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

I think suspension setup in this scenario might be 'pray it keeps moving up & down'

Braking bumps- is there a solution to these fuckers other than to avoid them?

Don’t ride trail centres?

Which is just avoiding them by a larger margin than I think you meant.

Don’t ride trail centres

This is the correct answer.

Any suspension setup intended to cope with braking bumps (i.e. no compression damping) will feel like dogshit everywhere else on groomed trails (super wallowy, impossible to pump)
I didn't know what a braking bump was until I rode a trail centre, and commented "it just feels like the whole of Scotland"

Other techniques might help:

Ride round them.
Brake before them.
Go faster.

Ok, so what in hearing here is that no one has any idea how to optimise suspension for the terrain I am riding this week.

On which note, L2A blues are almost wholly braking bumps this year. Morzine was a lot better

In theory, more spacers and less pressure will make the fork more sensitive. I think for braking bumps, you might have more luck with different grips or bars rather than trying to make a DH fork work well for small vibrations.

The chap in the shop tutted at my carbon bars.

I wonder if fast rebound, some high speed compression paired with slightly lower main chamber pressure but slightly higher ramp up chamber might work.

Jump every corner

The corners are ok, it’s the approach.

I wish I had my DH bike here to test, I think the extra travel and more heavily damped tyres would be handy.

They have the new folding DH22 and 34 in the shops here- have they made it to the UK?

Carbon bars aren't necessarily worse, but also static compliance isn't necessarily the best indicator of comfort. Ideally you would measure the resonant frequency of your bars and make sure it is sufficiently far from the frequency of the bumps at your riding speed.

Jump earlier.

The UK doesn't even have potable water yet.

Why would you drink water when there's beer available?

I mean, I don't, but sometimes beer isn't available.

I had a Comencal Fury DH bike for a morning here in Les Deux Alpes. 27.5 wheels and XL frame. Felt tiny- like my jump bike, and not in a good way. Bars were really low in comparison to my enduro bike, just not a fan.

Stop whinging. You're in France with two working arms. Bastard.

Felt tiny- like my jump bike

Something something chuckable

I’m scarpering before it votes in the fash

€450 for the full service on fork and shock, €150 on postage. Ouch.

Thule 599 details, bike on the rack is an XL Raaw Madonna 2.2 29er with a wheelbase of 130cm.

4 Attachments

Just caught up on the carnage at Les Gets. Would love to know what Pierron's tyres are made from...

Trail bike - I’d like to swap my existing Jibb (v1) for the new one (v2).

I think I’d probably order the Transmission chain stay with the bike, but would keep my existing setup (previous gen AXS mech with otherwise Shimano components) until they wear out.

I’ll also replace the AXS dropper (which I love in some ways) for a cabled dropper that has 200+mm of drop.

My current Jibb is XL with a 35mm stem, the chaps at Raaw recommend that I ride an L with a 50mm stem, so I’m tempted to give this a go.

When I was in L2A and Morzine recently I tried a Commencal Fury for one morning as a hire bike and really didn’t like it - on my Madonna I feel like I’m behind the bars, which gives a lot of confidence, and it’s very stable at high speed/over rough stuff. The Commencal on the other hand I felt was underneath me, and rather than riding the bumps it was trying to go backwards as I went forwards.

So why go smaller on the Jibb? Because Singapore is flat, basically, and that’s where it will be ridden - short, sharp, in some cases very technical descents but mixed into a lot of technical climbing, sharp turns, and flat pedalling sections. I think the extreme stability of the XL is not required here, and frankly I want to see what Raaw are recommending to me.

I’ll run the new Jibb as a mullet, also to give it some more agility in the tighter turns that I ride day to day, plus I have a brand new 27.5 rear wheel that I’ve never used, which seems a shame.

Observations welcome!

If you're running the Jibb as a mullet won't that shorten the reach assuming you're pushing the saddle forward to compensate for the reduction in seat tube angle?

With regards to the 50mm stem, it'll put your hands inline with the steering axis, where as 35mm will put your hands behind, all dependant on the sweep of your bars of course.

I don’t think the geo changes with the mullet as it comes with different shock mounts to adjust for the change in wheel size.

Does anyone have tyre recommendations for bike packing / double track / party pace riding.

27.5 x 2.6”
Maxxis Reckon or Vittoria Mezcal are the current shortlist but I have no idea about mtb tyres.

Ideally not more than £100 for the pair.