But aren’t fork offset and head angle just two different ways to achieve the same thing (i.e. the trail)? It’s been a while since I looked at bike design, but I thought that what matters is the horizontal distance between the contact patch of the tyre on the ground and the point where a line drawn through the centre of the steerer hits the ground (which I think is the trail). So, you can change this by changing the offset of the fork or the head angle, but it amounts to the same thing. In which case, are these newer slacker bikes just the same as the older ones (with the change in head angle just compensating for the change in offset)?

Cheers,

Andy

Thanks folks.

So, those who have ridden both do tend to prefer the newer model, but those who only have the older one are happy enough with it not to be tempted.

The comments would tend to tie in with the idea that all they’ve really done is fitted a longer fork and reduced the head angle so that the three contact points are in pretty much the same position (relative to each other and to the rear axle). That would explain why the climbing is pretty much unaffected but it feels a bit more stable on the way down. It would also suggest that you could get a very similar feel from an older model by using an angle reducing headset and a longer fork.

Cheers,

Andy

This move to slacker head angle on 29ers is interesting. Didn’t they start out using the same head angles as 26″ bikes, but everybody complained that they steered like a barge? So the head angle was increased to tighten up the steering. What has changed (or have I just got my history wrong)?

Cheers,

Andy

6’1″ on an 18″ (with 75mm stem). Still trying to decide if that’s right. My other FS bike (Trance) is a 20″ (with 110mm stem), which feels better for longer, less technical mile munching, but when things get fun the smaller Orange is easier to chuck about. Reckon I’d probably be happy with either to be honest.

Cheers,

Andy

Ironically, after nearly 15 years of being purely a roadie I’ve (re)discovered mountain biking this year and the road bikes have barely been touched. I guess I’m just counter-cyclical, or perverse, or just terminally uncool. Probably all three.

Cheers,

Andy

Any sign of the Strange (29er Five)?

Cheers

Andy

Be honest, did you think it would be “faster but less fun” before you rode it?

I’m not accusing you of anything, but it is incredibly hard to remove observer bias from these tests. Anybody who has experienced or observed the placebo effect, for example (where a subject will feel significant reductions in very real symptoms from taking a pill that can have no effect) will know just how easy it is to be fooled by your own subconscious preconceptions.

I suspect that, if you are told by somebody you trust that a bike will ride a certain way then that’s how it will feel when you ride it. I can even believe that, if you are told that a bike is faster you will be faster on that bike (at least for a while). But, since I’ve not thought of a way to do a proper blind test of a bike, I’m not in a position to prove any of this.

Thanks for the review though, it was an interesting read.

Cheers,

Andy

Depends which trails you are planning to do I guess. We lived out in Utah around 15 years ago and rode Slickrock and White Rim trails on fully rigid steel bikes. But I bet there is more technical stuff around there too.

Just remember to take plenty of water. It’s so dry that you don’t know you are sweating until you start to feel crap. So keep drinking and have fun.

Cheers,

Andy

Always likes Paramo stuff and am thinking about a Velez smock for when it gets properly cold up here (North East Scotland). Probably too warm for most of the year, although I hear the Mountain Bike instructors at Glenmore Lodge (Aviemore love theirs). Probably get them for free and spend a fair bit of time standing around though.

The Quito looks interesting, but presumably the shell is made of the same lightweight material as the Velez light. I tried a Velez light and the material is certainly noisier and doesn’t look like it would be as easy to fix after a crash. But (without derailing the thread) I’d be interested to hear of any real world experience of mountain biking in the Quito. It comes in Orange, which may be enough to sell it to me anyway!

Cheers,

Andy

Thanks for keeping it fun Paceman.

I was just trying to make the OP feel better really. Obviously we all know he made a huge mistake :-)

Cheers,

Andy

BTW… This debate has kept me highly entertained today if nothing else

Me too :-)

You are quite right. I couldn’t bodge anything together as good as the current crop of 29ers. But a lot of manufacturers could, they have been able to for a long while and some did. But the idea didn’t catch on. Other than the lack of a big marketing budget I can’t really see why not.

The suspension argument is a bit of a red herring. One of the big advantages claimed for 29ers is that they require less suspension to give the same ride. I suspect that perfectly adequate suspension forks were around for 29ers a long while before they became popular. But I’m getting into the realms of supposition now, which is never good.

As I keep saying, I’m not anti 29er. It may be that things have just developed to the point where everything came together and made the format viable. But I can also see that there is a huge benefit to the industry in making people believe that a new wheel size is better (you can’t just upgrade, need a new bike etc), which makes me suspicious. Especially when the wheel size has been an option open to manufacturers for as long as I can remember.

Still, at the end of the day they are all just bikes. To most of us they are tools for getting out into the wild and having fun. The sun wont shine any brighter or the view be any better, just because your bike has different size wheels.

Cheers,

Andy

You’ve answered your own question. “Suspension forks and disc brakes only became popular once they became affordable”. Actually it was when decent suspension became affordable, but I guess it amounts to the same thing. 29er wheels (as 700c rims) have been around and no more expensive than their 559 cousins for donkeys years. It’s not as if there has been a sudden jump in technology that makes 29er wheels dramatically lighter or stronger either. You could build a wheel with a 700c rim 10 years ago that was pretty much as light and stiff as anything most 29er riders are using these days. There were also CX tyres around that were light and would suit most riders as well.

As I said, I’m not against progress. I love it when new things come along that make bikes better. But 700c rims are not new. They (along with 26″ wheels) were a perfectly sensible choice for off road bikes 20 years ago and they are still a perfectly sensible choice now.

Cheers,

Andy

I’ve got nothing against 29ers, but likening them to suspension and disc brakes is a bit daft. They were both things that we didn’t have (or at least not in a useful form) until they were developed. The 29er wheel size has been around (and offered by various manufacturers) since the dawn of the mountain bike. If it is so much better, why weren’t we all riding 29ers 20 years ago?

Again, I’m not against them, they may offer some benefits (and some drawbacks) in some situations. My next bike may have larger (or smaller) wheels. But the recent growth in the 29er surely has as much to do with the fact that some big brands have put a lot of marketing dollars behind them than as anything else.

Cheers,

Andy

Many years ago (in the days of halogen) I learnt that there is a lot more to lights than lumens. After a few experiences with cheaper lights I moved to some Lumicycle ones. While the quoted output was lower they were so much better. Maybe some of these new Chinese made LEDs are better, but ever since then I’ve stuck with the bigger brands. The headline number may be lower, but if the heat sinking and optics are better it will still be a better light out on the trail.

Cheers,

Andy

Surely it should be a Reflex on the bars. Ten percent more lumens innit.

Diablo is brighter than joystick, but bigger, heavier and half the burn time, so not sure that’s a trade off I’d be happy with.

Thanks for all the feedback though.

Cheers,

Andy

Thanks.

Those that bought them seem to like the, I guess that’s the case with most things, but still useful feedback and they are sort of British, which is worth a fair bit to me. Pity it can’t charge my iphone/ipad. That would have been cool, even if I wouldn’t use the feature much in practice. Still, I’ll probably give one a try.

Cheers,

Andy

Is that a tumbleweed I see rolling past.

A bit more searching suggests that the SPT+ socket won’t charge an iPhone (even with the boost cable). So, I guess the joystick is no better (for me) than any other small, light, bright torch with a helmet mount.

Cheers

Andy

Not a big fan of the skunk stripe, but can’t find (or even imagine) anything that works once you start dropping of the back of the saddle for descents. So, for now, I’ll stick with (partially) waterproof shorts.

Cheers,

Andy

Since this debate consists almost entirely of unscientific subjective comparisons of apples and oranges, let me throw in mine.

Over the last couple of weeks I’ve done decent length tests on a 29er hardtail, which I didn’t like much and a 26″ Orange Five, which I loved. So, there you go, proof conclusive that 29ers are rubbish :-)

Cheers,

Andy

After getting 4 pinch flats on a descent of Ben Rinnes a few weeks back I decided to give it a go. Must admit (after all the horror stories) I was surprised at how easy it was to set up (Nobby Nic tubeless ready tyres on ZTR Flow EX rims). Only had a few rides so far, so can’t really say if it’s helped, but so far, no problems.

Cheers,

Andy

Damn you Metalheart, with your pictures of your Rocket on natural Scottish trails. That’s a trail centre play bike and is far too long and slack for riding natural mountain trails. Well that’s what I keep telling myself, so stop trying to prove me wrong OK :-)

Cheers

Andy

Thanks. Guess we’re all different as I really enjoyed the Five and can’t wait to ride it again.

I’m reluctant to drop the bars to make it better at 150mm in case it makes it worse at 120mm where is was really surprisingly good. But I guess it would be easy enough to move a spacer from under the stem and I could put it back on the trail if I didn’t like it.

There is also an issue that I forgot to mention with the size. The Trance is a Large (20″) where the Orange is 18″. I spent a long while trying to decide between M and L with the Trance and I’m still not sure if the Orange is the right size. Being smaller makes it easier to chuck around though.

The flex could have been in my head of course, but it didn’t feel as tight as the Trance.

Cheers

Andy

Well that was fun :-)

I took the Orange on a two hour blast over and around Bennachie this morning. A route I’ve ridden a few times on the Trance. Nothing particularly technical, but some climbs, rocky bits, boggy bits etc.

Based on … well just on the way it looks really, I’d expected the Orange to be solid, dependable, maybe even agricultural. In fact the words that seemed to describe it best were, lively and fun. It’s a bike that just wants to play, which wasn’t really what I was expecting at all.

I started off with a gentle fire road climb (lockout & propedal on), which was uneventful. I had the forks wound down to 120mm. I then came to a steep loose climb (turn off lockout/propedal), which I’ve failed to get up the last few times on the Trance and got up it no problem, which was a pleasant surprise. Now I have cleared it on the Trance once or twice as well, so I may have just got lucky, or maybe the vegetation has died back a bit. It did seem easier to move the Orange around though and it felt more stable at low speed. On the steepest section there are two line choices. One is tough at the start (never cleared it) then easier, the other starts smoother then has bigger bumps. With the Orange I was able to start on one then pop across to the other line half way up, which I’ve never managed before. But, as I say, I may have just got lucky.

The next section is a drag up to the top, which is on the limit for me physically. I couldn’t ride all the way up a few months ago, but now I can, just. I left propedal off (because this is what I do on the Giant) and prepared to suffer. And suffer I did, but I still managed to ride all the way.

Once at the top I set the forks to 150mm and tackled a boggy and rocky section. This has lots of deep but narrow holes and I found the Orange a bit of a handful here. It was hard to keep on top of the front wheel and it felt a bit like riding a Bronco. It might just be a case of getting used to the feel with the longer travel, but I’d be tempted to leave it at 120mm for this section next time.

Riding across the top (rocky path) it felt great and again it was its ability to scramble up loose steep bits that really surprised me. A few time I rode up some obstacle before realizing that it was something that had given me problems in the past.

Coming down was fun, but I did feel that the back end was more flexible than the Trance. It wasn’t necessarily a bad thing and contributed to the general lively feeling of the ride, but it could be a problem if you really wanted to push it. I suspect that this extra flex was also a factor in the way it was able to get up steep technical stuff, with the back able to move around rocks a bit more.

As I said I’d expected the Orange to be the solid dependable one of the two. In fact the opposite is true. The Trance is totally dependable. It’s a real skill compensator, which is great if, like me, you have no skills. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve messed something up (either because I didn’t see it in time or just rode it badly) and have been left thinking “wow, how am I still upright”. The Trance is a great go anywhere, do anything bike that will never let you down and encourages you to keep on pushing it. The Orange is the fun bike that brings a big grin to my face, but I do wonder if one day it may get me in trouble (when the back steps out of line unexpectedly, for example).

I’d also expected that the Orange would be better going down but worse going up. In fact, the biggest surprise was how good the Orange was at going up stuff. It seemed no worse on fire road type climbs and much better on loose rocky climbs. Going down they were probably about the same, although I’ve ridden the Trance a lot more of course so have more confidence pushing it.

The two fork travel options were a bit of a surprise too. It was great having the choice and really made it feel like two bikes. I’m not sure why multi-travel options aren’t more popular really although I wish Rockshox had made the handlebar remote control the travel rather than the lockout. In general the Orange felt much better at 120mm than I’d expected but not as good (more of a handful) at 150mm as I’d hoped. I expected that I’d use the 120mm just for climbing and 150mm for everything else. In fact I think 120mm was better for climbs and for anything technical (rock gardens etc) with 150mm being better for smoother trails and going down.

Interestingly, I’d taken it for a quick spin around the block yesterday, to make sure nothing was going to break or fall off today and 150mm felt much better than 120mm on the roads. At 120mm it just felt too steep and like I was too far over the front wheel. But, as I say, it felt great once I hit the trails. I guess this shows how limited test rides around a car park are.

Of course the Trance doesn’t have multi-position forks, which brings us to the problems with this test. Leaving aside the fact that I knew which bike I was riding (which means there is so much potential for observer bias that any scientist would consider the results to be meaningless), there are more differences between these two bikes than just the frame. These include:

Rockshox Revelation RLT dual position (120/150) forks on the Orange and Fox F125RL forks on the Trance.

An old Fox RP23 shock (with unknown service history) on the Orange vs a new Fox RP2 shock on the Trance.

75mm stem and wider bars on the Orange vs 110mm stem and narrower bars on the Trance.

Hope Hoops with ZTR Flow EX rims running tubeless on the Orange vs Giant wheels with tubes on the Trance (both had Nobby Nic tyres running at 30psi though).

So, whether the differences I’ve noted are really down the frame or some combination of the above is open for debate.

The bottom line though, was that I really enjoyed riding the Orange. It may be six year old technology but really I couldn’t say that it’s any worse than the modern Trance, just different (more fun, better on technical climbs but less solid feeling). In fact, the only thing that I really missed from the Trance was the dropper post that I’ve installed (which wont fit in the 27.2mm seat tube of the Orange).

Cheers,

Andy

Posted these once today already, but no harm in doing it again I guess :-)

I know, there should be a law against articles like that. They did seem to imply that the Gyro wasn’t as much fun as a Five though (although a better mile muncher than they expected). So just get the Rocket.

Cheers

Andy

Test rides do seem to be the preferred option. But since you don’t want to do that anyway, let me present a counter argument.

What will you really gain from a test ride? You can change the feel of a bike quite a bit with simple changes (bars, stem, etc) and lets face it all the bikes you mention are decent bikes. Unless you can really take them away, change all the contact points to suit you and ride them around lots of routes that you know really well, you’ll probably just be choosing an expensive bike based on the way it’s set up.

I reckon that there is a lot to be said for just buying a bike that speaks to you in some way, that you like the look of or from a company you like and just riding the crap out of it. Get to know its strengths and weaknesses and how to get the best out of it.

So, get the Rocket.

Cheers

Andy

The Orange has some dual position revs 120 or 150. So, I’m guessing that will either be too little or too much then :-)

Cheers,

Andy

Not sure about the service history of the shock to be honest. One of the joys of buying off ebay ! All the adjustments seem to work i.e. propedal stiffens it up etc. But so far it’s just had a few shakedown runs (to make sure nothing falls off). I’ll hopefully get a proper ride on it over the weekend. If the geometry seems basically OK then I might get the shock serviced to see what difference that makes.

Cheers,

Andy

If anybody wants to send me some more expensive 29ers I’ll be happy to test them for you :-)

Of course this was never intended to be a definitive test of the pros and cons of larger wheels. Mind you, I’ve yet to see anything that comes close to that anywhere else either. Everything I’ve seen written on the subject is highly subjective, totally unscientific and written by somebody who either has a vested interest (i.e. has just spent a lot of money on a bike) or had a lot of preconceptions. Against that background I reckon this test is probably no less valid than any others and it has allowed me to refine my thoughts a bit.

What was surprising was not that the Carve didn’t feel as good as the Trance. It’s not even that it failed to beat it on a climb (although surely a hardtal should beat a full suss on a fire road climb). It’s that, to me at least, it didn’t feel markedly different to any other £800 short travel hardtail.

Tucked away at the back of my shed I have a 20 year old fully rigid steel Specialized Rockhopper. Just for a laugh I dug this out yesterday and did a quick spin on both bikes. I didn’t do a full test over varied terrain or anything as I didn’t enjoy riding either of them enough to want to waste any more time. But you know what, the Carve really didn’t feel that different to the 20 year old Rockhopper. The front suspension helped a bit, but even 80mm of coil wasn’t that much plusher than the old steel forks.

Anyway, I’ve rambled on for long enough about this. Yes, it was a flawed test (but they all are). If you found it pointless then I’m sorry for wasting your time (and wouldn’t disagree with you really). But I had a bit of fun with it and a few people seemed to get something out of it, so that’s good enough for me.

Cheers,

Andy

Thanks all.

So a fair bit of humour, but nothing close to a consensus. We’ve got everything from well behind to well in front and “yes it’s a good rule of thumb” to “totally useless off road”. I think I tend to agree with the latter. It probably works fine on a 72/72 road bike, so can’t really work on, say, a 73/66 mountain bike. Not sure I can see how a proper fit would have the hub behind the bars when riding along the flat, but it takes all sorts.

Cheers

Andy

Paceman :- I wouldn’t want to be too negative about the Carve. It’s an ~£800 short travel hardtail and a pretty decent example of one I’d say. I reckon that sticking some better forks on it (i.e. upgrading from the Comp to the Expert or Pro models) would make it feel a lot better though. And you are right, it didn’t exactly inspire me.

Cheers,

Andy

oneoneorage :- Thanks mate, I appreciate that. My sort of long winded navel gazing isn’t for everyone I know. To be honest I’m surprised anybody bothered to read it all. But if one person gained anything from it then it was worth posting.

devs :- The Glenfiddich trail was the one on the MTBTrails site

MTBTrails – Glenfiddich

The pictures are the ones I uploaded, so you can see what a lovely day it was. Judging what is technical is always tricky, but you are right; the descent from Corryhabbie was the toughest bit. It’s just a steep path covered in very loose rock, but it was enough to make me get off and drop the seat a bit. I’ve only been riding off road seriously for a few months though, so I just assume that anything I can ride will seem trivial to most folk.

hugor :- Don’t be jealous. Just because I’m incapable of saying that one bike is definitively better than another doesn’t stop me lusting after new toys. In fact I’ve just put the finishing touches to a build of a 2006 era Orange 5 frame that I bought off ebay in a moment of madness. Can’t think of any good reason why, other than it seemed fun at the time.

Cheers,

Andy

Don’t. I’ve been deliberately avoiding reading any reviews of that Trance 29er :-)

Seat tube looks funny though doesn’t it? Hard to believe it’s 73 degrees looking at it, but I guess that’s just down to the radical kink needed to clear the wheel.

Here’s one thing that confuses me though. The chainstays on the 29er Trance are 1.7cm longer than on my 26″ model. Top tube is 0.2cm longer. Head angle is exactly the same. Fork travel is only 0.5cm different. Yet the wheelbase is only 0.8cm longer. How does that work? I guess the A-C length is shorter by more than the 5mm suggested by the travel.

Anyway, I bet it’s a great bike.

Cheers,

Andy

Thanks for the feedback. As I said, it was a long and rambling review, which I mostly wrote in order to collect my own thoughts. But the Web is a great rubbish bin for such things, so I posted it in case it was of interest.

Given that; I cant be too upset that somebody didn’t start again from the top of the thread, but we’ve covered the stupidity of comparing a full suss with a hardtail and why it came about. To those of us that obsess about bikes these are chalk and cheese. But I made the comparison again because I was struck, not by the differences, but by the lack of difference. Yes, the two bikes feel different, but at the end of the day they are both tools designed to do a similar job and for much of the time they do it equally well. A difference of 3s on the climb and 16s on the way out is within the variability that I’ll get from day to day depending on how I feel anyway. The only area where there was really a clear difference was the “downhill” where I needed to take more care picking a line on the hardtail. But even there you can’t say that one is better than the other. Some people like the challenge of picking a line, where others love to smash through stuff with a big shit eating grin. Both are perfectly valid choices.

Given that I can’t even say that a full suss is better than a hardtail I’m now pretty sceptical that anybody can really say that they prefer a certain wheel size. You can say that you prefer one bike to another, but it is never just the wheel size that is different. In order to tease out the effect of the wheel size in isolation you’d need a very carefully designed experiment, which none of us can really be bothered to do. If you are really going to conclude that one wheel size is better based on a “race” between two different riders with different skill levels on different bikes then good luck to you :-)

Cheers,

Andy

Can you say what it is you don’t like about the Orange? That might help to narrow it down a bit.

OK, time for an update. I’m afraid this may be a bit long and rambling, but I don’t have time to make it shorter. If you want the executive summary: I took the Carve Comp 29er on a route I know well, but the conclusions haven’t really changed.

So, I had a bit of time today and took the Carve up to do the Red route at Pitfichie. For those that don’t know this it consists (at least the route I did) of a fire road with a few downs but mostly climbing (and bottom gear steep in some bits) for about half an hour; a top section which has a number of rocky obstacles (natural and man made) and still more up than down, so mostly slow speed; a fast down section with switchbacks, rock “staircase”, loose rocks, singletrack etc, but not too technical then the fire road back out. So, plenty of variety and I rode it on the Trance last week in pretty similar conditions (light winds, not too hot).

The fire road climb took me 29:31 to the lookout point on the Trance last week and 29:28 today. That’s right, the 29er hardtail was a whole 3 seconds faster than the 26″ full suss bike. Of course, this is one ride on each bike. Conditions and my energy levels may have been a bit different, but I would still have expected more of a difference than that, if only because a hardtail should climb fire roads much better than a full suss.

The top section has lots of obstacles, only a few of which I can clear. Unfortunately I can’t compare times on this section as I went back and tried a few of the obstacles multiple times on the Trance, where today I was pushed for time so it was just one attempt. I wasn’t able to get over any of the obstacles that I’d failed on with the Trance and failed on a couple that I’d cleared last week. That might just be luck, or it might be that the rocks were a bit wetter today. I felt that, at very low speeds (i.e. walking pace) it was perhaps a little harder to get the larger wheels to go where I wanted, but that may have been in my head. I also felt that it didn’t cope with square edge hits as well. But that may have more to do with the difference between 80mm RockShox coil shocks and 125mm Fox air. But it was disappointing to find that I wasn’t able to suddenly bound over obstacles that had caused me problems in the past. Overall (as with the climb) I’d score this section a draw. Basically, if I want to clear more of these obstacles I’ll just need to work on my skills !

On the fast downhill section I thought the Carve felt fine. The switchbacks didn’t cause any problems and it generally went where I wanted it to at speed. I did think that it was carrying speed a little better. It wasn’t dramatic and may have been in my head, but I was quite happy with it on this section. Being a hardtail it jumped about a bit more on the bumps and looking at the times it took me 8:40 to get down today, whereas I got down in 7:34 on the Trance last week. So the Trance was over a minute faster here. even though it didn’t actually feel as fast.

The final fire road out is a repeat of some of the climb. It’s more down than up, quite fast with a surface that gives a fair bit of chatter. Here I did feel that the larger wheels made for a smoother ride and the times, kind of, support that; with the Trance taking 16:26 and the Carve 16:10. Top speed was also a bit higher at 33.5 mph (compared with 32.4 mph for the Trance).

So, on the four sections, two where a draw, one went to the Trance and one to the Carve. The overall difference was minimal though (less than a minute in a total of around one hour twenty minutes).

Where does all that leave me? Well I started out thinking that, being given a 29er to play with would allow me to decide whether I liked 29ers or not. In fact it hasn’t really helped much there. I can say what I do and don’t like about the Carve Comp. It’s not the bike for me, but I don’t think that has anything to do with the wheel size. It rides like what it is; a £1000 hardtail. I notice that it has mounts for a rack, which hints at the intended use and I’d say that it would be a great choice if you want a bike that can double up as a commuter and still hit the trails.

I’m not an expert in bike design, but I get the distinct feeling that you could build a 26″ version of the Carve with everything the same except for a slightly slacker head angle and maybe a bit more travel and it would feel pretty much the same. Maybe one would be a bit better than the other, but the difference would be so close that you’d need a pretty well designed experiment to spot it. Nothing I’ve seen in the literature on 29ers (including my own observations) comes remotely close to being a proper scientific study.

In the interests of full disclosure I should point out that the 6 hours or so that I’ve spent in the saddle on the Carve have only really served to confirm the opinions that I had at the start. I came to this test thinking that 29″ wheels were just another design option open to bike designers and I’ve come away with the same opinion. But, of course, we have to accept that any observational study like this will suffer from a huge operator bias. Somebody who really wanted 29ers to be better (e.g. if they had just spent a chunk of cash on one) would probably come to totally different conclusions. That’s just the nature of observational studies. If the observer isn’t blinded to the product they are testing they almost always get the result they want.

But it’s not all bad news. Having ridden one I’ve certainly got no objections to 29ers on principle. Although the Carve isn’t the ideal bike for me, I’m confident that a good designer could make a bike that suited me very well out of 29″ wheels.

Like all format wars the winner will be decided, not by what is best but by who has the biggest marketing budget. So, I’d expect that 29ers will dominate for a while. Then we’ll get the headlines claiming that the 26er is back! In fact, I suspect that 26″ wheels will suffer the same fate as touring bikes. Twenty plus years ago we all had road bikes with relaxed geometry that could take mudguards. Then we were sold race bikes that were cool, and stiff and fast. There were still a few beardy blokes in the CTC telling us that the old classic tourer wasn’t dead and was actually a better option for most people. But nobody listened to them. Now we’re all getting old, are realising that speed isn’t everything and are tired of beating our bodies up for our hobby (and getting a wet arse whenever it rains), we’re starting to be sold these new bikes that are more comfortable (and some of them even take mudgards). They aren’t called tourers of course (you always need a new name to sell new stuff), but they aren’t far off.

Anyway, I’m getting well off the point, so I’ll stop now. The bottom line for me is that 29ers don’t offer any huge advantages but they don’t cause any big problems either. A good bike is a good bike and when I’m next in the market for one I’ll look at whatever is available regardless of the well size.

Cheers,

Andy

Thanks. Will do.

Cheers,

Andy

Well that was easier than I expected !

After leaving them inflated at 40 psi (with a tube) overnight, today, I let them down, carefully pushed the tyre off one side, removed the tube, put in a valve (without the core), put the tyre back on (being careful not to unseat the side that was already seated) and connected a track pump. I then started pumping like fury, expecting this bit to be tricky. But the tyre just inflated and popped into place. Didn’t even use any washing up liquid. This was brand new Nobby NIc Tubeless ready tyres on Flow EX rims. After that it was simply a matter of removing the pump (letting all the air out), putting the content of one small bottle (60ml) of fluid in through the valve, putting the core back and inflating. No leaks (as far as I can tell) and no bubbles. I pumped them back to 40 psi and did the recommended disco moves, but all seems fine.

So, all in all a pretty simple job

Cheers,

Andy

Thanks All,

Coatsey, if you could sell me a 6mm 90 deg connector that would be ideal I think I can source some braided 6mm hose.

Cheers,

Andy

Thanks all,

It was indeed Hope rim tape and pretty easy to remove. Although it seemed well stuck down there was very little residue once it was removed. A quick rub down with some sandpaper (as I didn’t have a Scotchbrite scourer to hand), a wipe down with some brake cleaner and a good pull on the Stans tape (sticking the wheel in the trueing stand helped here) and the tape seemed to go on easy enough. Fitted the Nobby Nic Tubeless tyres (by hand) with an inner and tube and am going to leave them pumped up at 40 psi overnight before trying the tricky bits tomorrow.

To be honest, if I can’t get the tyres to seat or seal it wont be the end of the world as inner tubes have served me well enough over the years. But I’ll give it a go.

Cheers,

Andy