design is being stifled by the uci, not because it’s the optimised design (especially with the mainstream adoption of composites).

That shed’s beautiful.

Today I’ve been mostly resewing an army bivvibag. It was one of the enormous danish ones, with all these extra bits of fabric, poppers everywhere and the front was this annoying velcroed flap (I don’t require the same quick exit an army guy does).

It’s now the same shape as an alpkit albeit with a longer hoodflap for full coverage when necessary. I’m proud of it.

alpkit kepler velo?

Oh, it came with a fat-front too. I hated that! swapped the wheels and am much happier.

The fat front had some strange handling quirks at slow speed, so much grip that the steering didn’t want to change line, almost as if the headset was too tight. I didn’t like it.

I’ve not ridden a plus but my diamond unicrown is lovely. I use it for the riding you describe with the emphasis on the ‘playing about’ and an occasional long day.

It really does handle very well. It reminds me of my old DMR trailstar, but (very) comfy, it’s so eager to jump and pump but I can ride it a decent distance with ease.

I bought it as it was being sold too cheap to say no to; I was ready to be skeptical, but now I am a total convert.

Wheelies better than any bike i’ve ever owned too.

Aye, seen that, but to hell with the logical choice. I just prefer the look of skinny tubes and matt black.

The aviator
Catch me if you can
Wolf of wall street

or at least Leonardo is basically the same character in them.

Gotta admit, I don’t buy into the 26″ wheels for touring bike thing, the usual argument is if you break something you can’t get it replaced. Rode 700c wheels through a number of the stans and snapped a spoke in Kyrgyzstan, went to the local market in Osh and picked one up in no time.

I just think it’s a bit out of date.

@ Xyeti

I have a female friend who works in a bikeshop who takes great pleasure in this very thing.

What are those aeropads Jameso?

The Jones boring. I really like it – and have spotted I have no photo’s of it on the trail.

frames showing at £130 now. Not that I need another bike.

Charging £140 for something that costs £10 to make is asking for copies to be made.

I understand where you’re coming from but i don’t think he IS taking a huge markup, not in his small volumes; and certainly NOT 140%. I also imagine he’s tied into some quite specific Jones tooling, having to have large batches of tubes drawn at a time.
It would certainly explain some of his design decisions. For example, when adding width to his Surly versions of the loop bar it was done by lengthening the grip rearward, when adding width by lengthening the central butted/tapered crossbar would be a better solution – doesn’t require a stem length change.

Jones loops are 13mm rise/drop i believe.

Njee isn’t wrong – they’re bloody ugly.

I totally disagree, the richness of the colour of the frame and smooth epoxy/hemp? joints are things of beauty.

But yes, destickering pretty much every bike makes it look better.

No, that’s a noticeable change in trail, a shorter stem will not make it the same as before.