You think the comfort difference from a seatpost’s flex comes from the tiny vertical vector? (which is about 1/6th of the total movement).

No, it’s the fact that your saddle is extending behind the centreline of the post so as the post flexes back, the rear of the saddle drops. An imaginary line from the the top of the seat tube where the post emerges to the back edge of the saddle is at quite a shallow angle, the bit of the seat your weight is on is moving down for the backward flex at way more than 1:6.

Fairly similar to the Giros mentioned above but Shimano MT91s are excellent. Mavic Alpine XLs or Crossmax might be more what you are looking for though.

for trail…? How do you not constantly hit trees?

Same way as usual I expect, look where you are going :wink:
To be honest I’m not at all sure there’s all that many places where this is really a problem, there’s a very wide range of riding across the uk as a whole despite all the folk that will proclaim X or Y is “all you need for Uk riding”. Certainly despite a lot of the riding where I stay being in the trees (NE Scotland), there seems to be enough space between our trees that 800s are fine.

been there done that, cut at least 50 mm of each side, just to wide and will **** up you postion.

Much like the above, it’s conceivable that other folk may prefer wider than 700mm bars and that their riding position and body shape may mean that it doesn’t **** up their position…

Would YOU take one hand off the bars to flick a lever that you cant see, that’s possibly obscured by a frame bag? I would have to pull over when the trail allows, or just have an annoying ride down, clattering all over the place and not enjoying it as much as I could.

Alternatively, always rise with the suspension set for when you really want it, i.e descending, then there is zero risk of forgetting. This fix is also lighter, cheaper and more reliable :wink:

On the older Avid brakes it was the caliper shape that allowed for the CPS washers, so the mounts and adapters were standard, you could use any brand. The only way to get rid of the CPS washers was to run a solid spacer the same thickness. There isn’t a mount that will put them in the right place without some kind of spacer in there.
That SRAM info looks like they now make calipers that need the CPS and calipers that don’t but if they have had CPS from the factory you’ll need to keep it or put in a solid spacer instead.

Old Beetles seem to have stronger roofs than a lot of the other things though. Horrifying how easily all the old cars flip.

Nice to drive, quite small inside (certainly no bigger than a Focus of the same age), expect mid 20s mpg. Most of them are rusting now, check the wheel arches, particularly the front.

bump the spring rate up.

Pedantry, but you can only change the spring rate of an air spring by changing the geometry, specifically the diameter of the air piston, so this isn’t actually a possibility. Changing the air pressure only changes the preload.

Shocks (type, tuning and set-up) and other set-up differences can very easily make a much bigger difference than the exact suspension arrangement to the feel when simply bombing down hills. When it comes to behaviour under pedalling for climbing and behaviour when braking the specific arrangement comes into play more, but I wouldn’t by any means assume that your limited sample means single pivot bikes feel best for descending. FWIW, I find the Horst link arrangement that Specialized use feels much nicer when descending than the single pivot bikes I’ve ridden.

As mentioned above, chesty. And it has to be upside down in order to get the angle. For me the short arm thing upside down and then as low as it’ll go is just O.K but the longer arm allows it to go a few degrees lower and it’s better like that. The correct angle on the chesty looks like you’ll be filming up your own nose when you are standing, it’s above 45 degrees up I reckon. Gives this angle for me:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hfpCRvhNs98&list=UUx2jmDYL8AhrOssfxErh4dA
(Unedited for much nicer quality, hence the few seconds before the riding starts)

Work Components headset would get you a degree slacker headtube angle.

No offense but Subaru’s aren’t 4×4’s like landies. They are marketed as ALLwheeldrive. Not two spinning whilst waiting for the two rears.

I’m a fan of Subarus myself, but yes they are. The recent ones (i.e new shape Foresters) may be different and have electronic aids to brake a spinning wheel but the old shape ones would have got stuck in this exact way due to a non locking centre diff, in fact even one wheel off the ground or with zero traction would stop them on any sort of slope. In some ways the performance Subarus do better as they at least have limited slip centre and rear diffs so they do transfer at least some torque in this situation.
They do have the advantage that they don’t require the fronts to slip before the rears receive torque though so they are better than most in snow as they aren’t constantly slipping the fronts a little bit.

Absence of infuriating creak after finally getting the pressfit bottom bracket cups to shut the hell up in the carbon 29er.

I love chemical metal!
8O
The bearings can be removed from the cups, right?

The narrow field of view is a big problem if you want to mount it on a bike / helmet / rider etc. It’ll be very hard to keep it pointing the right way and the resulting footage will tend to look rather wobbly and slow.

O.k, so next question, how much does a 700c tub weigh?

Somewhere in between for normal road use. The difference will be more in longevity and performance when used very hard than in how they work under normal circumstances. Any of the brands you named should be o.k, Pagid make very good pads for sure, I’d assume their discs are good too.
Personally I’ve sometimes chosen to go with good pads and slightly cheaper discs as a lot of the time corrosion kills the discs on the back surface before they are worn out although it depends whether you do mostly long or short trips

. Are there any other narrow/wide, 104bcd options, before I buy an absoluteblack?

This one:
http://singletrackworld.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/blabs-oval-narrowwide-offset-chainring/

No clipless pedals will work as flats, the mechanism is where your weight wants to be and is not grippy without cleats clipped into it.

This.

an estate is too long
Even mondeo hatches are really long. Best check that.

^ This, the estate versions of many cars are the same length as the saloon / hatch versions.

Right foot forward on the bike, Goofy foot on a board, right handed. I hip and table to the left and feel more comfortable pushing the limit on left turns, which makes sense to me for a leading right foot, I’d think left leaders would be the opposite.
I’d always assumed that it went with your boarding foot, so slightly more folk should be left foot leaders on the bike but it’s not looking that way so far from the above.

I’ve got one of the Absolute black ones on one of my bikes. I’ve only ridden it twice but I like it. Weirdly, if anything, it feels rounder than a round ring and after a few seconds isn’t noticeable unless you look down. Going back to a round ring afterwards you notice the tough spots that the oval ring is trying to eliminate.

Still seems like only the last 5 years or so when you could go out for a ride and be in the minority on a hardtail. And that still coencided with me moving from the Peaks to Berkshire, when I went back upto North Yorkshire 26″ hardtails seemed to be the prefered choice again.

There has been some degree of mountain biking occurring in other locations during the period involving folk you’ve not met though, so your experiences might not be entirely representative of Uk MTBing as a whole.

nowhere else ‘does’ hardcore HT’s in partuclarly steel ones, whereas 5-10 years ago you could turn upto some STW rides and stick out like a sore thumb if you weren’t on a Dialled PA or Inbred. Even FS was a novelty in the UK untill 5 yeas ago.
STW really isn’t a representative sample of the UK cycling public. To suggest that FS bikes were rare and Inbreds common 5 years ago is to ignore what’s actually been going on.

Indeed, that doesn’t in any way shape or form represent the riding scene I’ve seen and been involved in around Aberdeen. Maybe 15 years ago full suspension was rare, 10 not so much and in the last 5 years its probably the norm. All the enthusiast riders I know have been on full suspension only for more than 10 years now. I think you might be confusing the Uk riding scene with around where you live, the same way folk do when suggesting particular gearing set-ups are “all you need for Uk riding”.

It’s possible as it sacrifices safety margins for dodgy fuel, high temps and so on and also emissions performance and tunes it so it runs the way that is best for the engine rather than balancing performance and economy against emissions and safe robustness.

Often it’s done by adjusting timing and turbo boost maps rather than just throwing more fuel at it, hence the reason you can get more power and better economy.

get yourself a 60mm stem and see the difference in control, you’ll get used to it in no time at all, especially if you get wider bars to match it.
don’t waste yer money on tyres when that isn’t the problem

Some of us actually rode just fine on bikes with 135mm stems that were designed for them, believe it or not!
The big difference you’ll notice if you put a 60mm stem on a bike like that will be the 2-1/2″ less reach to the bars making you massively uncomfortable.

On the topic of the OP, I’m not sure I’d choose to run spikes for a mostly road commute, have you anything slightly treaded to try?

I don’t really think there’s any need for a bash on a 1x set-up. The spiky and bendable teeth of the ring are covered by the less spiky and much harder chain, plus, as above it’ll be small and therefore pretty high up. I reckon it’s just adding back some of the weight advantage that going 1x gives you.

Looks nice, but for me the only improvement over the Solaris I have is the finish of the welds and paint.

Also, there’s something impossible about the geometry figures, the reach can’t possibly be right for those top tube lengths and seat tube angles. You’d be able to see in the photos if it was THAT long.

Have you tried to ride an XC bike with XC angles with a 40-50mm stem?

Yup, I maybe ride oddly but I notice very little difference in handling with stem length changes, mainly just the bars feel nearer or further away.

Go with a 30mm or 35mm I’d say. It’ll steer nicely, she’ll most likely not be charging rooty singletrack at speed so high speed stability in the rough isn’t a big issue I wouldn’t think. Regardless, it’ll be easier to ride with manageable reach and quick steering than with the bars too far away.
As above, also consider how to get the bars as low as possible and check out whether the brake lever reach can be reduced.

Have you actually spoken to Turner or just through Silverfish? If you haven’t already I’d recommend actually calling Turner to be sure.

Another vote for Shimano if you are interested in getting them done up tight and reliability. Something else if you are more interested in weight and looks at the expense of function.

Two seperated by a few mm give a nearly parallel movement which may be the way to do it.

The moving end still tries to move in a circle, it now just does it while staying parallel to the other end, thus putting a big stress in at both ends, it’s really no better. At any rate, in this case the movement will be dictated by the much larger and stiffer frame tubes, any flexure plates will just be forced to do what they have to to keep up.

To the OP, the upwards curving twin tubes look nice but aren’t they really curved the wrong way to make the rear end flex much vertically? Imagine, if you took the seat stays away, the rear wheel would be cantilevered on the chainstays and over small deflections move like it was on a swingarm, pivoted somewhere near the BB. So the axle would be moving up and forwards in an arc. That arc is pretty much in direct line with your curving tubes, so effectively you are putting them into compression and transferring a huge load to the top of the headtube, thus stressing both connections to the headtube very heavily. If the tubes arched downward (yes, like a Jones), you would be flexing them like leaf springs and quite probably get on better. Your current design will mainly soften the ride by allowing the seat tube to flex backwards (until it bends or snaps at the weld).

I’d be tempted to do the twin tubes arched downward and weld a thin horizontal flat plate between them in a couple of places to allow them to work together as one beam sideways in order to give lateral stiffness then run a couple of small diameter tubes from the high on the seatube to around the headtube/downtube junction to stop the seat tube flexing back. add in a flat plate section behind the BB in the chainstays to take away the vertical stiffness there is need be. It probably wouldn’t look as nice, and it’d probably be heavy but you might get it to flex at the rear wheel if the stays were slim enough.

Also booked in for both and looking forward to it. I better get some bigger rides in, the last year has been a quiet one riding wise since my daughter arrived.

First step for me would be a pair of 203mm shimano discs, these ones are good: http://www.chainreactioncycles.com/shimano-xt-rt76-6-bolt-disc-rotor/rp-prod39007
and a pair of Shimano brake adapters. That should get the pads lined up with the discs. Drop the pads you’ve got out, give them a wee sand on some fine, clean abrasive paper and pop them back in. Bed the brakes in and try it like that. It should be fine, if not you’ve maybe contaminated the pads in which case, new pads and clean the discs and that should definitely be it. Id spring for the Shimano pads myself for the first set, to get a datum of how well they can work before you try a cheaper replacement and decide the brakes are no good when it could just be cheap pads.
At 75 kg my SLXs with the discs above are borderline too powerful, they grab like crazy.

Is that demo photoshop gone wrong or is the shock really on one side?

Shock is in the middle, frame is asymmetric.

Dumb q, can you not run a small cage on 1×10 with a 30 front and 42 rear?

No, as above. The size of the front doesn’t actually come into it when you only have a single on the front, its just the difference between largest and smallest on the back.

Why do they need to be stiff if you using a large flat pedal made of metal?

Because there is still an edge under your instep where your foot goes from on the pedal to in fresh air which you can easily feel and it causes a lot of people to get achy feet after a while.

There’s honestly a really big improvement in comfort and grip from normal skateshoes to something like 5:10s.

The 10 spd XTR shifter is very light and smooth, to the extent that for me on the steeper bumpier bits of natural trail around Aberdeen I found it hard sometimes to get one gear at a time. The Saint shifter is a bit more positive which I like better.

I take my seatpost out when I wash my bike

Why?

Fully open all the time here, I don’t like having to remember to change the settings before descending and I don’t remember the last fork I had that bobbed to a noticeable extent when climbing.