Let's offroad / mountain bike / mtb / ride dirt

I injured my back just after building this last year and never really got round to riding it, had ridden it a couple of times but with the old fork. Been bonding with it over the last couple of weeks, it's a beast! Hardtail and 6 inch fork makes so much sense.

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6 inch forks are really useful on towpaths!

is...is that a water bottle......

You do sometimes get quite steep drop-offs where the path passes flights of locks.

Yeah you'd be surprised actually between Leeds and Bradford it's pretty shagged and there are lots of woods you can cut off into along the way. That was first little ride out on it, been adventuring a bit more but not been takin photos of it.

Looks like I've secured an On One Scandal frame for not too much money so project MTB is go.

I'm planning to run it with the On-One monocoque carbon forks and an SLX 1x10 setup. Some questions:

Do I want cooling fins on my brakes (I very much doubt it'll see Alpine descents)?
I'll need post to IS adapters front and rear, yes?

Is there any way to estimate overall reach on a mountain bike based on a road/cross bike fit? At least to get an starting point on stem length.

29er wheelsets around £150? Shimano MT66 can be run tubeless, seem to get reasonable reviews and would match everything else.

Do I want cooling fins on my brakes (I very much doubt it'll see Alpine descents)?

If they are free, go for it. If not, don't pay for them.

I'll need post to IS adapters front and rear, yes?

Looks like it - but IS to Post - from a quick squint at some images. Your brakes will be PM, the fork and frame IS. Your brakes should come with them.

Is there any way to estimate overall reach on a mountain bike based on a road/cross bike fit? At least to get an starting point on stem length.

Assume you want a fairly agressive XC fit, so how about starting with the bars being roughly in between your hoods and your tops? You could probably work out roughly what you need to achieve that by looking at the reach on the two frames, then assuming it's comparable, then add 10-20mm to the MTB stem

29er wheelsets around £150? Shimano MT66 can be run tubeless, seem to get reasonable reviews and would match everything else.

I'd get some Stans Arch built on to Shimano XT or something, but it's difficult to argue with the MT66. Note the MT66 appears to be centrelock so you'll need centerlock rotors or an adapter (I have some if you need them).

Now which tyres...

Great, thanks Howard!

I figured somewhere between hoods and tops would be about right. Doing all the maths gives me a 90mm stem which sounds pretty reasonable. Given the bars will be much wider I might start out with 80mm.

Some brakes fo yo?

Tempting - was going to spunk the rest of my budget on some Middleburns but those do look nice.

So far I've avoided the lure of bling MTB cranks. Good stoppers are a win, tho. Not that they'd be that much better than Shimano SLX.

SLX are ridiculously powerful, far stronger than my hope (minis?) proper one finger braking.

They are a bit binary

They're awesome, not quite as good as zee though.

By binary do you mean "on/off"?

If so then definitely.

Powerful though.

Don't forget the effect of bar width on position. Makes a massive difference.

Binary on fast downhill off camber rooty mud is not good. Newer Hope are closer to Shimano on power but have heaps of modulation. Much more expensive but when you destroy a lever in a years time you'll be able to buy a lever not have to buy a complete brake etc.

Shimano flog just levers/calipers too. The deore/slx/xt/zee I've used have got plenty of modulation anyway, the levers don't need to be pulled as much as some other brakes to go from just on to all the way on and the servowave makes for a different feel but the modulation is fine once you're used to it.

Yeah, I just got XTs on my 29er, amazing. People who say they are binary, just have really insensitive fingers. Like @snottyotter said, you get used to it, unless you're a bit binary.

#binarybitches

Have the xt's on two of my bikes and the partners mtb. Have worked brilliantly.

I just like parts hewn from solid blocks of metal in the UK.

I'm being sensitive over @gabes accusing my fingers of being insensitive.

I'd buy Hope over Shimano simply because ++rad and I already have a pair on the Stanto. I just can't get excited over Shimano brakes. #buyer

I know, hope look nicer. I agree on that, and the Tech 3 / E4s I have on the full-susser are amazingly powerful, but 140 quid per end. My shimanos are as powerful for 50 per end.

I'm looking at getting a MTB on c2w,

I' 5'7 so ideally 26.5 or 26, hardtail, ideally 100mm forks, don't mind putting in another ~£200 ontop of the £1000 if needed. whats out there?

I went SLX everything in the end. Seems hard to justify spending extra money on top of it for the sake of bling.

Seeing as it looks like I should have a bike built up for the first round of the Southern Series - how do XC race catergories work? seems there are potentially four races I could enter: Open, Sport, Expert or Elite. I have reasonable palmarès from cyclocross but I haven't raced a mountain bike for about a decade. I'm leaning towards expert.