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

Someone from Hope came in the other day and showed them around. Much fondling was had. If you like machined shindigs, your mind will make sexy stuff up.

Yeah, but proprietary tooling can >>>>>>>>>>

My middleburns are 3500 miles old, and use 1 8mm allen key.

The Hopes are big money once you add a ring and BB. Race Face Turbines are lighter and cheaper with the only downside being no 165mm option.

They look lovely and I do like Hope as a company, but they're too rich for my blood.

From my mega-watts, no cranks are safe

lolz

Rocket Ron Protections are a good balance of speed and grip. Not very different from X kings though. I've not tried Ralphs on a 29er but they might work better than on a 26er where I found them rear only and sketchy on anything not bone dry. Also not tried Thunderburts.

I'd go protection version every time. Actually I think X kings in black chilli are as good as Rons and probably what I am moving to as I've had a lot of training punctures on Rons. Your pressures do sound a bit low but weight, carcass strength, line choice and rims are all factors

BTW there is an internet legend that Contis come with mould release agent on the side walls that interferes with latex sealing. Supposedly if you wipe the inside down with alcohol or similar it helps the sidewalls seal.

Guess who forgot to do the pinch bolts up on his HT2 cranks before going to Bike Park Wales today...

indra'd ?

It's fucked.

Couldn't even get the bastard off so had to just crank the bolts up and carry on riding :/

The only silver lining is that I got them for like £20 a few years back.

Much better race today at deep cut.

A course that suited both the bike and myself, some elevation gain and no real features to cause bottle necks on the first lap. Dropped a category and managed fifth in sport - kind of wanted to do another lap.

Rode with a bit more pressure (22/28), mostly because I'm still losing a bit of air from the rear tyre, and it seemed okay, bit of finger pain but nothing I couldn't deal with.

I was there too, small world. I think I spotted you talking about the demise of your crank in the hut that smells of pee at the top.

Hah, small world indeed!

I never went inside the hut so may have been some other unlucky soul. What were you riding?

More to the point how was he riding!

Ti. Slackline. Pretty much the only hardtail in the village.

I was riding like a boss, obvs.

Been clearing out some of my parts stash. Today bars, with a width range of 520 to 720mm, weights between 132 and 499g and in alu, carbon and steel.

Holding the 520s feels really odd.

I find Rons the least grippy - but probably fastest in a straight line - of all the schwalbe knobbly MTB line up.

Built up my Krampus Ops at the weekend and took it for a good ride yesterday.

The first thing I did was strip it back down to a bare frame - Surly don't put any rustproofing inside their frames at the factory, which is mighty inconvenient for us, and possibly a bit silly since most people won't bother to do it. So half a litre of linseed oil carefully injected into every hole using an old brake bleeding kit - 99% ended up on the patio but no biggie, I used the natural stuff. I was surprised at how light the bare frame was - the tubing is definitely thinner-walled than my Inbred.

The Surly offset cranks seem good quality and aren't particularly heavy. The modular dropout system is a great idea - the dropouts are held very securely by a couple of what look like chainring bolts.

I tubelessed up the wheels using the split-tube method. People recommend laying down gorilla tape from bead-to-bead before putting in the liner and the tube... well, I didn't see why that would help so I did an experiment, and only put tape on the rear (I used 50mm electrical tape). There may be something in the idea because the front hasn't settled down. I used some old thick blue sealant (can't remember the brand) but my mechanic friend says Stan's works better for ghetto tubeless.

Annoyingly I couldn't fit my Elixir CRs because the hose entry on the caliper fouls the spokes, due to the massive rim width. It seems current SLX and XT brakes run the hose entry on the outboard side so they should fit.

There are a couple of things that annoyed me slightly. The first is the painfully cheap finishing kit - the Salsa bar is fine, but the seatpost, saddle, grips, and stem feel like something off of a Halfords special. I fitted a 60mm Truvativ stem, FSA777 bars, ODI Vans grips, an old BBB seatpost, and a Romin saddle. The second thing that annoys me is the lack of a QR on the front wheel, and the third thing is the rearward-facing seatpost slot (which reminds me of a fourth thing - no QR on the seatpost collar). I know these are only little things, but it's not cheap bike and it would be nice to get them as standard - I can't imagine anyone who buys one not upgrading to QRs!

For the ride we first went to the Switchback Track (in Dunedin NZ). It's pretty rocky and rooty but the bike just absolutely barrels along these sections without a hint of slowing down. There are also a few hucks which the bike responds to well (after some adjustment from my old 9kg singlespeed). As the name suggests there are a lot of very tight switchbacks which the long-wheelbased bike did not handle particularly well, although the amount of grip meant it was my balance and nerve limiting me rather than the tyres. The bars might need trimming as I had to really squirm through the trees a couple of times, too.

The second part of the ride was at Bethune's Gully, which has no tight switchbacks (hurrah) and it quite open. It's fast and rough with a lot of technical drop-offs and roll-offs. The climbs are very steep and super-rooty, but the bike seems to get up anything you can pedal with no difficulties at all. I think the bike really shone here - being rigid you still have to choose your lines carefully, but the long-low-slack geo works really well for this kind of terrain, and I found it so much more rewarding than an FS bike, so long as you don't mind being a little slower.

Surly don't put any rustproofing inside their frames at the factory

I thought Surly were ED coating their frames now, but it looks as if they've only done it to the ECR, Ice Cream Truck and Straggler.

Also, pics??!

Mmhmm, and the matte black looks like ED coating too, but better safe than sorry. Also it smells great now.

Will do the picture thing once I've trimmed the steerer, it looks a little dorky at the moment.

It comes with Surly hubs right? At least the QR conversion is just a case of removing the bolts and popping a skewer in...

I really really want one of these

I went to a talk about MTB geometry last week, presented by Cy Turner from Cotic. The inevitable return of 150mm stems into fashion was a running joke...

I'm gonna need a shorter toptube.

Don't tell the polo kids.

Here you go, in full commuto-packing gear.

I don't like the punk-pirate-NOFX-fan look. The Vans grips probably don't help. It'll do for now.