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

Boardman generally produce a MTB that gives you more bang for buck and because of brand snobbery are more affordable, I don't think they've made a bad one yet.
Quality in SUS forks at that price would be Rockshox Reba in good order that have been serviced, hold air and have no wear on the stanchions. Generally avoid Suntour. Nice would be Shimano drive train and brakes. More likely is SRAM and Avid.

Quality in SUS forks at that price would be Rockshox Reba in good order that have been serviced, hold air and have no wear on the stanchions.

Or go with a decent rigid mtb fork.

Spam

The Fort William world cup downhill race track has been raced rigid, but with gears not SS, so a rigid is capable of anywhere in the UK.......

Suspension forks are a minefield.
FOX are more race and need looking after, good back up if you follow approved service regimes, costly repairs if not, but fully rebuildable at cost.
Marzocchi are more solid (08/09/2010) certain models had problems, 07 and earlier are bombproof workhorses, 2011 onwards is almost on a par with the older bombproof models, loads of late 1990s still in service.
Rockshox, easy to work on and service, moderate pricing good choices.
Magura, good forks but spares and dealer servicing can be tricky.
BOS, excellent forks.....but..... pricey, poor spares and dealer service in UK.

XFusion building a good rep for well priced and specced forks, wouldn't say no.
Suntour, mostly low end OEM budget forks but they are trying to get into the quality aftermarket business.
Manitou, once made banging race forks, then quality went down the pan and they got called manipoo's, bought out by Hayes around 2010, and making back ground, well priced and some online bargins, the 29er forks have a good following.
They have all had issues and dramas over the years, find a bike, google the fork/model year and go from there.
As a very rough guide, open bath forks tend to be longer lasting but heavier (more oil inside) than the closed/sealed damping cartridge versions which are lighter weight and don't have much oil to help shed grammes. So much to choose from these days and a very focused market for product, so XC, XC race, All mountain, Enduro, Freeride,Park, Dirt/jump/street, Downhill, air or coil sprung, open bath dampers or sealed cartridge dampers, anything from 24hour service intervals to maybe check the oil every 6 months.

You totally forgot about RST forks*

*maybe that was intentional...

And Cannondale. lolz.

But yeah just get something with Rebas.

Or one of these.

what Really Shit Twangers, allright back in the 1990's from memory i think Shaun Palmer was sponsered by them for a bit, but so long ago, i wanted some Mozo Pros because they had coil springs inside, an age when most had a foam rubber stick inside that would go hard when it was cold and not really do much :)

We had some crap gear back then, but it was also cutting edge back then, Girvins, and AMPs, RST and Zocchi Bombers could be easily stripped and rebuilt but the Bombers with open bath MX type dampers, against the Rock Shox Judys with plastic cartridges........ goes all misty eyed and looks for rose tinted specs :)

The old Rockshox boxxer DHO Tim Flooks had to rebuild them after each downhill race run as the cartridges would not hold together for a full race run, imagine that, you have the cutting edge fork on your bike and you know the internals are going to let go in the final half of your race run, exciting or what.

Oh oh oh Cannondale Moto's :)

Mud dock cafe in Bristol used to have a big table with about a dozen sets of Moto's for it's legs, possibly the best use for them :)

you know the internals are going to let go in the final half of your race run

They'd last longer than me on the Fort Bill DH course O.o

Best track i know, it has a bar at the start and a bar at the finish and a hospital 8 mins down the road in a car :)

Cheers all. Will do some more research.

Tbf, I only rode the Witches Trail when I was at Fort William and even that caused a couple of hairy moments :-)

Haven't done the xc routes, i couldn't walk for a few days after the biggy. The red DH track is fairly mild depending on weather, about 1.2km of boardwalk at the start, i went a bit quick and jumped one of the tables, shame about the heavy crosswind that blew me sideways in flight and into the bog, bit exposed on the boardwalks, but stunning views and a bit of shelter when you got off the woodworks.

Did you spot any wildlife on witches! pine martins are ace, like a big scary fluffy ferret on steriods.

Did you spot any wildlife on witches

Sadly, none that I can remember.

This was years before they started building the red DH run. I'd spent several days wild camping along the West Highland Way and thought that as I was in Fort William, I'd give it a go.

S0. Many. Midges.... and I was too tired to outrun them :-(

Ah midge hell is not nice.
I tried to count bites one year, got to 300 and gave up :( the itching for days was not nice, i mastered the dark art of taking a whizz while still walking (slowly) for those out there reading, if you stop for 10 seconds it's like something from a horror movie, the little vampires appear from nowhere and swarm all over you, i managed not to get a single bite on me wang, which was nice.

Ended up riding this last weekend:

http://www.strava.com/activities/268745443/embed/fdbe123dcaf6f10bea846b0aa54a6060c1af2edf

First half was quite technical, thankfully the second half was mostly North Downs way and wider bridleways as I was nicely fatigued by that point. I'd forgotten how much harder it is to ride a mountain bike properly when tired, as compared to a road bike.

Does anyone have a Sram x1, x01, xx1 rear mech?

I've been a tad stupid and need a comparison to one that is set up properly, fingers crossed

Looks alreet. Did you do the trails like BNB, Telegraph etc or was it just masochism?

Certainly rode summer lightning, not sure on the others. Saw a few posts but I wasn't paying a great deal of attention.

Borrowed a friends mtb at the weekend and have decided that I need to get one going again. Going to be doing some medium difficulty trails with a mix of clay mud and gravel around Oslo. Seeing as the last time I owned a mtb was 12 years ago I'm thinking I need some help.

I'm looking at building up a hardtail 29er with possibility of gears/ss and an OK amount of travel. The slot dropout inbred looks good but the non replaceable hanger has me worried a bit. Like the unit too but a bit pricey maybe, any recommendations?

Norway? Get a fatbike. They make great trail bikes too.

battle of the beach last weekend was brill..

I only found one riding snap of me though, honking my horn through a tunnel

rider pics here

Found one of me, but I'm sheltering from the wind on the beach and the guy in front thinks waving is more important than keeping in touch with the rider in front...

Got as far as page 18 of 30.

Much pain

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