Gravel / Gravé / Gnarmac / Groad / ATB

Having used v-brakes now for a month - I am on your side.

Hydro maintenance is easy, might be more of a problem if they break, but a broken caliper is a broken caliper hydro or cable, just easier to use something different if they're cable.

It's a lot easier to break a cable than kill a hydro line in the field too.

Just in case there was any doubt: fuck cables.

Blimey, and I thought chat about gear ratios was tedious

well didn't expect that to take off as well as it did - and stayed so civil too what a bonus.

I guess the takeaway is hydro is obvsiously better but mechanical isn't that bad too. Nice and conclusive!
If i had the money it would be hydro Di2 anyday but i dont think i can convince myself to spend that much so mechanical it probably will be..

This is all a bit Spanish to me.

Hola

Would you like to see my cassette collection?

Thanks, fitted once like the Contis haven’t punctured or I binned the wheels as that once was enough?

not punctured!

New Stayer route up..

https://www.stayercycles.com/thedistance/route11

That is true, that’s where the similarities stop, the Juintech does not auto adjust for pads wear meaning you can adjust the levers pull.

You can't adjust the lever pull with HY/RD? hmmm

At one point everyone on here was all in for hy/rd, or have I misremembered?

its all about the rod brakes now.

its all about the rod brakes now.

"oooh yes, the fucking modulation on rod brakes. I can stop on a penny with one finger..."

etc

Juintec are loads better than Hy/rd and much less ugly.

Cassettes?! Eewwwwwwww...

Get a fixie, you weirdo!

What I've found about Shimano hyros (with my limited experience with RS505 and R8020 levers and building/bleeding my own bikes so far, not a mechanic) is they're straightforward if you follow the instructions and take extreme care on using genuine and correct parts. They have two different sizes of olives/barbs and two different diameters of hoses (so far and AFAIK). So if you use an undersized hose or third party olives there'll be some chance of failure.

I've got one. I dangle a cassette from the saddle for the ironies.

Interested in the levers and calipers - happy to split? PM me?

They've potentially already sold, although you're top of the reserve list.

Wanting to get on the g̶r̶a̶v̶y̶ gravel train, but (obvs) can't bring myself to use a bike for what it was built for, so I want to get a cheap-ish hardtail 29er frame to use with the Merlin fork that was selling for silly cheap 2 months ago.
I feel like on paper this makes sense (at least more than bolting on track ends) even though the fork is not designed to correct for suspension geometry, because a gravel bike should have a steeper HT angle than your normal slack hardtail, right?
I was hoping to be able to fit fairly big tyres (the fork actually takes up to 2.25), which eliminates most cyclocross frames (that I've seen so far) and all of the actual gravel bikes going on eBay/here just seem like more than I want to pay. There must be a good reason why a mediocre 29er hardtail with a decent gravel fork doesn't work though - what am I missing?

what am I missing?

BB drop of the MTB frame with a much shorter fork?

we you need a gravel version of your GT. w/ bolt on track ends. Obvs.

Slight side note but I've found a rear mech hanger for an Arkose in my spares box if anyone is after one

shorter cranks to compensate?
I think it would be a minimal diff with a frame designed for 100mm suspension, as the Merlin forks are pretty long (and not planning to bumpy terrain, just non-existent gravel, so not that worried about pedal-strike).