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

Has anyone bought a thru-axle from China? I need something compatible with the RockShox Maxle Stealth/Ultimate/whatever after my last one sheared itself off. Kind of balked at paying £30 for a threaded shaft of metal.

Just wondering whether it's a false economy buying the cheap ones which then ruin my fork threads or something

yeah, mine is almost identical (i think it's the deore version of that) and it works great with my sunrace 10-42 10spd

I've heard rumblings the short cage Zee works with a 42t cassette (though this is probably largely dependent on dropout geometry), so I'm guessing a medium cage should be no problem.

Anyone fancy riding out to / meeting up in the North Downs tomorrow and riding some fun trails? @xkittyx @umop3pisdn @platypus @Sparky

bike is being completely rebuilt at the moment - sorry!

I've stupidly agreed to do a 130 mile audax with @amey...

Gotta do work stuff this weekend so just going to do a short jaunt to epping. Would love to join in future and ride something a bit more bumpy.

Travelling i'm afraid

Forever alone face

When is @IR back from that weird island on the other side of the world?

He went with a 6 month visa in February, so back in August, I guess.

I am thinking about making a 29er hardtail MTB frame where I can swap between rigid forks for heavy off road touring and suspension forks for single track.
Trying to figure out the geometry I need to settle on a suspension fork. What is the value for money tapered suspension fork these days? And what kind of travel am I looking for?

Currently I am riding a Inbred 29er with Rock Shox Reba 100mm travel and 490mm a-c Salsa Firestarter forks.

But as you can see I need a larger frame

I thought about doing this when I got my cotic a year or so ago

finally decided swapping forks was too much of a pain, so have some bottle cages taped to the fork (sid 29) lowers, and then a full complement of bikepacking bags, from which I take as many as I need for the trip. touring with front squish is so much fun.

Went to Epping in the end.

There’s a very naughty jump and drop line that’s appeared to the right of the bomb hole line on the trail just before claypit hill. Recommend suspension.

Yeah, maybe that is more sensible.

crappy pic of lightweight touring mode in the black mountains this feb

Looks like type 2 fun :-)

Any photos of the cages mounted to forks?

What is the value for money tapered suspension fork these days?

You can do a lot worse than a Reba. 120mm is probably the most you’d want on a 29er Hardtail.

it was type 1 but extremely muddy on everything!

mounting: fork lowers + inner tube cut to size of cage mount + cage (bendy is best) + generous layer of black duck tape + generous layer of silver duck tape + bottles (I prefer tesco pineapple 1l ones) = happiness

also I bloody love the solaris geo with a 120mm SID, feels perfect.

Thanks.
I am going to sell the forks and Inbred as soon as I have build a new frame and use that to pay for forks.
The Reba are 1 1/8" straight steerer.

Thanks.
I might machine some clamps with M5 bosses. Like this:

if you do I might take a few! although this method has worked well for at least 2000km now

Haha. There is no need.

http://www.chainreactioncycles.com/dmr-hinged-clamp/rp-prod745

Edit: Abort mission. Misread size. For REBA forks I would need 39mm not 34.9

yeah. there are already solutions out there. but I want something really good = custom made.

Cool,
I will draw something up.
I might machine some, but I will start out by designing something that can be 3D printed in SLS