Any cyclists here?

[rando]

I got a new bike this year, joined an enduro dh race team

Enduro is where the fun has been for a number of years now.

Never quite got into racing or any other form of organized competition. Certainly had the ability and skill. More importantly I had the mentality and self assured attitude that anyone involved knew had taken a minor placing to acceptance of being on a program. Nowadays I just know enough to be trouble and ride as much or as little as pleases me. Just glad to be alive in a time when the greatest (post-war) cyclists were still around to cast a large shadow. Most of the great men and women who climb mountains on foot as well. Everything is great so long as we can avoid more 'troubles'.

My decade plus old Dutch racing bike. Bless their souls for making a standard geometry level top tube stage racing bike with a threaded bottom bracket to match their usual world beating pedigree. Won't get far into a conversation about doing a Cairo to Capetown trip without someone audibly casting their gaze atop the pile of bikes that never finished to see what Koga you'll be riding.

 

[defride]

I got a new bike this year, joined an enduro dh race team sponsored by Specialized. The 2020 Spec Enduro is an amazing bike. A little heavy, but it pedals and climbs surprisingly well for a 37 lb (16.8 kg) 170mm travel mt bike!

Here'a pic of the bike with the new Fox 38 fork and a pic of me on a local trail:

Ha, my MTB couldn't be further from yours



The guys I used to ride XC with all went Enduro 20 years ago and with it went the fitness, fast down a hill and they'll take on anything but so slow up a hill that I'd be quicker up and over on the HT! Back when I was exclusively MTB it was all about the descents, since I got a road bike it's become all about the climbs. Each to their own.

 

[dan31]

I picked up a new mtb, 2020 Specialized Epic Hard Tail. The ultralight build. Size large 18.5 lbs. It goes like a stabbed rat!!

 

[Raven]

I've got exactly the same bike like on this picture

 

[andromedaaudio]

@Dave C

Just came back from the international space station ( part time NASA scientist) , i work there for some extra money on the side .


Apart from that just got my TREK bike back .
I must say excelllent service from TREK , the vertical carbon dampening mechanism which was broken could not be repaired ( previous page photo )
So the dealer gave me a brand new 2020 model frame , this one has a different dampening mechanism in the horizontal tube .
Looks very clean, also the frontbrake is intergrated in the frame .
Some high Carbon rims from campagnolo or zipp should give a fast clean look .
Its a very stiff bike , excellent handling .
Very hot in europe , its like riding in a sauna

 

[MPS]

Fantastic bikes and stories, nice reading.
Due to some extra time at hand recently, yeah, international travelling is somewhat limited nowadays I (finally) dusted off my old work horse and fitted more fitting (pun intended) transmission components with gear ratios to go with this old guy who's almost a no go

 

[rando]

So the dealer gave me a brand new 2020 model frame

This is an unfortunate/fortunate side of so many proprietary and internally complex elements molded into the frame that can render it unusable. Very nice roadside shots!

How well were you able to be fit to this given restraints on adjustability? I've hit this stumbling point numerous times in recent years preventing owning something equivalent to your SLR.

I (finally) dusted off my old work horse and fitted more fitting (pun intended) transmission components with gear ratios to go with this old guy who's almost a no go

No Record Triple?

 

[DaveC]

@Dave C

Just came back from the international space station ( part time NASA scientist) , i work there for some extra money on the side .


Apart from that just got my TREK bike back .
I must say excelllent service from TREK , the vertical carbon dampening mechanism which was broken could not be repaired ( previous page photo )
So the dealer gave me a brand new 2020 model frame , this one has a different dampening mechanism in the horizontal tube .
Looks very clean, also the frontbrake is intergrated in the frame .
Some high Carbon rims from campagnolo or zipp should give a fast clean look .
Its a very stiff bike , excellent handling .
Very hot in europe , its like riding in a sauna

Nice, ISS has gotta be a nice break from Earth right now!

Trek makes some great bikes, I've owned several including the '09 Trek Session 88, which was a groundbreaking downhill bike, an '09 Remedy trail bike, and a '18 Slash, which was the Ferrari of Enduro bikes when it first came out...

A lot of my friends have road bikes, TBH I'm a little scared! I live "in-town" so I ride my town bike around a lot to do errands but the thought of doing 40+ mph down a mt road basically naked seems much more dangerous than sending a 30+ ft jump!

 

[andromedaaudio]

I have not played with the adjustment yet of the new bike .
With the old one you can tighten the bolt ( blue dot ) but my gut feeling is it becomes more susceptible to cracking if you tighten it more .
But i received no brochures / explanations when i bought the blue frame trek.
This new model works with a horizontal slider which can be locked with a bolt .
What i can say is that they are more comfey then with a frame without suspension

 

[DaveC]

Ha, my MTB couldn't be further from yours


The guys I used to ride XC with all went Enduro 20 years ago and with it went the fitness, fast down a hill and they'll take on anything but so slow up a hill that I'd be quicker up and over on the HT! Back when I was exclusively MTB it was all about the descents, since I got a road bike it's become all about the climbs. Each to their own.

Ideally I'd have a bike like yours too, but there's only so much time, money and space available.

Enduro now involves having to pedal a bike weighing 16-17kg with sticky tires 2000+ meters up in a day, and racing as many as 4 of the most difficult tracks in the area. This requires a lot of fitness and the top EWS guys train as much as any top athlete. For me, half of it is simply being outdoors and enjoying nature.

 

[MPS]

No Record Triple?

There are no hills around here and then I'll just pick my vintage Rocky Mountain ETSX-70 when needed for more challenging routes.

 

[defride]

@Dave C
Apart from that just got my TREK bike back .
I must say excelllent service from TREK , the vertical carbon dampening mechanism which was broken could not be repaired ( previous page photo )
So the dealer gave me a brand new 2020 model frame , this one has a different dampening mechanism in the horizontal tube .
Looks very clean, also the frontbrake is intergrated in the frame .
Some high Carbon rims from campagnolo or zipp should give a fast clean look .
Its a very stiff bike , excellent handling .
Very hot in europe , its like riding in a sauna

@andromedaaudio Looks like a happy accident, beautiful bike, well done Trek.

Funnily enough the day after our PF30 BB conversation my road bike BB gave up the ghost creaking badly, bearings shot grrr... put in a wheels manufacturing and it seems okay so far.

I've been riding Vision Metron 55's for the past couple of summers look great excellent in the wind for a deeper section, noticeably fast, though only good braking and not great in the wet.

Enjoy your new bike in the sun while you can, will soon enough be back to freezing cold winds from the East

 

[defride]

Fantastic bikes and stories, nice reading.
Due to some extra time at hand recently, yeah, international travelling is somewhat limited nowadays I (finally) dusted off my old work horse and fitted more fitting (pun intended) transmission components with gear ratios to go with this old guy who's almost a no go

That Colnago deserves a proper introduction and picture!

 

[defride]

Ideally I'd have a bike like yours too, but there's only so much time, money and space available.

Enduro now involves having to pedal a bike weighing 16-17kg with sticky tires 2000+ meters up in a day, and racing as many as 4 of the most difficult tracks in the area. This requires a lot of fitness and the top EWS guys train as much as any top athlete. For me, half of it is simply being outdoors and enjoying nature.

Yep, I spent time with Tracey Mosely back in the day, you only get what you put in, she worked every bit as hard as the XC racers and reaped the rewards

My old riding buddies have grown fat on beer but still enjoy riding down a hill fast

 

[DaveC]

Yep, I spent time with Tracey Mosely back in the day, you only get what you put in, she worked every bit as hard as the XC racers and reaped the rewards

My old riding buddies have grown fat on beer but still enjoy riding down a hill fast

Yeah, I have a couple of friends now on e-bikes, which is fine, I have nothing against e-bikes and I'm sure I'll own one at some point... but they are on them because they drink too much beer!

Tracey is a legend, that's awesome you got to ride with her!

 

[defride]

Yeah, I have a couple of friends now on e-bikes, which is fine, I have nothing against e-bikes and I'm sure I'll own one at some point... but they are on them because they drink too much beer!

Tracey is a legend, that's awesome you got to ride with her!

E bikes definitely have there place.

Came up behind a couple of unlikely looking lads at the bottom of a short climb yesterday morning. As I called to pass one took off and went up the climb like a goat with a big cat on his tail. He was wearing trainers and proved a good lead out, I went past over the top and carried on at a decent pace down a lovely but very narrow 2 mile lane. He was only a few seconds down by the end and made some comment about smashing the segment. Too dangerous to go flat through there so mildly surprised at a top 10 for the Strava segment including the hill. One of the guys I was riding with pulled up after a bit and pointed out he was on an E. Wouldn't have pushed on without his incentive!

Tracey was the last women I spent the night with before I married... Ha ha, well I was the only one of the lads trusted to share a room when she helped out at a demo, must have been early 2000s before she went to Trek

 

[rando]

Certainly followed Sean Kelley's timely advice this Spring to get a bit fat and enjoy facets of life normally crowded upon. In less Continental locations time has come to revisit parts of the good book he lived and not the sermons he delivers. Problems faced in sub-zero weather wearing a face covering with glasses constantly at risk of fogging over are proving a godsend lately.



@DaveC Not sure if you were around CO in the 80's when the best Trek bikes had road geo and fit (Cylclocross) mtb tires. Ratio of pavement to "roads" has almost completely flipped since. These same Trek are worth their weight in gold right now as everyone rediscovers the US invented mountain biking because it matches the terrain.

MPS looks to have an ideal setup combining the best qualities of a race bike and enjoyable riding. As the unmaintainable amount of paved surfaces in the US continue to degrade. It will be steel bikes that "plane" really coming to the fore. There was a lot of magic in those old race frames!

You should consider taking some advice on patching together an old steel race bike. Jumping and powerslides are only slightly more delicate to balance given the position you are in. Seriously though, done right it reopens a lot of places the advancement of mtb's combined with urban sprawl made dull. Nobody was riding off cliffs and hoping to survive back in the day.

 

[andromedaaudio]

@andromedaaudio Looks like a happy accident, beautiful bike, well done Trek.

Funnily enough the day after our PF30 BB conversation my road bike BB gave up the ghost creaking badly, bearings shot grrr... put in a wheels manufacturing and it seems okay so far.

I've been riding Vision Metron 55's for the past couple of summers look great excellent in the wind for a deeper section, noticeably fast, though only good braking and not great in the wet.

Enjoy your new bike in the sun while you can, will soon enough be back to freezing cold winds from the East

If it creaks again , definetively put some loctite retainer or threadlocker between the frame and the mfg outershell.(stepped surface with my mfg ) and remove the internal circlip in the frame if there is one
My 9 year old sram crankset with the mfg definetively runs smoother then the ultegra crankset in the new trek .
Reducing the bearing preload and swapping the bearing grease with sewing machine oil defintively makes it run a lot smoother.
The campagnolo wto 60 uses cup and cone bearings (angular contact bearings) which can take both axial and radial loads .
Thus making them very stiif , nothing worse then brake rub.

 

[defride]

If it creaks again , definetively put some loctite retainer or threadlocker between the frame and the mfg outershell.(stepped surface with my mfg ) and remove the internal circlip in the frame if there is one
My 9 year old sram crankset with the mfg definetively runs smoother then the ultegra crankset in the new trek .
Reducing the bearing preload and swapping the bearing grease with sewing machine oil defintively makes it run a lot smoother.
The campagnolo wto 60 uses cup and cone bearings (angular contact bearings) which can take both axial and radial loads .
Thus making them very stiif , nothing worse then brake rub.

Been down that route with FSA & FSA ceramic BB's The Enduro worked for a season but never felt super smooth. The mfg seems a good deal better, perhaps there's a touch less preload using the very unscientific wavy washer and spacers of the Cannondale crankset this time around. mfg instructions recommend carbon slip grease and void the warranty if you use any sort of retaining compound. We'll see

Campag wheels are among the best, hubs probably are the best, can't really go wrong though if I were currently in the market i'd be looking to Schmolke and saving half a kilo with Extralight hubs

 

[DaveC]

BBs can be a pain! I went with these Cane Creek BBs. Interesting bearing tech, they are sealed entirely and originally designed for food processing equipment.

https://canecreek.com/product/hellbender-bottom-bracket/

I have cheap aluminum crank arms though... maybe one day I'll spring for the Cane Creek Ti eeWings arms...