Mountain Bike - Hard tail

Hammer's Recoverite works great. Love that stuff.

 

I like peanut butter and banana sandwich before and a blox/beat elite mixture in my bottle before and during. Usually an island green smoothie after.

 

And there it is. http://dirtragmag.com/chumba-usa-returns-with-american-made-steel-hardtails/

 

The rasto looks like my transam.

 

History: Rode a ton in the mid 90s, had an Amp Research that was pretty well built, after hearing the guys at work talk about riding, I just picked up a Trek Superfly6 29er hardtail that was a 2014 closeout for right at $1500.

What are people running for bars? I am trying to get used to the riding position on the Trek. It seems the current trend is super short stems and low sweep bars, where I used to run a longer stem with a bar with a bit more sweep. Not sure if I should go from the stock flat bar to a riser with some sweep, or? Think my complaint is I am used to having my wrists with my thumbs further forward, and my current bar has my knuckles flat

Know a lot of it is personal preference, just don't want to go through a few hundred in trying out new bars.

 

I need everything higher at the bars than I used to. I think it's just age. My setup is pretty old school though I continue to fight the temptation to trim my bars down to shoulder width. Apparently that went out of fashion too.

 

hussafelt makes the largest drop downhill bars. I believe ~45mm rise. Scoured every catalog the bike shop had and that was the largest one. You can add a riser stem ~35mm. So thats a lil over 3.5" with the bars/stem

 

Yeah all my old 26ers now feel like the low riser bars(which 10-12yrs ago, were then new school) are crazy narrow/twitchy, after riding the new 29er with the newer wide-ass flat bars exclusively for a month. With the 29er, I can see for a bit more leverage. Here in the thickly wooded SE mtns w the wider bars, one has to work a bit more thru the narrow sections in the trees. Also don't have as much clearance thru the trees for skirting mud holes/big ass rocks, etc as easy now.

On another note, had a simple frontend washout last Fri, while railing a turn I've been thru 100 times before. The right hand got trapped against the bar as it got trapped into my hip area as my body tried to go passed the bars and all from momentum, bending the wrist to its limits. At that moment I heard both bones in my right forearm where it joins to the wrist, break. Dambit man! Used a 12" stick and bandana for a split. Actually worked pretty good. Had to ride out 5+ miles of rocky mt-nous terrain 1 handed. Which sucked. Had to run along side the bike on the steeper rocky descents. No way using one hand trying to hold ones body weight fore-aft and while steering, braking, etc. And at that point, I absolutely didn't wanna fall a second time on a freshly broken arm. Took the huge up-past-my-elbow temp cast brace off the ER installed, and used one of those short carpel tunnel wrist support thingies. Much better. Still riding one handed, but only doing road hill repeats.

Yesterday the ortho doc installed one of cool removable wrist brace, using the round ratchet twister thingie for tension, not unlike the higher end Sidi boots.

 

+1 on that, some of the other stuff they make doesn't work as well for me but recoverite is awesome. After a long day of dirt riding chug one down as soon as I get off the bike and I'm back to good energy level for the rest of the day. Without it, I'll slump and want to fall asleep in a few hours.

 

I work with Hammer a bit and they have some special deals every once in awhile. When you run out, let me know.

 

Damn, heal up!

 

Heh I used to race supermoto with the owner of the company (they were doing go-karts, same track/days), great guy overall and definitely very creative businessman. But, I don't have any special hookups, so thank you!

 

It looks promising!

 

After scoffing at them for 10 yrs...

Installed a new KS Lev 125mm travel dropper on the carbon 29r today. Now all I have to do..is heal haha

Net weight gain wasn't too bad for a dropper. 202gms.

Action is hydraulic. Smooth as butter.

 

Got stuck out on the trail when it started raining. Eff the mud.

 

I bet your casette and chain loved that.

 

Well shit, looks like I get to spend some money

Was about half way through the TOWM on saturday. Just finished most of the climbing and was starting on the flowy downhilly shit. Hauling ass, jumped a water bar and all of the sudden my rear wheel locked up. was able to not crash, and when I stopped, my rear deraileur was about 50 feet up trail, mangled to shit. It had broken off, got sucked into wheel and busted like 5 spokes. fuuuuuuuuck SO, I hiked that shit out and proceeded to get drunk off my ass.



So, I just dropped the wheel off at a LBS, hopefully everything goes smooth. Now I gotta figure out what the hell to do with my drive train. I was running X7 (its what came on the bike). No real issues til shit exploded saturday. Its 2x10, shimano SLX cassette (it was on sale when I busted my sram cassette like 6 months ago). Im debating on making the switch to shimano or sticking with sram. I got SLX brakes and LOVE them, and hear nothing but amazing things about shimano drive train. I would go XT for sure. I also hear mostly good things about sram, and am thinking X9 type 2.

Opinions?

 

I've got X9 type 2 on my Epic comp. It shifts much crisper than the X7 I had on my Giant. It has worked flawlessly, and I've banged on it in all types of conditions for the last year and a half.

 

Has the RD(and or hanger) ever been bent previous to this incident? Sometimes if its bent any..and when going off some type of jump(cause'n it to extend downward)..it could possibly go into the spokes, which typically results into what you have.

 

Let me first start by saying that i ball on a budget.

Ive been running a Trek 6000 for a little while now, and my Dart 3 forks are about done, i figure new forks will be better than rebuilding those.

What do you guys recommend for budget friendly air forks?

Thanks