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

Steel is real. Though my BB sounds like a piece of mining equipment.

Oh dear.

Was that caused by chain suck or gunk build up on and around the chainring?

Epic chain suck. The transmission was locking up solid up to 20 times a lap, and consistently making a variety of unpleasant noises in the inner ring. Needless to say, I just carried on racing, swearing a lot at my stupid bike.

On the plus side, possible new bike/frame time?

Thought about a new frame, but I need an old-fashioned 135x10QR rear end, as my MTB Powertap hub can't be converted to 142x12. And decent carbon 29er frames with QR back ends are thin on the ground. I think I'll just carry on riding this one until it breaks, and then build myself a steel frame from scratch.

Sounds like a good excuse to add to your Powertap hub collection ;-)

And decent carbon 29er frames with QR back ends are thin on the ground.

Cannondale F-Si is still QR.

Bosh. Job Done.

If you can actually get frame/fork only. You'd need the 'fork' because it runs a large offset to, uh, offset the slack head angle.

You can get the frameset, but it's 4000 Euros and I already run a Lefty fork on the borked frame so getting another one seems too profligate even for me.

too profligate even for me

Just take it to a new level :)

All a bit mute because cannondale have little interest in selling frame / fork only; the full bike can be had for < £4k. Think I paid about £1,600 for mine.

I rode the Kona A in to work today - since hitting its arse end with a shock pump it seems to work well, unlike the Inbred which sounds like it will need a complete fucking strip down and, given the crank movement, a new BB.

That's basically what I ended up concluding, and I'm definitely not getting another 29er just because one chainstay's a bit sorry for itself! Currently researching 29er chainstays and putting numbers into rattleCAD...

Is there a GPS trace floating about for the Thetford race? Interested to see where they set the course

Search KLMTB or KL MTB round 3 on strava

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Danke. Worth checking out next time I'm there as a loop? Or just muddy, cross-country pain?

I don't know, I'm not a mountain biker, this was just a bit of fun with workmates. It's not technical at all in the dry but quite a pleasant loop but when it got chopped up and soggy it was hard work just trying to keep the bike straight.

I'm not a mountain biker

We'll see...

The last time I dabbled with dirt was 2004 so I'm clearly not that hungry for MTB.

I'd certainly ride more races but not at the expense of my road racing and with about a million changes to what I did at Thetford.

Sounds like a 'maybe' to me.

He's already got 2 MTBs.

I'm not a mountain biker
Maybe not a mountain biker
I'm maybe a mountain biker
I'm not maybe mountain biker
I'm not a maybe biker
I'm not a mountain maybe

?

Actually I have an Avanti in Oz, a Voodoo Bantu from the forum in Poland, a Kona A and an Inbred in London.

Is that more than 50% of your total bike hoard?

I'm not a mountain

Even you're not that fat.

Nope, still have 2 x road in Oz, 1 CX/road in Poland, 2TT, 2 road, 1 road fix in London.

And the Inbred was shod in slicks until that race. It will get the slicks back on soon. I'll probably keep the Kona A knobby.