just done the same myself on my spicy, went for a 33t e13 ring up front and xt rear mech though. the new shifters feel so light!

Yep, rq’s, seem a bit more pinch resistant than maxxis too for the rocky stuff

Lol feel free to prove me wrong

Sambob, got rid to fund a patriot that cracked

The colour combo is naff as the oranges don’t match but I quite like it

By jumps well I mean it feels nicely balanced in the air, easy to find the C of G and easy to hip turn. By corner well I meant it’s got a low bb, long wheelbase and slackish head angle so rails turns well but not so slack and long as to inhibit more techy stuff. I was surprised by
How slack it was actually, measured, remeasured and remeasured again- 65 degrees.

That trail was pretty sloppy today; ended up in the gorge twice and had half a dozen near misses!

Probably best left alone till next year now…

Lol if I said yes would you bunk off to come and play? There’s 3 or 4 of us going, a couple will just be spectators though. They are coming along for the warm up ride really

Ah yes I know where you mean now! Doing it today as it happens, I’ll let you know how it’s holding up.

Hora I’m not sure I know which one you mean? I’m always up for a cheeky new trail though

lol are you trying to start an ego war bunnyhop? i didnt think there were any proper downhills round marple anyway? 😛

i like that area for some of the reasons you say you dont. my mid-week rides have to fit in between the school runs and derwent is 45 mins away so having somewhere i can park up, start pedalling, then decide which 3/4 descents i want to do that day really suits me. there are lots of options (some more legal than others), many of which ride pretty well with a bit of water on them too. i agree with whoever it was who said that trails like the beast require a certain level of effort and commitment to get the best out of them. i really like trails that you have to use loads of body movement in order to keep your momentum and flow. there should be an unwritten rule that people arent allowed to take the easy lines either. with a bit of practice the only places you need to brake on the beast are coming in to the turns and then only a scrub. thats using the proper lines too.

cheers thats wicked!

id like to do that jacobs ladder ride again sometime, twas a goodun

heaven forbid that their may be low iq bikers out there 😀

corners are overrated

sambob – Member

Hopefully we won't have to show them proper bad weather

+1 8)

started changing it already…

here

yeah i was disappointed not to do the race. gawton was good though. is it anywhere near the next forum ride? maybe a detour? 😛

notts. theres a 1 minute run at hemlock. not exactly rad but fun nontheless

surprised anyone likes the look of it tbh, the colour sceme almost put me off buying it! being able to get such a good deal clinched it though, upgraded wheels, bar+stem, and drivetrain to 1×10 and still had change from the rrp.

the furniture incident was one of my proudest moments. one fo the cats had brought a dead bird back while we were on holiday. the kid who was feeding thew cats put it in the wheelie bin where it stayed for 3 weeks till we ot back. the night we got back there was a big storm and all these hundreds of maggots went on some mental raindance all over our patio so i set fire to it with petrol rather than call pest control. in my excitement at playing with fire i forgot to move everything so we had bonfire night early that year!

chunky, yep, subtle eh?

mr p feel free to pop round and sort it out. i quite like a bit of green poking through

lol its something huh? 2 clashing shades of orange and some white thrown in there too. they arent red bolts on the chainset btw, its just my camera freaking out.

ive got my neon orange supreme for night riding

having owned both (admittedly only got the spicy today!) id say you cant make a bad choice either way. the five is an ace bike, no doubt. i ran mine with 36 talas and tbh should have gone for a float instead and got used to climbing it at full travel cos it was crap in the two shorter settings.
an absolute riot if you can ignorw the noise and use the single pivot to your advantage.

the spicy (on first impressions) reminds me a lot of the five in that its quite low slung and stable with decent geometry. its definitely quieter and the rear suspension is great at just flying through stuff with no chatter, letting you push it harder and harder. i took mine out for half an hour tonight for the first ride and 3 runs in was hitting everything i do on my commy supreme.

lol thanks for not tearing in to the terrible colour combo. criticism of the garden i can handle, according to the mrs its a 'work in progress' but i daren't show her your comments! we are both terrible gardeners but im banned from doing any work since a fire 'incident' with the patio furniture.

schwalbe big bettys aint bad either, good weights too.

nice one funkynick 😀

green, but with a white block or band with a thin red stripe like on the frame. that would look proper ace!

wheels came today. other bits come tomorrow then the bike arrives thursday. hoping i can get it built up quick cos after thursday my next day off is tuesday!

sounds good nbt, bagsie not stoking though.

i was going to enter that farmer john race you told me about but ended up at gawton for the weekend instead. did you go?

ive never ridden around marple, whats it like? should be easier than the last one with my nooo light bike anyway lol.

as always, anyone from notts/ passing m1 j25 want to offer me a lift in exchange for petrol money/ dirty favours?

geetee, nope i dont think so. ive only been on a couple of peaks rides where i met hora and the gang.

sambob, i looked at them but was a bit put off by a shock that i didnt think i could srvice myself. bit fussy aint i?

lol hora, takes one to know one!

whilst i have flogged a couple of bikes just i wanted a new one ive also had a couple nicked, not to mention a forced change of the kind of riding i do following breaking my spine a few years back. i now cant really do long days in the saddle without a lot of pain for some time afterwards so i try to ride for 2-3 hours and cram in as much fun as possible rather than distance.

and by the way rik, im no great rider! almost blind in one eye and clumsy as you like, so ill take all the skill compensation i can get, ta! im not really after a new bike to make me better or faster either, its because my current bike is a 37lb mini dh bike so im looking for something more all-round really. if speed or skill comes as a by-product of being less shattered then lucky me.

Yes, shorten the travel on any fork and it instantly becomes stiffer.

lol indeed

im no engineer or owt but wouldnt manufactures ahve thought of this and increased the strength of longer travel forks to take in to account the extra forces they are subject to? or do you mean buy some forks and run them wound down to increase the overlap? im not lolling anymore, im genuinely baffled!

Um.. think you'll actually find shorter travel forks and a hardtail frame are both stiffer than DH frames/forks never mind "all-mincer" ones.

lol really? i think you might generalising a little there!

there is no way my mates float 32's with qr15's are as stiff as my current lyriks, nor his on-one as stiff as my supreme. im sure there are plenty of stiff hardtails out there but thats not what im after. out of interest, what was the last 'all-mincer' you rode? the ones of ridden in anger (1/2 dozen different brands) exhibited verly little flex, though a five AM and a commy 66 were slightly more flexible than the others.

cheers all for your comments, helpful or otherwise! like i said the bike is now chosen so feel free to tell me how wrong i am

lol juan, i wondered how long it would be before someone told me i didnt need 160mm of travel! the reason i chose this level of travel is that forks and frames are suitably stiff for the kind of riding i do which is basically dh but riding back to the top (apart from the occasional forum peaks ride which are a bit more gentle).
i dont want a full on dh bike because they are too specific to one purpose and cost a fortune.
i dont want a trail bike because, as mentioned above, i dont have the skillz to pilot one down a dh track without breaking it or dying.
Ive been to my lbs (already!) and had a go on a nomad, alpine 160, scratch, spicy and a couple of others. it really is between the nomad (carbon, obviously), alpine 160 or the spicy.
my heart is saying nomad, though the alpine 160 would be good for me as ive had a 5 and a patriot 66 before and loved them both.
however, ive just pushed the button on a spicy 316 at a silly cheap sale price plus a load of bits and bobs to make it 'mine'. i went for this over the 516 cos i dont need a travel adjust fork and for the price difference ive gone 1×10, upgraded the wheels and the cockpit too. cant wait! (its quite pretty, ive never had such a colour coordinated bike before!)

ive had bikes from the 'trail' genre before and whilst great bikes they dont have sufficient skill compensation for the kind of riding i like to do.

bionicon? aesthetics aside, i dont want a bike that changes shape, be that with travel adjust forks, magic buttons or owt else. im sure some folks would love it but i like my bike to stay the same shape on all terrain,i feel moree 'in tune' that way. (gawd, another cliche!)

sligth aside, im looking at the hd 160 but have heard of chainguide issues which puts me off slightly as i want to run it 1×9/10. anyone know a fix for this?

Anyone?

great bike, best hardtail i ever owned. i ran mine with 160mm forks and a 34t front ring and it climbed around the peaks fine so 140mm and proper gears would no doubt be even better. i think its a bike that you hammer ot get the best out of it, not so suited to the gentle touch imo

mine isnt a meta hora its a supreme. you are welcome to give yourself a hernia trying to take it for a pootle!

was there t'other day, very good fun! hsd and most of super tavi should be alright in the wet, a few bits of tavi and egypt would be pretty slidey i reckon. definitely worth the trip though, we didnt have the uplift and still had a blast (no riding up, my bike is 37lbs)

thanks all, ill give em a ring and see who i can cope with having tell me what to do for a day

blur 4x is a great bike, i had one as my do everything bike for a year or so. at 6 foot my large was just the right shape and size for throwing it around but not so suited to long days out as its quite short in the top tube. pedals like a cr@p in the granny ring so just ran it 1×9, tried to get it light and strong and got it down to 29lbs with xtr, juicy ultimates, mag/ti pedals, fox f120 qr15's etc but the brakes boiled, cranks and pedals snapped and the forks flexed so went back to a 32/33lb build with pikes and stronger kit. i loved it, maintenance wasnt as bad as some had said it would be but i did need new bearings every 7-8 months. not a light frame for the travel but id compare it to bikes around 140-150mm in terms of purpose and capability. however, now that mid-travel bikes are getting a bit slacker i dont think id get one again as there are bikes out there that do the job better imo. still a classic though!

the new 5 isnt any slacker than your blur hora, theres good deals on cube stereo, commencal meta 5 and lapierre zesty too if you look around.