Dammit’s adventures in mountain biking

Dunno, he might weld them in - he’s not mentioned it.

Brake bleed and a bolt check needed still.

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15.2kg of aloominum trail bike.

I don't have much of stance here, but was really hoping you went for white again. The murdered out look is a bit...AMG Lad.

True. But, other option was raw aluminium which is what the Madonna is, and I wanted to be able to tell them apart from a distance.

What's the dingus hanging off the linkage?

Do you think this will be much different from your Madonna?

What's the dingus hanging off the linkage?

?

Do you think this will be much different from your Madonna?

It's interesting comparing them side by side - before it turned up it's easy to think of it as a Madonna frame that has been shrunk a bit, but whilst the approach to everything is very similar it's quite different dimensionally.

It's over 2kg lighter, also, despite many of the components being the same, albeit smaller (disc rotors for example).

I think that the air shock will provide quite a different character to the coil, and the bike is in general shorter and steeper. We shall see!

The Gold nubbin - maybe part of the shock actually?

It's the shock's piggyback thingy

Yep, it's the remote reservoir for the shock.

Always the most fun way to spend your evening

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it's the bike wash/degreaser that enters your frame during washing through your seat tube

Solution; dry wipe your bike.

Ed, have you ever encountered the countryside?

It's not like you weren't warned! 😉

On a totally unrelated note, do you still have your ShockWiz?

Once it's dry, you can just brush off the muck. I never got the hose out for this.

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I don't find that that approach gets the bike clean enough, I also don't want to put a soaking wet bike that's covered in mud in the van.

Oh yeah, that's fair. Mine goes on a roof rack, if it's raining on the way home it's usually clean by the time I'm back. Generally though, washing bikes is bad for them, I've found

Certainly my enduro bike is now squeaking, post cleaning, in a way that it did not when dirty.

I rest my case. Mud is a lubricant.

washing FS bikes is bad for them

The engineer behind Swarf Cycles posited that linkage bearings with additional covering seals only serve to trap water and lead to decreased bearing life, and specced the Contour with completely open air ordinary sealed bearings on the basis that if you got them wet they'd dry off. Anecdotal obvs, but his test bikes that I saw were all silent after being washed after every filthy wet Scottish ride, and I haven't changed the bearings on mine since I got it three years ago, and I've hosed it off plenty. Inclined to believe him.

This works if you re-lube after every wash. It's what WC racers do as it also reduces the friction, but they (like a rental fleet) have full time paid mechanics taking care of their bikes.