Falling over in the forest: Starling Murmur

That's very good, the Fox stuff adds nice subtle accents. Actually the default light grey was my second option, I think that'd been ace as well.

interested in how you find the coil shock

Yeah, definitely, although I'm not sure how meaningful opinion I can give.

On a related note, paint quality isn't great—there are a few fairly obvious blemishes. It doesn't really bother me, somewhat surprisingly even, except maybe it makes paying extra for "custom" colour a bit meh (or more meh if that's a thing).

Feed that back to them

This is very good

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Yeah, maybe. I kinda feel it'd be disingenuous to complain as I really am happy with the frame as is. At the same time I don't think it was unfair to point this out, a minor criticism in a positive context. They choose to charge extra for the non-default colours, and I chose to pay for it.

Yeah, because there produce their stock colours in larger quantities so can reduce the cost not the quality.
I’m pretty sure that they’d like to hear about it as not all their customers will be as easy going as you

Yeah, I'm sure you (and @Howard ) make a reasonable point. What I meant was that at least looking at Starling bikes online gives the impression that most of their frames are painted in one of the optional colours they are offering, and they obviously aren't a very high volume builder. So the £125 upcharge over the basic grey felt a bit cheeky, but that was OK by me regardless. And in all honesty, the upcharge let's you pick swing arm colour as well, and obviously I may be wrong about their cost structure. Anyway, in hindsight I probably shouldn't have said anything *shrug*.

The paint quality isn’t great. Mine was rubbed off a bit on the drop outs. I complained and they offered to send over some touch up stuff if I remembered correctly/suggested where to buy it as I’m in Canada.

Honestly I would have been surprised if my frame was a one off in this regard, but I really didn't mean to deter from the awesomeness I'm experiencing.

Slight detour, but I have this custom made piece of audio equipment that has a rattle canned enclosure and legends written with a magic marker, and I think it's great. It's a nice tool that does its thing well with minimal fuss. So that's kind of the vibe I get with this frame, and that's something I wasn't really even expecting beforehand. And maybe that's part of the reason why I personally don't mind the less than perfect paint job.

It pissed me off initially. I had actually completely forgotten about it until I read your post because being out on the bike has just been that fun (one awful puncture / user error / old tyre shitshow aside).

Front brake sorted. Possibly could have left the hose a tiny bit longer, but shouldn't be an issue functionally.

I followed this video, and seems like I got a good result both times.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GMRk916qJTg

I've been putting off working on hydraulic brakes after some less successful previous attempts, but possibly it's not as much of a dark art as I thought. Maybe I should finally service the Bullitt as well.

I was thinking of routing the front brake hose under the fork crown. For one, it wouldn't rub on the head tube when the fork compresses—any reason why this might be a bad idea?

Other than that, there's just the dropper post cabling left, plus all the random finishing touches. Hope to be out riding this weekend 😍

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Looking forward to the ride report

Those brakes are very good at fooling you in to thinking you’ve done a great job. Maybe you have but bounce it around a bit whilst cycling the brake lever and you might find out.

As much as I liked to bask in the warm glow of a job well done, that's genuinely good to know. Thanks for the heads up.

I have just shortened the hose on an MT7 and it didn’t require a bleed at all - if you pay attention to keeping the lever body and hose pointed upwards you can avoid letting air in (generally), but Howard’s advice is accurate- if the system does require a proper bleed you will never perform it if you leave the lever on the bars (in my experience).

The correct routing for LH front on a Manitou is all the way around the head tube and then the back of the arch, but looks too short for that now. Great fork though, I approve. I milled out the compression piston for the high flow mod on mine and converted it to coil. It's very good. Edit: Looks like the new damper is a sealed cartridge bladder thing, which is a shame from the user friendly perspective. Looks like it's still all home-serviceable and tuneable though. Be interesting to try it.

Hope to be out riding this weekend

Plans are stupid. Anyway, the bike should be rideable now. Weather forecast says sleet for the night, but will see if I could spend an hour or so of daylight riding tomorrow.

@TvH

Right, thanks. I couldn't figure out the intended routing / my google-fu was weak. Actually I'm not sure if the hose would have been long enough to begin with, it was a fairly short section I chopped off (this was an OEM set without retail packaging).

I switched over to alternative clamping point on the front of the fork, which I had managed to miss somehow, and I think the hose length is more of less ok that way.

@Howard @Dammit

I bounched the bike (well, it's more of a dull thud than a bounce, but anyway) and lifted it up on the back wheel, and couldn't detect any loss of brake power at any point, so I'm still pretty confident that bleeding went ok. Will keep an eye on it, though.

I managed to squeeze in only a short ride, still enough to get muddy and out of breath. Fall-over count one, the front tyre slipped on a wet root. Not sure if a stickier tyre could have helped. Also tried to do a particular rooty and rocky off-camber section I've struggled with previously, and unsurprisingly the new bike wasn't an instant magic bullet. Overall, I thought that the most immediately obvious improvements over what I've had before were gears and the dropper post—which of course could have been had for much less sans the bouncy bits.

Sizing was one thing I was a bit worried about, as I fall between L and XL. I went for the smaller size after as much research and testing I could manage [not sure if true], and I'm inclined to think the bike fits me well. Planning to keep the handlebars at full 800mm for now at least, and the 165mm cranks were totally a non-issue.

Initial outlook positive, more data required 🤖

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Dream bike - definitely worth the pink paint upgrade

Hilariously I also stacked it yesterday thanks to a wet root, entirely down to user error. Though I did try and blame the less chonky rear tyre. You’ve gone for some pretty trail / xc focussed tyres?

definitely worth the pink paint upgrade

Yeah, no regrets here.

You’ve gone for some pretty trail / xc focussed tyres?

Yup. I'm not hurling down from high places any time soon, so my thinking was to see what I can get away with. The trouble is that I don't really know what I might be missing here, but I'm still planning to stick with these for now.

Looking awesome.

I always go super grippy up front no matter what then change between a grippy/faster rolling rear tyre. I don't mind the rear moving but I like the front to go where I'm pointing it.
I like a Mary/Mary combo personally but if it's really dry then I might change to something like an Eliminator on the rear to reduce the drag a bit. Depends on conditions and terrain though. I don't do lots of linking miles either on the likes of roads or fireroads so I don't have to worry about wear/drag too much.

Thank you. I'll admit I'm very pleased myself.