That’s because there’s little or no demand for one.

This. By the time you have a designed a bike primarily around reliability and fitted a coil shock to it, there is absolutely no reason to restrict it to 110mm travel, so why would you?
The requirement for durability and ability to hammer rocky descents will require solid wheels and tyres and by the time you’ve fitted the wheels off a 140-160mm bike, you have something that pedals pretty much like a 140-160mm bike. The actual amount of travel at the rear wheel is much less important to the feel at the pedals than the tyres the bike is fitted with.
I’ve always reckoned that it’s often most accurate when deciding what bike to buy to start by picking the tyres you need / want to run and get a bike that will suit the tyres.
After all, it is usually the tyres that are the limit on the capability of the bike, and either one of running heavy duty tyres on a light, flexy frame or running lightweight, fragile tyres on a burly long travel frame is just saddling yourself with all the disadvantages of either end of the scale.

They don’t which is why they are not really floating rotors, but it is quite normal to call them that anyway.

No, lateral movement doesn’t make them floating, lateral movement makes them broken.
What makes them floating is if the outer, braking part of the rotor can expand radially without restriction, while being held laterally.

I was also of the understanding that the floating aspect of Hope rotors allowed them to expand radially to stop any restriction to the material expansion causing them to buckle. I did not think they had any lateral movement for ‘centring’.

This is correct and is the exact definition of a floating rotor. Sorry MSP, you are under a misconception here.

So what’s a floating rotor compared to a 2 piece?

Like this: Floating rotors[/url]

The point is that they can expand radially but are still constrained side to side and located circumferentially so that the braking forces can be carried. They shouldn’t float sideways too, it’ll tend to knock the pads back and cause lots of dead travel in the brakes.

As you’ll know, 2-piece rotors are riveted together so this can’t happen, you are just getting strength and weight benefits.

You must be a lot more sensitive to differences in shifter feel than I am then, because they feel identical in use to me! Ive got saint on the Foxy, XTR on the Cotic and I can’t tell the difference.

I’m with Northwind, I can definitely tell the difference, I’ve had both XTR and Saint 10 speed shifters and the XTR is too light for my tastes, I found that I’d occasionally get too many gears at once when the terrain was very bumpy and I needed a quick shift. The Saint is a little more defined in it’s clicks, like SRAM is and I haven’t had the same issue with it.

I’m in for a Reverb one, I’ll drop you an e-mail.

For me a bike should feel at one with you on trail riding- you lean it goes etc. For you to over ride the bloody thing isn’t right.

It’s not a totally unreasonable attitude, and a fair enough way to pick bikes, but surely you are limiting yourself to bikes that feel like the ones that you learnt to ride on, or at least similar to your last well liked bike if it needs to be immediately intuitive? After all, familiar and habitual aren’t necessarily right, are they, so it’s fair enough if folk are willing to learn how to ride a little differently for the sake of getting used to a bike which may offer better capabilities in some regard.

Another +1 for no real problems between my full slushbox Subaru Outback and my wife’s manual Panda. Same for my wife. We both very occasionally mess up but it’s almost always in the manual, not the Auto, by braking to a halt without dipping the clutch, or by reaching the end of our short street, still in second, braking to a near halt without dipping the clutch to check it’s clear then simply planting your foot back onto the throttle. Sudden stall in both cases and you don’t do it again for weeks.
The situation you mentioned where you “dip the clutch” in the auto is something that I’ve found that you simply stop doing once you’ve had a few hours practise in the auto but as mentioned, it’s a good plan to be very deliberate about tucking your left foot onto the foot rest or up by the seat until you learn.

Fox are generally compatable

Woah!, that’s a sweeping generalisation. Older Fox 36s have space but I’m pretty sure the smaller forks don’t have clearance between the crown and the tyre at full compression.

a coil shock

Then yes, your easiest way to check the chain is long enough is to take at least one end of the shock out.

How many chaninrings are you running? You’ll probably get away with a short cage if it’s 1x with an 11-34 but it’s always better to have too long a mech cage than too short.

Also, do I need to remove the shock to drop the bike low enough to fit the chain? I think the answer is ‘yes’ to this one.

To fit it? No, just join the chain with it sitting around the BB shell if you find it hard to hold against the mech tension then lift it onto the ring once it’s joined. If you mean to check the length, then still no, just let all the air out of the shock.

I’d start by setting the sag by measurement and go with whatever pressure gives you 20% stood up then wind all the compression damping right off, both low and high speed and go back a little at a time until you get the ride you want. The air pressure will have a much bigger effect than the damping on dive in these circumstances but won’t hurt the performance on sharp edged bumps.

+2
I’d suggest you are running your forks too soft air pressure wise and they are diving hugely. I’d be looking at more like 18-20% sag set standing with all your weight on the pedals.
+2 on body position being a significant part of the fix too.

Avalanche cartridge upgrade for the Pike?

yes it has, for me.

Me too!

For those of us who came into it from a mountaineering background in the 80s and 90s, mountain biking was a means of getting around the mountains with, hopefully, a decent bit of downhill to round off the day.

Ah, but that was folks from a mountaineering background co-opting mountain bikes for their own purposes rather than what Mountain biking had always been about :wink:

Cairn William isn’t too hard (assuming that’s the climb up to the Trig point), it’s the boulder mess of a climb before it that bugs. IMO trail centres shouldn’t have hike-a-bike sections in, that’s just daft.

Yes, the main one that’s all reasonably rideable and finishes with some big slabs is Cairn William. For what it’s worth, the other one is rideable too, I can’t do it myself but I’ve seen it done! It’s a push / carry for me though.

Mountain biking to me has always been about getting to the top of the hill, enjoying the views then getting the maximum fun out of the descents. That was the case when I started about 25 years ago and I don’t think that’s really changed. The capability of bikes has increased enormously which has in turn changed the features we consider appropriate for a given level of rider to tackle but I don’t think your average rider has any more of a downhill only bias than ever they did, almost everyone likes going downhill on a bike, not everyone likes climbing!

throwing yourself down a tricky descent requires skill too and some fitness, but it often seems to be more a test of courage than of fitness

To me, if you feel that riding something is predominantly a test of courage then you are riding over your head. Downhill riding for me has always been about applying my skills well in tricky situations not about taking what feels like a gamble.

As an aside Pitfichie is weird, it could be really quite good, but it’s almost like they built a little bit then thought, pah this is hard work we can’t be bothered anymore.

This times many, the fact that unless you ride the DH course at the end, you finish the main descent still most of the way up the hill and have to lose the rest of the height down fireroads just makes it feel like it’s all climb and very little descent as if it was some sort of MC Escher trail centre. However, for what it’s worth, despite being a fairly DH biased rider (almost always on a long travel bike, DH racing background) I do usually ride all of the Cairn William climb, including the features and for a climb, it’s actually quite fun. The descent on the the other hand requires so much pedalling and work to feel like you are pushing at all that it’s almost as hard work as the climb and not much more fun.

Now, if you look at the line along which that force is acting (which is different for the 32 and 22 chainrings) and where that line is in relation to the pivot, you can see that those two options will have a very different effect on the suspension.

I stand to be proved wrong on this, but I thought it was more a case of the angle between the line of the chain as viewed side on and a line through the wheel axle and the pivot than whether the chain actually passed in line with the pivot. In other words, for the Orange 5 situation the chain leaves the sprockets above the hub and the chain line and the axle/pivot line converge towards the front of the bike. This tends to try and extend the suspension by an amount which creates about the right amount of anti-squat for flat surfaces.
Putting it into the small ring drops the chain at the front and increases the angle between the chain line and the axle/pivot line, increasing the anti-squat for climbing.
So, your argument is that running a single ring removes the ability to increase the angle of the chainline in this way for climbing. Which would be true except for one thing, we are mostly running larger sprockets on the back to compensate for the larger rings, which has the exact same effect on the chainline, increasing the angle, just from the other end by lifting the back, not by dropping the front.
Edit: The change may be slightly less than it used to be though, 24t granny with 32 middle used to be normal, an 8t difference, now we are usually going from a previously 36t largest sprocket to a 42t, only a 6t difference. Of course if you used to run an 11-34 cassette, it’s the same.

Another no, for the exact same reasons as daver27 gave.

Growinglad, read up on valve stem seal wear on those engines before jumping in. It’s a lovely engine to drive but there seems to be a common / endemic issue with the valve stem seals wearing and it burning oil. At the very least, if you go to see one, let it have a long idle (5-10 mins) then give it a rev and look for smoke out the exhaust.
https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=bmw+650i+valve+seals&oq=bmw+650i+val&aqs=chrome.1.69i57j0l5.22759j0j7&sourceid=chrome&es_sm=93&ie=UTF-8

Your engine could well have a knock sensor to detect pre det, but I’d imagine if it did, it would throw up an engine warning light and perhaps put the car into limp mode or something.

The engine has a knock (det) sensor fitted to it, this can be anything from a simple piezo microphone that listens for it to far more complex systems that look at what happens as the plugs fire such as BMWs ion current system that can tell from how the spark jumps how close it is to det. If the sensor detects trouble the ECU simply retards the ignition timing a bit which will prevent the knock. It will gradually try to advance the ignition again if no further problems occur until it figures out where the limit is. However, on most cars the default map is safe on standard fuel and the ability to get more out of higher octane fuel is very limited or zero. It should, however cope with a bad batch of fuel without problems and then slowly recover to standard mapping once it’s running on good fuel again. The BMW system above is once of the few that can get more than the quoted stock engine output from better than expected fuel.

My wife also has tiny hands and her bike is set-up with a grip shift for the front shifter for that exact reason. She loves it, previously, to get the front to shift up, she had to take her hand off the bars to push the lever far enough with the heel of her hand. The grip shift is easy.

As above, if it’s been backed up, just put in a blank unformatted new drive, restart in recovery mode and point it at the back-up.

Have you gone the right side of the tab on the mech? A lot of folk miss it, and that would do exactly what you’ve said. The one between the jockeys.

And just to trip you up, the chain goes the other side of said tab than it did on older mechs…

Iam sure my old ones had a tiny grub screew on the side of the end caps

Like the one you can see in that photo? :D

Report back on how it works.

Isn’t 953 already stronger than titanium? Reynolds lists it’s “Ultimate Tensile Strength” as way higher than their titanium tubing. (I am not an engineer

Yes, Titanium isn’t all that strong in absolute terms. From the article it looks like they mean that the new material has a better strength to weight ratio.

I’d not choose to do it that way, but I’m expecting to need the 42t regularly so I want it to feel like just one more step up from the 36t. In terms of shifting, I reckon the problem will more likely be getting a satisfactory b-tension setting to achieve acceptable shifting right across the range as the distance from the top pulley to the sprockets will vary quite a lot. Are you using a Shimano mech or SRAM? The SRAM ones with the top pulley offset from the pivot of the mech arm seem to cope much better than the Shimano ones where the pulley and arm are coaxial.

A mate had a BMW where the climate control sensor was next to the cup holder, so on a warm day you put your nice cold drink in the cup holder and the car thinks ‘brrr, it’s a bit nippy, better put the heating on’. Vice versa in the winter, too. Genius.

Old 5 Series? I had one of those, it was the other way round than you described though, the heat off your coffee would make the climate control think it was roasting in the car and turn to full cold. The only thing you could do was turn the fan off (thus causing the screen to mist up) or turn up the requested temperature up to about 36 or whatever the max was. Then again, those cup holders didn’t, suggesting that they were a total afterthought.
I loved that car but it had a few issues like that; the wipers were still LHD even on the RHD versions, so the unswept corner was on the drivers side and I don’t think any height of driver could simultaneously get a comfy position and see the top part of the speedo and the turn signal indicator lights.
It was still a lovely car to own and drive though and at least avoided issues like the unlit stalks and minor controls on my current Subaru Outback that makes it very tricky to remember how to, for example, turn on the front driving lights after dark.

If you fill the reservoir, replace the cap, hold the lever with the hose outlet at the highest point and pump the lever until you see oil coming out and no air then refill the reservoir, you might get away with it. I’d bet against it though.

Double post

Well, you’ll need a rear mech or some kind of sprung tensioner on the rear to allow the length of the chain to change and you’ll need to be running a dérailleur chain not a SS one but if you do those things it should work.

It’s about 10% higher.

So a 3 tooth smaller ring would give you the same gears. That’s not an option obviously, but a 30t chainring will get you pretty close.

The elements versions are the ones intended for wetter weather.

As Northwind suggested, Ben Aaronovitch would be worth a look. Jim Butcher is generally pretty enjoyable too.

OP, Hopes are nice and pretty burly built around the edges where the Vaults went. The optional long pins makes them as grippy as you’ll ever need.

how dose everyone manage to use those sticky uppy bits on flat pedals without ripping bits out of their legs whenever anything goes vaguely pear-shaped?

Best plan is to make sure you don’t slip your pedals :wink:
Grippy shoes, big pins and decent technique will do the trick.

Maybe I didn’t give them a fair go before returning to SPDs…

This.

Is the cable inner definitely clamped under the correct side of the bolt on the clamp?

In those circumstances, yes, it’s probably the dog owners fault but unfortunately without his good will to help you out you will really struggle to prove it and get anything out of him.

I don’t see the problem. The current legal default is dogs on leads, if not you’d better have them under control or be liable for any resulting damage. As an owner you are responsible, it makes no difference what you can “reasonably foresee”.

I’m playing devils advocate a bit but it’s not hard to imagine a dog / cyclist collision which was the cyclists fault for riding into a dog they should easily have been able to see. What if you ride straight into a dog on a lead? Who’s fault now?

Which is irrelevant – as the owner you are responsible for a dog’s actions whether or not you knew what it was going to do.

I’m fairly sure you’d find that trying to make a legal case of that approach would quickly degenerate into judgement of what the owner can be reasonably expected to forsee. Anything else would necessitate having all dogs on leads all the time.
Look at it this way, who would have been responsible if the animal in question was a horse being ridden by it’s owner and the horse was startled and turned in front of the bike? Or how about something else about the size and predictability of a dog, a child?

I suspect, as above, it’s just a bad luck thing. The .gov link is irrelevant, the dog didn’t injure the OP, the dog was a contributing factor in an accident in which the OP was injured. There would be no way to prove the dog owner had any idea how the dog would react so you can’t prove liability there either.

That velo news article suggests a measured vertical deflection of .2″, about 5mm. That’s going to be a noticeable benefit and certainly an order of magnitude more than your’ll ever get from frame flex regardless of material.