Can you get heated seats that aren’t leather?

Of course. Even better in many ways, they tend to heat up faster.

pretty much everyone you see who can jump confidently has spent countless hours getting that way.

This is definitely true.

I don’t think many car manufacturers use real leather anymore these days, do they?

There’s a decent amount of fake leather around, but more of it is painted leather, so it is leather underneath but the surface finish is manufactured. Makes it a lot harder wearing and less prone to getting marked.

standard leather if it’s smooth finished is too slidy for my taste

Can be but if the fit of the seat is good it’s usually o.k. The Euro spec sport seats in my old BM were fine for me, the ones in my brother’s US spec BM were too wide. Make of that what you will…

Baby wipes aren’t a bad start though and are particularly good on leather.

Can I just clarify something… are you guys that CAN whip doing anything different BEFORE getting air on a jump, compared to a “normal” jump? Like line choice, angle of the bike into the jump, steering to a side or laying it over just before the lip?

No, that’s the point I’m trying to make, if you start moving the bike in one direction before you take off, it will keep going the direction in the air (remembers Newtons laws?) and you will not land the right way up, facing the right way. There may be exceptions to this for really advanced stuff, but by the time you get to that, you won’t be asking questions about it anymore. The good thing about this is that you can start small and work up, little bar turns etc.
Edit: Really proper moto whips do start before take-off before someone mentions that, but they also land at least a bit sideways when done on an MTB not a MX. MX bikes have an engine which allows you to put in extra energy in the air to move the bike, MTBs don’t.
In the meantime, ignore this and learn to x-up, table top, get a hand off the bars and so on and for all of that, everything happens in the air.

Good fabric seats are probably better to sit on (cooler, grippier) but as an overall ownership proposition (cleaning, residuals, ambiance) I’d rather have the leather.

I disagree with this too. For example, watch a slow-mo clip of someone doing a 360.

Of course. It goes without saying that if you are only trying to go move in one direction, i.e a spin or a flip, you’ll need to initiate before take off to get momentum. But for a whip or similar, you need to get back to straight and if you initiate before you take off you are just throwing yourself off the bike, there’s no way to get back to straight again.

I just don’t get how to whip.

Wait until the bike is in the air, move bike and body to desired shape, straighten out, land. 😀
The first point is pretty critical, if you try to initiate before you are in the air, you won’t be able to reverse it to land.
Practise and coaching is probably the answer though, it’s very easy to get the wrong idea and bin it in a pretty big way.

I wouldn’t ever bother with either of them. There’s no reason why a disc would come undone and no particular reason why Shimano discs would need these when other brands don’t. It’s lawyer tabs for your discs.

Apart from the armchair experts in here.

Well, naturally. I thought that went without saying 🙂

but going to email Avalanche for some info.

Call them. You’ll almost certainly get Craig Seekins himself. He’s very helpful and I doubt you’ll ever speak to anyone who knows and understands suspension better.

only very small difference in fuel economy maybe 5mpg.

That’d be the difference between 21 and 16 in my car 😀

I’d always put the bikes inside the car if possible, much more secure, fuel efficient and quieter, plus you don’t need to worry about them falling off or catching barriers etc. I’ve got a roof rack but it lives in the basement so I’d need to go and get it, carry it through the house and wrestle it on to the car by myself, which is going to be an extra 10-15 minutes over wheeling the bike out, dropping the wheels and slinging it in the back on a tarp that’s already in the boot. Leaving the roof rack on the car all the time is a big no for me, looks horrible, makes noise and uses more fuel for the 90% of trips when I don’t have a bike with me.

Looks very short, does it have a short top tube as they are expecting you to be on the hoods?

+1 for why wouldn’t you? I can’t see that clothes are any dirtier and if you are worried about stuff coming off clothes and ending up on the towels you might want to change your washing powder as you obviously don’t believe it works.
On the other side of things you will never win this argument, science is worthless in these situations.

Might struggle with the really tight turns but is crazy fast

I don’t think the turns would be an issue, Pikes Peak is all hairpins, but I’m not sure if it’s got the top speed and could cope with the undulations in the track.

Maybe due to the narrowness, the flowing bends

This is the killer for cars I suspect, the track is effectively 6ft or so wider for the bikes and the usual advantage for cars is braking and cornering, which isn’t such a big deal on this track. Plus the elevation changes favour the bikes higher power to weight ratio. Not to say it couldn’t be done, but I think you’d need to set out to build something to suit that packed the performance of a proper supercar into a rally car sized package but with nice stable high speed manners to allow it to be driven right at the limits on bumpy roads.

Avalanche damper in your existing 34s will be a better overall fork for less money than any of the new fork options. Plus it’s a bit more interesting, custom built for you and should be very reliable.

Indeed, I can’t expense my lunch each day, nor can I expense my work clothes as I work in a fairly casual office and can’t demonstrate that the clothes are work specific (they aren’t anyway). Plus I don’t get paid holidays, sick leave, a pension, health insurance or any other benefits at all.
Anyway, it’s up to you, if you fancy the contract self-employed lifestyle more, crack on and do it, you might be better off, you might not.

No you can’t,

Sole Trader?
My mistake. If you have a limited company, as I do, you can.

X9 type 2 cage doesn’t go as ‘straight’ along the chain as a non clutch type mech

This is true and it’s a potential gotcha when upgrading the mech. You need to actually check with the chain through the mech.

At the end of the day £400 per day is about the average weekly net pay.

Even if it is, it is still not, as several people have pointed out, what the guy is getting paid. It is what his company is charging, which then includes all of the tax that the business needs to pay and all of the overhead of running a business. What he can actually take out of that business himself is an entirely different matter. At the end of the day…

A massive +1 to this. A few folk seem to reckon that things like vans, computers, phones, tools etc all come for free.

Yup, a lot of folk seem to think it’s like expensing stuff when you are an employee of someone else’s company and you just get the money back, forgetting that for the self employed, you are also the company so the cost of the item still comes out of your pocket, just minus tax.

And I can’t buy a bike on the cycle2work scheme!

Yes you can, speak to an accountant.

if you didnt hit something then was the chain to short?

This, sounds awfully like the chain was too short, particularly if it took the hanger with it.
I’m not 100% clear from your OP, but you are of course aware that if you change to Shimano you’ll need a new gear lever too?
I’d just get a new X9 and double check the chain length with all the air out of your shock and the suspension fully compressed.

IME, the heater valve is always iffy on Pumas, if it’s stuck with the heater off you’ll be fine for a few months yet. 🙂

Or is the eyelet supposed to allow the shock to rotate around the mounting cylinders?

This is what happens, and is meant to happen.

ok, think my bushings have all been worn out then as they’ve always been very hard to move!

No, they get slacker as they wear. You are underestimating the forces applied at the end of the shock (large fractions of a ton or more), the friction you are feeling is trivial by comparison and it all moves fairly freely under load.

What I don’t understand is why there is no purpose made rotating part in the setup,

There is, the bushing in the shock is that part. It’s a very light, small and strong solution for that particular loading, anything that moved freely like a ball race would have to be huge and heavy to take the loading.

I disagree, if it sucks it up then it could indicate there’s a lot of rebound damping,

What it usually means without a rider on the bike is that it has some compression damping. Very few bikes significantly actuate their suspension when dropped under their own weight only. The rider is far too big a part of the overall system weight to discount in this way. Likewise, rebound without a rider on it meaningless, particularly with the advent of commonly available forks and shocks with proper speed sensitive rebound valving (e.g new Pikes etc) since they will control the rebound very well when the weight of a rider is on the bike (i.e recovering from a big compression) but rebound very fast without it (i.e wheel is off the ground and trying to track the back of a bump)

If you get off the bike and you drop it from say 1 meter up will it bounce or just suck up the impact and sit there?

This tells you nothing. Very few trail bikes will drop and not bounce like a DH bike often does and depending on the shock valving DH bikes often won’t either. It doesn’t mean the set-up isn’t right. You need a rider on the bike to judge the set-up.

I don’t know…. how does someone gauge which is too fast or too slow ?

This is my opinions, but a good start is:
Ride off a highish kerb sat down like a sack of spuds on the seat and watch the suspension. Does it just dip and return or does it dip, return, overshoot and drop back to the original ride height? Start with it too fast (second option above) and slow it down one click at a time until it just stops overshooting. Usually that click or the one faster than that is pretty much right. You want the forks to rebound a bit faster which is most easily judged by someone else watching while you bounce hard on the pedals as you roll along. Try and keep your weight off the bars as you do this.

You are most likely aware, but your pedal spindle isn’t looking too smart in that shot either, or at least, in addition to the twist in the crank, the pedal isn’t at right angles to the crank where it attaches. It could be more damage to the crank though, you’ll only know once you unscrew the pedal.

If you are still using bar ends then you will never be very Endooro

This, but I think if you stay over 720mm you’ll be ok.

I always just pop a bolt in them then tap them in with a hammer but there is always a bit of tapping it sideways to straighten it as you go required.

It needs bled, simple as that. Normally the air is sitting above the master cylinder so no problems, but as soon as it gets shaken it’ll turn the contents of the reservoir in the lever into foam and you get no brakes. Give it a minute and a few pulls of the lever, all the air comes back to the top, all ok again. If you turn the bike upside down for a minute then try the brakes I bet you’ll get the same result.

It often isn’t obvious as you don’t get fluid leaking out but you can’t get them working right if it’s leaking in there. You’ll obviously need a full, careful bleed after.

Not the exact answer you want but mine feels perfectly nice with a 50mm.

Most likely cause of the noise is that the bladder in the lever is leaking. Lever rebuild kit should sort it. Also worth freeing the pistons up by pumping them out as far as you dare, scrub with a tooth brush, drop a little brake fluid on them push them back in, pump them out again, drop on a little more fluid if needed them push in and pump out, wiping off any crap until they both more freely and evenly.

Hope F20s with the optional long pins on the front and back edges and leave out the pins in the middle are superb. I don’t like the Nanos as they have a lump liver the axle right where you want the pedal to be flat or concave.

How old is the chain? If you think you’d get away with it without problems on the cassette, It’d be worth trying a fresh chain, I strongly suspect it’s the chain getting flexible, not the ring wearing that causes these problems. I could be wrong though.

Mine last night

Nice! 😀

a pro who runs 10% sag

Really? In what discipline? I know they tend to run a lot stiffer compression damping but I’d have though minimal sag would just mess up geometry and traction.

Chain has got plenty of life in it

Oh, I’m sure there is, I simply mean that I don’t believe it’s predominantly the ring wear that causes the drop in performance. I could be wrong though.
And yes, there’s been some issues with clutches breaking but in terms of wear, they can be tightened up on both brands.