ATXZJ

Anyone ridden since Halloween rain? Assuming it still G2G.....

18 hours ago, tomreece said:

Good question! I don't really know to be honest. 6 months ago I'd have said you were crazy to spend $1500 on a bike. But now after demo'ing the $7000 carbon Mondraker Foxy RR 29, I see what money can buy. The experience definitely gave me some upgrade-itis.

$2000 - no guilt
$3000 - minor guilt
$5000 - major guilt
$7000 - no

$3000-4000 is a the sweet spot for most "good" bikes. As others have said, you can get some really nice deals on leftovers for 2-2.5k right now. Anything over 5k in my opinion, is an exercise in diminishing returns, particularly in the flatlandia that we ride in. The upgrade-itis comment reminded me of the latest from IFHT.

1 hour ago, Ridenfool said:

The level of tech in the MTB industry has been excellent for many years now. Which means if you look at the large scale online shops you can often find a well reviewed, new old stock bike in the vendors warehouses. A one or two year old bike that is an excellent ride and sold for $4K or more can often be purchased for $2K or less.

This is the beginning of the season where many stores will be clearing their inventory before the tax year ends.

JensonUSA.com was mentioned earlier,

A few others include:

UniversalCycles.com

ChainReactioncycle.com (British site, with free USA shipping on orders over $49)

ColoradoCyclist.com

CompetitiveCyclist.com

BicycleWarehouse.com

There are more ...

Most of the manufacturers will have clearance sales on their new old stock. Check their websites for a clearance or sale page.

Many smaller shops with an online store can offer bargains for the same reasons.

You could also build a bike by sourcing components as you find the ones you want on sale. Thus, spreading out the purchase over time, and learning about installing components and doing your own maintenance, if that appeals to you.

Lastly, mtbr.com and pinkbike.com are a couple of good resources for reviews and classified ads and other information.

 

THIS^

You picked a perfect time to buy a bike. I bought a 2600.00 frame for 1550.00 delivered this time last year. FYI, Jenson will discount their advertised prices further if you call them and ask if there's any room left on the price. They usually give me a minimum 5% off for using a CC over the phone rather than paypal online.  They buy these bikes and frames as bulk leftovers from distributors and manufacturers and get them cheaper than your LBS can. Basically bikewagon, but with bikes you'd actually want to own.

Bought my wifes process 134 complete from The path in tustin and only took a minimum of fuss to get it going, but im an ex mechanic. 

Dont rule out cambriabike. I bought 4 kona frames from them and pay 30%+ off with free or reducing shipping.

Id rock a used bike off pinkbike for sure, but only ones with aluminum frames.

Good thing is it sounds like you've narrowed your selection to a shorter/mid travel 29 FS which will make the process WAY easier. Assembly is easy enough and the benefit of being cool to fellow MTB riders and people on the forum is they'll be willing to offer help if needed. You'll be good on assembly.

Lastly, you might consider some of these offers on devinici. The Django and Marshall would be rad bikes for central TX, and as i recall theres a few people on the board that have them.

https://www.evo.com/shop/sale/bike/bikes/mountain-bikes/devinci?utm_source=Pinkbike&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=Nov-18-Monthly-Deals&utm_term=Devinci&utm_content=Devinci

1 hour ago, WhoAmI said:

I rode a Trek Remedy for a few years and loved the suspension design, which it shares with the Fuel EX.  Was the suspension set up properly for those who rode it?  It should've been, but I'm curious. Trek incorporates what they call a full floater, which means that the rear shock is not attached to the main triangle like almost all the other bikes.  The shock is attached to a rocker and point on the chain stays in front of the seat post.  Due to this design, suspension setup is key. 

Also, was the Mino link set up for a 29er (low setting) or a 27.5 (high setting)?  This makes a difference.  

Edit: Bicycle Sport Shop has their previous year demo bikes on sale now at Lamar.  I know people love to hate BSS, but it's an employee owned local shop in business since 1984.  And, yes, i work there.

It did have the floating shock and we made a special hail mary trip back to the shop to try and get the bike tuned before inevitably giving up. to us, it just felt like an overpriced fun removal machine. He finished the weekend on a borrowed slack 29 hardtail and said he had way more fun. 

No hating on BSS. If they'd mark down their 2-3 y/o inventory more than 20% i might actually do a little more business with them. The tallboy and hightower are great bikes for texas.

Again, if you're cool with online purchases, jenson cannot be beat. Id imagine theres quite a few evil followings to sample around here.

https://www.jensonusa.com/Evil-Following-V1-GX-Eagle-Jenson-Bike

3 hours ago, Kobra Kai MTB Guy said:

There are so many better values out there’s in my opinion. Just on looks alone, the fuel is very “meh”.  Friend of mine has one and rented one from BSS fleet while he was here. Nothing really impressive about it at all. 

Don't want to dogpile on this but yeah, a lot of better choices.

For a lbs sourced bike similar to the trek, I would suggest going to see AJ down at peddlers in CP and try out a smuggler. F*cking rad bike.  If you are open to online sales, nobody can touch jenson on their closeout pricing. 

I'll also throw in a test ride if you want to try a kona hei hei. 

1 hour ago, tomreece said:

Does anyone have a Trek Fuel Ex 8 29?

Has anyone ridden one?

What did you like?

What did you dislike?

Buddy of mine rented the 27+ version in bentonville and turned it in early because he hated it so much. When he brought it back to the shop the rep he said "yeah we get that a lot". At the time, my buddy had a salsa horsethief and intense spider and went on to buy a sentinel. 

From what i rode of it, felt dull and and a bit cumbersome, the exact opposite of poppy. It was the carbon version i believe but it had HR2s on it with tubes. Sorry to be so anecdotal.

His thoughts: "A solid bike that feels grounded for good and ill. Feels far heavier than the lbs would lead you to expect. like the hand of god was holding you down admonishing you for trying to have fun. For as much of a tank as that felt, I'd go with a Slash. Might as well have a bomber if its going to feel like that "

Your experience as well as others may be completely different. If you're gonna buy from LBS, might as well demo, demo, demo.

Good luck

2 hours ago, Chief said:

. Including vehicles that stayed in one place too long.

Ah the old crapstacktacular.

My favorite was when the wind would pick the hoods up that were "stored" on the roofs and blow them onto the ground. good times.

1 hour ago, mack_turtle said:

 

Looks like present day san antonio..........sorry had to

3 hours ago, JRA said:

 

That resembles the current state of my rolling cart.

2 hours ago, The Tip said:

I don't think we should fear things that bring more people to mountain biking. There is not a "finite amount of trails." Demand will increase supply. This happened in both golf and skiing as they increased in popularity. The end result being that there were more courses and more ski areas to chose from.

The more people that call themselves mountain bikers the better it is for all of us. 

But I still haven't decided how I feel about ebikes.

Yes and no.

Agree the exposure to Ebikes in the USA through UCI events will bring more interest to the sport. The manufactures know that if given the choice of two bikes, both costing $5k, one with a motor and one without, cost driven consumers will choose the one with the motor. I was just listening to a industry podcast about this very thing.

In TX, the biggest issue will be the lack of available public land and a state that has historically, ranked at or near the bottom in funding of its parks. That leaves it up to the local counties and governments to fund bike trails, which they have little to no reason to when they can develop it and gain the tax revenue. The local municipalities and governing bodies seem to be reluctant to move forward with, or have any clear plan on building on land that cant be developed anyway. Austin, unlike other cities doesn't have an issue attracting people to move here, so the possibility of building bike trails for a completely niche hobby, leads me to believe we are indeed stuck with a finite amount of official, sanctioned trails.  

You'd have to ask the local trail builders if more people on existing trail networks is a good thing. I can say that once people get access to trails with e-bikes there will be issues with speeding on crowded trails and riding places they have no business. Its human nature to do dumb sh*t when you can.

My theory comes from when we were 4x4 trail builders in Utah. There were very few land usage issues until side by sides became popular. Those vehicles granted the novice access to trails their stock wranglers wouldn't go.  They drove around obstacles (features in MTB speak) widening the trails, stacked rocks, cut down trees, drove way too fast and were generally in over their head. The 4x4 community eventually fractured over these things since we all wanted access to public land, but the 4x4 guys were doing ALL the work building, maintaining and cleaning trails while the side by sides were on the news driving through streams and getting in accidents. We eventually went rogue like the MTB builders do here and built secret trails that we kept to ourselves. I see a very similar situation brewing with the addition of E-bikes into our sport/hobby. 

Disclaimer. I left utah in 2012 so things may have changed a lot since.

9 minutes ago, notyal said:

Being able to go faster and farther with the same effort and very similar riding experience sounds awful. Wait, no, that actually sounds like a lot of fun. 

Sounds like you should move west and buy an adventurebike. Open travel is really that good.

I'm totally down with ebikes in cities because it gets people out of cars and relieves congestion and pollution. However, i do wish they'd do a better job discarding those scooters somewhere other than middle of sidewalks. I digress.

E-bikes will just bring more people to a finite amount of mtb trails and nothing good will come of that in places like texas.

1 hour ago, throet said:

I just don't get why they didn't leave the single log to be hopped over vs. piling a bunch of kindling around it. 

Autism

Looked and couldn't see if the garage thread from mojo made it over here. With all the downtime from the rain, i got a little bit done on my project. What about you guys?

When i run out of booze and beer, i drink chardonnay  

2 hours ago, mack_turtle said:

SCNP has a Facebook page with status updates. It was closed as of 7 Friday night.

thanks. just checked looks to be still be closed

3 hours ago, Chief said:

Cam McCaul's commentary is hard to listen to. He's even hard to watch with his focus and eyes darting all over the place. There's no need to sensationalize this event it's pretty self explanatory. The problem with the judging is that it's very subjective unless someone pulls off some crazy move. I think Lacondeguy might have won with that last run he had going, was definitely pulling out all the stops.

Yep, he and neethling are painful to listen to during crankworx.  Ill take warners drunken shouting any day over that study in autism 

Thinking about hitting slaughter tomorrow. Any status updates?

Thanks!

Insane riding

Thought faircloth got robbed.

Commentators sound like they're watching figure skating

Think ive had enough of the rampage slopestyle events 

Anything for a dollar

1 hour ago, AntonioGG said:

Several people at my work drink the faucet water and they're OK.

Thats been my experience as well. 

So is anyone drinking austin water?

55 minutes ago, cxagent said:

IMy biggest reason I don't ride it wet is I slip and fall too much on the wet rocks.

Exactly.

This is what i dont understand about people who insist on riding in the wet. No matter how many PB vids you watch, this isnt the PNW or UK and the traction and mud here is awful to deal with.  The risk of injury is also much higher than in the dry. For what? To ride the same crappy trail you've ridden 100x before? Go to the gym, buy a stationary trainer, do anything to stay fit other than damaging the trails or getting hurt for something dumb.

2 hours ago, Ridenfool said:

My 90 y.o. neighbor texted to let me know she was just informed they are looking for someone with a gun at Rocky Hill and to lock the doors.

sun comes out for one day and everyone loses their sh*t😁

22 hours ago, TheX said:

I'm so glad I bought the Kona when I did. Not my favorite type of ride, but it's riding.

After all this rain, was thinking "man i should've have held onto that cross bike".  🤣

Glad to hear you're still digging it!

2 hours ago, mack_turtle said:

It's highly likely that the slack STA on Verdone's latest bike was chosen to negate the offset placement of the seat tube in front of the BB.

 

 

 

If he put a conventional 74 degree angle or a steep 77, the saddle would end up waaaay forward. I'll bet that if you measured the angle from the BB to the top of that post, it would seem closer to normal. With a custom frame, you know where you want the saddle to end up and can plan accordingly.

2 hours ago, mack_turtle said:

It's highly likely that the slack STA on Verdone's latest bike was chosen to negate the offset placement of the seat tube in front of the BB.

 

 

If he put a conventional 74 degree angle or a steep 77, the saddle would end up waaaay forward. I'll bet that if you measured the angle from the BB to the top of that post, it would seem closer to normal. With a custom frame, you know where you want the saddle to end up and can plan accordingly.

Virtual STA is probably closer to 72-73* on that bike. As it looks like hes only going by actual STA. 

Would like to add the shift towards steeper STAs that has become popular was also necessitated by shorter CS and the need to do something with the tire under full compression. 

Modern honzo with anything longer than a 40mm stem is blasphemy. Mine has a 35mm with an angleset shortening the reach a bit.

Pretty much why i bought a process 111 when they came out, and I've stuck with that geometry since. It just feels (right) to me compared to what i'd owned prior.  The sentinel i built had a 64* HTA,  35mm stem, 800mm bars, 42mm offset fork and had almost no noticeable flop. That pretty impressive considering its sporting what would have been DH HTA a couple years ago. The long reach/front centre of these bikes combined with short stems and low standover gives me the confidence to push harder.

FWIW, even my current "XC" bike has 66HTA with 40mm offset fork and 40mm stem 780 bars. Concerning lower bars, my rigs usually have one 2.5mm or 5mm spacer under the stem because i prefer low stack on all my bikes. If i want more, i usually just buy a bar with more instead of adding more spacers. Low stack and standover helps my feel like im slung into the bike and not over it. Totally agree on HT HTA needing to be slacker for compression and sag. You generally lose a degree just from sag. 

Interesting to read those notes and definitely illustrates why the new geo bikes are popular.