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

I've removed the olives and barbs when re-hosing Hopes, it was PITA, would not recommend, unless you love the high risk of stabbing yourself

Did you use a torque wrench to tighten them up or are you one of those “self calibrating, I don’t need a torque wrench” mechanics?

Did you use a torque wrench to tighten them up...

Haha, I'll tell the jokes!

Patter merchant.

But in all seriousness, I know how tight it should go. I'd love to say that maybe something jammed in the threads making it feel like it was tightened correctly but the far more plausuble explanation is that I have for some reason just barely 'nipped' it up intending to go back and do it up properly later and somehow forgotten. I noticed today that my usual 8mm spanner was marring the compression nut slightly so switched to a wider jawed spanner, I may have thought "I'll get the other spanner and horse that down in a bit" or perhaps I wanted to fit it all onto the bike incase the hose needed rotating to sit nicely. In either scenario a torque wrench would not have helped as it'd either have registered that it was torqued up just as my wrist did or been sat in the toolbox never put to use, like my wrist wasn't.

Like I say, annoys me more that I fucked up than if it was something that just broke.

5-7Nm, the olive needs to compress while tightening

how do I do so badly with hydros

You keep buying Shimano?

Fair.

I have a set of Sram Guides, the good ones supposedly though I'm sure the Sram haters will say that Sram and good are oxymorons.

They were pretty nice other but I could never get a decent bite from the front one. Bled several times, tried new rotor, new pads...maybe I should try them again.

I have considered dropping the cash for a set of Hopes but there's as many people say they suffer real bad rub and stuff as say they are amazing.

All my Shimano brakes work. This is user error.

Shimano do have new style barbs btw. Something something brass versus silver something.

The barbs match the different ID of the hose options. BH90 is slightly smaller than BH59...

Olive stays the same as the OD doesn't change

I had a brass barb in bh90 hose. Perhaps allowing the hose to squash down a bit and ‘escape’ the olive?

The olive wasn’t properly compressed though so that’s also a problem.

That's annoying when you're mixing and matching different series stuff. Crux is going to explode isn't it?

Edit. Shimano compatibility chart
Most higher end new stuff uses BH90.

It would need to be assembled first, so you're probably safe

That's kind of the point though. It's all there, it just needs the bars, shifters and hydro stuff done and tape and the Junction A. But I've got 12s calipers with 11s levers and no fucking idea which hoses and bits so now I expect the universe will explode.

it just needs

'Things to do list 2025'

Looks like I'm getting surgery next week so I may have a reason to finish it sooner.

Buzzing off doing some gap jump lines at phoenix for the first time. Mostly out of line and casing, but when the feeling when you get it right is immense.

Anyone at Ard Rock?

I’ve realised I ride gravel way more than I ride mtb trails so I’m quite tempted to replace my under utilised hardtail with more of a flat bar grav bike. So far I’m liking the look the Spa Rove as it ticks a lot of (pretty much all) the boxes on my list of requirements which is as follows (in order of importance),

Steel.
Ability to be run geared or ss so sliding, rocker or otherwise adjustable dropouts or ebb.
Clearance for 29 x 2.2-2.4” tyres.
Tyre clearance created with use of a yoke rather than heavily crimped stays.
Can take my 15 x 110/12 x 148mm wheels.
Dropper compatible seattube.
All the mounts.

My current choices for gravelable bikes are a fixed/ss bike that takes max 40mm tyres or my pumped up Raleigh Twenty which is actually surprisingly good on gravel at least until it gets lumpy at which point the wheel size becomes a problem.

Thought I’d ask in here (and in the gravel thread) to see if anyone could suggest any alternatives that I might not have looked at yet.

Should also say, I’m open to buying a geared frame and changing the dropouts to sliders but this counts out the likes of Genesis as they tend to use large plate style dropouts and I’d also want a frame I was going to chop up to be used or at least cheap.

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Possibly a bit of a pita to get it completely to your spec but the old Genesis High Latitudes are an option - might be a few cheap ones knocking around & if you're up for chopping out the dropouts & adding extra braze-ons you'd have something very similar to that ^ for not a lot of cash.

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Kona unit weirdly might fit the bill.

Though I have stuck a rigid fork on my Genesis Latitude to make it a town bike and I’ve wondered if it would be possible to machine drop outs that were SS-able.

The list of steel 29er mtb for bikepacking might be worth a look:

https://bikepacking.com/index/rigid-steel-off-road-touring-bikes/

Stooge being the obvious (and pricey) UK based choice.

Sour Pasta Party

That list is good reading, cheers.

There's a large Stooge on ebay the now but they look real slack (something I don't enjoy about my Honzo, at least not when its anything other than pointed downhill) and I had a mk1 or 2 that had cracked behind the headtube. Real low bb on the one I had too actually.