cfaber Posted November 1, 2022 Share Posted November 1, 2022 I just picked this up for my boy 1 Winning the internet Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
m sprank Posted November 2, 2022 Share Posted November 2, 2022 Cool GT for the little man. One question... rear brake lever and rear derailleur on left hand side? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
xt2005bonbon Posted November 2, 2022 Share Posted November 2, 2022 Good catch. Should be on the right hand side. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cfaber Posted November 2, 2022 Share Posted November 2, 2022 Good catches guys, my boy has some problems with his right arm and hand which prohibit normal movement. Still loves to ride so I custom built his derailer and brake setup so he could actuate it with his left hand 2 Winning the internet Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
xt2005bonbon Posted November 2, 2022 Share Posted November 2, 2022 This makes sense. Glad he can still ride a bike. He must love it. On topic, I hurt my bank account lately in terms of mountain biking. After 14 years of putting mounting bikes on my roof rack, I finally bought a vertical hitch rack. Sooo freakin nice. It is a velocirax 5. You would really love this thing. Very quick and easy to rack and unrack the bikes. Rack is heavy (85lbs). But I added two retractable straps, permanently mounted on the rack, which I hook to my roof rails on long trips. Can't feel the rack anymore! You can go fast on dirt road and go light offroading too. Obviously, departure angle hurts, but if you have a truck, then no big deal. Note that I have aftermarket eibach rear coils (500 in lbs spring rate). I had to adjust the preload a bit. May have to adjust some more or get the 600 or 700 inch.lbs coils. I also carry a bunch of stuff in my trunk (small Dometic fridge, large toolbox, 12" subwoofer, kitchenette, amps, extra battery, etc..) Also, just bought a used bike for my wife, a Transition Bandit 29er full suspension. Will post picture once I receive it. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
m sprank Posted November 2, 2022 Share Posted November 2, 2022 Cool that you are able to modify the controls so that the little guy can still rip it. I raced MX with a one armed man and a one legged man (two different men). If they can do it, so can your boy. Love the new rack. I so need a better one. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
xt2005bonbon Posted November 2, 2022 Share Posted November 2, 2022 Check out their website. They have a discount going on I think. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
m sprank Posted November 2, 2022 Share Posted November 2, 2022 I checked. I assume you purchased the bundle (159 off). Dent in wallet is right. They look very nice. Good stuffs not cheap. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
xt2005bonbon Posted November 2, 2022 Share Posted November 2, 2022 (edited) I bought the Velocirax 5 with their lock. No discount at the time :(. But I do not regret it. My wife loves it too. There is another local Utah brand (Alta) that is a little more expensive but provides better departure angle, more flexibility with the basket location, etc.. However, that one does not come with Velocirax proprietary way of making the rack stay put inside your hitch. It does not come with the struts either, which assists you when lowering the rack. That feature is awesome. I also use the rack to store the bikes in my garage now. It comes with a 'rack hanger' when you purchase it. Nice review here: https://www.twowheelingtots.com/alta-racks-vertical-bike-rack-review/ Edited November 2, 2022 by xt2005bonbon 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cassy0110 Posted January 12, 2023 Share Posted January 12, 2023 I can recommend Schwinn https://www.bikethesites.com/full-suspension-mountain-bikes-under-2000/ the second one, I use it and very satisfied. It rides like a dream on the rough dirt and rocky mountain roads near my house, the full suspension and big 29" tires really soak in the bumps, very smooth. I am very pleased with the overall performance of the bike so far, it shifts very quickly up and down and the disk brakes are strong. I am 5'9" tall / 185 lbs. and the bike has plenty of seat adjustment left, I would say it will handle up to a 6'2" rider, but not much shorter than 5'8" comfortably. I would highly recommend this bike to anyone that is NOT interested in hard core wide open down hill mountain trail riding. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
m sprank Posted January 12, 2023 Share Posted January 12, 2023 You get what you pay for. A schwinn frame might be an ok starting point. I am far happier with an entry level Giant over the Schwinn Boundary I previously rode. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
m sprank Posted January 12, 2023 Share Posted January 12, 2023 It was Christmas, so I was busy. More mods complete. Might actually be done for a while. Nothing remians factory on my bike except the frame, bars and saddle. Wifes bike kept the frame, bars, saddle and seat post. Daughters bike retained the frame. I have between 1500 and 2k invested in each. Light riding this winter and we should be ripping the single track come spring. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
xt2005bonbon Posted January 12, 2023 Share Posted January 12, 2023 wow, that's a lot of money. I must be cheap then I see you opted for the PNW components. Their grips are some of the grippiest ones I have ever had. I also use one of their dropper posts too. Been working fine for more than a year now. How heavy are your bikes now? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
m sprank Posted January 12, 2023 Share Posted January 12, 2023 (edited) Yes, me likes PNW. Grips on all bikes, Loam dropper on mine, pedals on daughters bike. A lot went into the wheels and hubs. Wife and daughters bikes were $325 each for the rims, spokes, nipples and hubs. I went a little overboard on mine. Lets not speak of cost. I wanted to try wide and tubeless. 30mm inner rims (all bikes ride sun ringle now), Dlight spokes, alloy nippes, speed tuned hubs. All bikes now have hydraulic brakes, mine using 4 pots. All have air forks. All have Cane Creek 40 series headsets. All are 1x drive systems. Yada, yada, yada. Wifes bikes ran about 1300 daughters 1500 to build. Mine around 2000 (beacause of the wheel set). For 2k you get about the same bike with lesser quality wheel set from store. I also built a light weight wheel set complete with brakes and cassette to be shared by wife and daughter. Mounted up a more gravel friendly tire for commuting. I need to drag a scale to the garage and weigh them now. I suspect a wash as I reduced in some areas but added in others. Forks dropped almost 2lbs alone. Edited January 12, 2023 by m sprank Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
socalsleeper Posted January 12, 2023 Share Posted January 12, 2023 Very cool rigs you got there. I regret selling my hardtail Giant when I left SoCal as it would be nice to have now. All I got now is a Specialized road bike in dire need of some TLC. I do plan to get an MTB sooner than later, but with so many other interest I have bouncing around in my head right now I don't know when that will be. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
m sprank Posted January 13, 2023 Share Posted January 13, 2023 Weighed the bikes as requested. My process... weigh myself, then weigh myself holding the bike and subtract my weight. I weighed them each twice, just to be sure. My bike = 29.9lb then 30.0lb (2lb under stock) Wifes Bike = 30.9lb then 31.0lb (1.0lb under stock) Daughters bike = 30.9lb then 30.9lb. (1.5lbs under stock) 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
xt2005bonbon Posted January 13, 2023 Share Posted January 13, 2023 wow. Good job. Mine is 45 lbs. Ouch!! 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cfaber Posted January 14, 2023 Share Posted January 14, 2023 7 hours ago, xt2005bonbon said: wow. Good job. Mine is 45 lbs. Ouch!! Ah, exercise bike Winning the internet Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KZJonny Posted April 26, 2023 Share Posted April 26, 2023 Cool thread. I only recently got back into trail riding over the past couple years, inspired by my former assistant at work who really got his teeth into it. He went full retard and graduated from repairing and flipping low end mountain bikes to make a little cash, to riding on his budget, built-up old Kona Cindercone? that was made almost entirely of second hand stuff and used things off of Pinkbike. Not long after that he picked up a very, very nice DeVinci Kobain in 29"... and as of last month he had quit working for me and was out in British Colombia taking a course in how to braze together your own bike frame. So. During that whole whirlwind, I dusted off my most recent mountainbike purchase, a Kona Process 134+ which I'd picked up while living in BC myself, in around 2015. It's a nice bike, and the FS was great to get back into riding and keep my old ass from being too sore, but it comes at a weight penalty.... Being a reasonably modern bike, it didn't need much but some air in the tires and shocks and a quick wipe down and chaing lube. Rode that with him every once in a while for half the summer. Eventually, it got a little tiring falling waty beyhind him every time we got to a hill, and I had to drop a chainring to get my out of shape self and the 34? lb bike up after him. (Note, he is ~15 years younger than me and rides almost every day in the summer, so even keeping up at all is an accomplishment, hah!) In an effort to not die quite so much and so often, I went to the wayback machine and dug out my original MTB, which I purchased from my friends Bike store, back in 1999. My Gary Fisher Hoo Koo E Koo, in 26". Aaaaaand it is still a pretty great bike, from a time when I think you got a lot more value for money, and there was a lot less BS stuff on the market. It's well under 30 lbs, still has a 9 speed XT cassette and 3 chainrings up front. I hate that most bikes these days have gone to a sigle chainring with only 10 or 11 gears in the rear. It must work for someone, but I find them stupidly inefficient to ride. It's also a *very* well made Chromoly frame from back when there wasn't some kind of stupid premium on them, and MAN does that make a difference. I do not think I will ever buy a bike with an aluminium frame again. A couple of rides on that reminded me of a few things about MTB in the 90s and 2000s. Much less slack in the head tube angle, (and much narrower handlebars than you would ever see today...) means a pretty twitchy steering sensation. It's great for not bashing your hands on everything along the trailside, but at speed, also means you need to be very very careful with steering input, lest you "oversteer" or flip the bike. This is especially evident when I took a ride on the Kona with it's 700mm? handlebars, followed by the Fisher (580mm bars?). It also became pretty clear that the 20++ year old RockShox Jucy C's that came with the bike were A) toast and B) not enough travel (63mm) for the kind of riding I'm doing now, or for my increasingly arthritic hands. So.... I found a set of period correct Marzocchi Z1 Drop Offs with 120mm of travel and slapped them on, and some cheap 640mm handlebar off of Amazon that I will add for this season when I get a brake line long enough that I can still has fron brakes and use it. Aside from that, just a set of nice fat, knobby Conti Mountain Kings, to replace the (!original!) front tire, and the somewhat wornout replacement rear tire, both of which were maybe 1.95? or so... Things change over time, and the now-standard 2.25ish wide tires barely fit between the rear seat stays, but they are there, and a lot grippier that the 20/15 year old ones that were there.... It's been a fun little restoration, and I gotta say while I appreciate the plushness of the FS still, I'm increasingly grabbbing the old Fisher when I go out for anything but the gnarliest of hill rides. Light, fast and simple is awesome. Turns out that good Avid side-pull brakes are still more than enough to put you up on the front wheel if you're not careful and 20 year old geometry looks strangely a lot like the current "trend" in gravel and trail bikes, with a little tighter head tube angle. So, I guess it's that old chesnut about "never throw out your old ties...." Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
xt2005bonbon Posted April 26, 2023 Share Posted April 26, 2023 Talking about mountain biking, I finally got around finding the right size orings for my leaky 66 2010 Marzocchi fork. Changed the orings, began doing an oil change only to find out the titanium spring is broken in half . Quite annoyed now! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KZJonny Posted April 28, 2023 Share Posted April 28, 2023 On 4/26/2023 at 12:06 PM, xt2005bonbon said: Talking about mountain biking, I finally got around finding the right size orings for my leaky 66 2010 Marzocchi fork. Changed the orings, began doing an oil change only to find out the titanium spring is broken in half . Quite annoyed now! Hope you can find replacement parts! I went down this road with my vintage forks, and it had been a pain. But I really don’t want to switch to a modern fork on my vintage bike! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
xt2005bonbon Posted April 29, 2023 Share Posted April 29, 2023 These springs are still being sold in Europe for..... 350$+shipping! Titanium ya know.. A guy in Cali who has taken over the whole (old) Marzocchi inventory has some as well for 250... Steel version for 70$. 100g extra weight. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KZJonny Posted April 30, 2023 Share Posted April 30, 2023 On 4/28/2023 at 11:07 PM, xt2005bonbon said: These springs are still being sold in Europe for..... 350$+shipping! Titanium ya know.. A guy in Cali who has taken over the whole (old) Marzocchi inventory has some as well for 250... Steel version for 70$. 100g extra weight. Those are some very expensive grams! I know what I’d do, but I don’t do races any longer. Those days are well behind me, tho I did enjoy them when I was at it! At least you can get those shocks back in working order. I know modern ones are nice and light by comparison, but when I put old Z1’s on my hardtail, I was surprised by how nice they are for damping and rebound. Guess they knew what they were doing 20 years ago. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
xt2005bonbon Posted May 1, 2023 Share Posted May 1, 2023 My Marzocchi 66s forks are so plush I love them. Yes, they are heavy but I don't care. I have a blast when the bike points downhill. I put the spring back in. It stays well put actually and does not even make any noise at all. I think I'll be fine for now . 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
xt2005bonbon Posted May 15, 2023 Share Posted May 15, 2023 I was able to find a seller in Spain who sold me a brand new titanium spring for 120$ shipped. Not too bad I guess.. Also purchased a DT Swiss tubeless rim (FR 560) for my rear wheel. Last Saturday, I swapped rims. I need to finish truing my new wheel. I hope I will be free of leaks! Btw, still no leaks with the 66s forks. So nice to have front brake working again Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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