Mountain Biking

[Andrew Moore]

I’ve just gone and purchased the cheap and cheerful Boardman MTR 8.8 as it’s on Easter sale.

Other than moving to tubeless and swapping pedals to some more durable parts with replaceable studs what else would you do?

Yes I appreciate it’s an entry bike however a few points to bear in mind.

1, I’ve not had a bike since I had a Kona Stinky 2007 which was heavily modded, weighed as much as a small planet and was rocking 26ers on Maguras that blew seals every 5 minutes and sounded like banshees.

2, I don’t believe I’ll be “sending” anything and as with point 1, I can’t be bothered spending most of my Sunday walking back to the car as I’ve broke something so will instead be casually having a bit of fun and not acting like a weapon.

TLDR, I’m not 20 any more.

Also any recommendations on a helmet? Nothing too flashy.

 

[aVdub]

I’ve just gone and purchased the cheap and cheerful Boardman MTR 8.8 as it’s on Easter sale.

Other than moving to tubeless and swapping pedals to some more durable parts with replaceable studs what else would you do?

Yes I appreciate it’s an entry bike however a few points to bear in mind.

1, I’ve not had a bike since I had a Kona Stinky 2007 which was heavily modded, weighed as much as a small planet and was rocking 26ers on Maguras that blew seals every 5 minutes and sounded like banshees.

2, I don’t believe I’ll be “sending” anything and as with point 1, I can’t be bothered spending most of my Sunday walking back to the car as I’ve broke something so will instead be casually having a bit of fun and not acting like a weapon.

TLDR, I’m not 20 any more.

Also any recommendations on a helmet? Nothing too flashy.

Nice.
34 Tooth chainring

Drivetrain Archives - Unite Co

uniteco.bike

Get the brakes off and for sale and replace with Shimano SLX (2 pot will do) or go up to to XT there are some good deals floating around for slightly older models.

 

[Andrew Moore]

Nice.
34 Tooth chainring

Drivetrain Archives - Unite Co

uniteco.bike

Get the brakes off and for sale and replace with Shimano SLX (2 pot will do) or go up to to XT there are some good deals floating around for slightly older models.

The 32 a sore point on the bike then? Ive noticed a fair few people stating the Boardman 8.x MTR range is a little lacking in frame protection too, no idea what they mean about that but would a bash guard be a worthwile drop on too? I cant recall breaking cranks or smashing the frame underside when i was younger so its an after thought and probably a waste of cash.

Some have received the bike with the MT200 brakes, others with Tektro HD M275. Id likely keep any brakes i removed as spare anyway, the scars of the Magura days will never heal.

Appreciate the response though!

 

[aVdub]

The 32 a sore point on the bike then? Ive noticed a fair few people stating the Boardman 8.x MTR range is a little lacking in frame protection too, no idea what they mean about that but would a bash guard be a worthwile drop on too? I cant recall breaking cranks or smashing the frame underside when i was younger so its an after thought and probably a waste of cash.

Some have received the bike with the MT200 brakes, others with Tektro HD M275. Id likely keep any brakes i removed as spare anyway, the scars of the Magura days will never heal.

Appreciate the response though!

I'm only going by the 2 bikes I had with 11-32 and 12-32 that ran out of puff too quickly. Adding the 34 really made a difference.

Frame or Heli tape is advised for those area's that always get the thump, forks, top tube etc.

Bash guard if you ride rocky area's is useful I guess.

 

[arknor]

Other than moving to tubeless and swapping pedals to some more durable parts with replaceable studs what else would you do?

I'd replace the grips and saddles with Ergon ones, but they are expensive and it's not my bike, but you asked what I would do so..

well the grips are only £30 https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B08248TGJZ/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&th=1
They have a wing shape so your hands have more contact area with the bar and are less likely to go numb

Ergon seats are proper comfy too but they are expensive.
I run one of these

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B084WVRWXJ/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&th=1&psc=1

but its "emtb" specific and over kill for an analogue bike, where you won't be sitting down so much, also incredibly expensive

Ergon stuff is all 10.10 from what I've tried, some people don't like wing grips but they stopped my hands aching on 3-4 hours rides.
the grips that came as standard on my bike were like arthritis inducing and the seat ached my butt after 45mins



if you want to waste £9.50 then https://76projects.com/products/cable-bobbins look good and stop all the wires Infront of your bars dancing around

1 item/pack of them is enough to manage 5 cables as it states.

someone is probably churning them out on a 3d printer for almost nothing.

 

[Andrew Moore]

Thanks for the links. I will have a mooch. With the grips ill have to give the ones on the bike a go however I can see that they are likely to need a swap out as the grid arrangement on them I didnt think was all too helpful on the palm for the few moments I held on to one on a hard tail that uses most of the same parts.

Seat will probably get a swap out. I just need to tune my backside to a seat again, anything that thin is going to give me rear and crotch issues after a near decade of not sitting on one.

 

[nick-fury]

I've always found the Ergon saddles to be "comfortable" after a few rides of breaking your butt cheeks in...

Ergon Saddles | Free Delivery* | 365 Day Returns | Tredz Bikes

Shop the latest range of Ergon Saddles delivered free to the UK mainland*. 0% APR finance is available on all baskets over £99. Tredz Price Match & hassle free 365 day returns. Buy Now.

www.tredz.co.uk

I'm currently using the Ergon SM E-Mountain Sport.

For grips I always go with DMR Deathgrips, thick and soft - just like me.

MTB Grips | Lock On Grips| Free Delivery* | Tredz Bikes

Shop the latest range of MTB grips delivered free to the UK mainland*. 0% APR finance is available on all baskets over £99. Tredz Price Match & hassle free 365 day returns. Buy Now.

www.tredz.co.uk

 

[Andrew Moore]

Picket up a specialized Tactic 4 at £45, bargain really and apparently one of the safest if not the safest MTB helmets on the market coming in 3rd over all out of 200+ and 1st for an MTB specific part. I got it in "oak green" because blacks boring, white will get too dirty and they didn't have brown. Very happy with it, been sat playing world of warcraft with it on just to see if it would bother me and its sat perfect.

As I went to a specialized seller I happened to notice the Specialized Status 160.. Was £2900, now £1999... Its a jump up but my god does it have me wanting to cancel my Boardman in favour of this particular bike.. its a good £950 more, call it double the price but my god is the spec above and beyond!

The question is given the upgrades, what would you do? Feel free to tell me to shut up and enjoy the Boardman when it arrives as I am sure I will.

 

[Anth-h90]

Picket up a specialized Tactic 4 at £45, bargain really and apparently one of the safest if not the safest MTB helmets on the market coming in 3rd over all out of 200+ and 1st for an MTB specific part. I got it in "oak green" because blacks boring, white will get too dirty and they didn't have brown. Very happy with it, been sat playing world of warcraft with it on just to see if it would bother me and its sat perfect.

As I went to a specialized seller I happened to notice the Specialized Status 160.. Was £2900, now £1999... Its a jump up but my god does it have me wanting to cancel my Boardman in favour of this particular bike.. its a good £950 more, call it double the price but my god is the spec above and beyond!

The question is given the upgrades, what would you do? Feel free to tell me to shut up and enjoy the Boardman when it arrives as I am sure I will.

What’s the spec of the specialized and do you have any plans to upgrade the boardman?

If you plan on upgrading it might be better to bite the bullet now and get the higher specced bike

 

[Invertigo]

Picket up a specialized Tactic 4 at £45, bargain really and apparently one of the safest if not the safest MTB helmets on the market coming in 3rd over all out of 200+ and 1st for an MTB specific part. I got it in "oak green" because blacks boring, white will get too dirty and they didn't have brown. Very happy with it, been sat playing world of warcraft with it on just to see if it would bother me and its sat perfect.

As I went to a specialized seller I happened to notice the Specialized Status 160.. Was £2900, now £1999... Its a jump up but my god does it have me wanting to cancel my Boardman in favour of this particular bike.. its a good £950 more, call it double the price but my god is the spec above and beyond!

The question is given the upgrades, what would you do? Feel free to tell me to shut up and enjoy the Boardman when it arrives as I am sure I will.

The Status has a very similar component setup to my Turbo Levo (only real difference aside from the ebike stuff is GX vs NX drivetrain) and that's a very competent bike. I personally ended up swapping out the Code R brakes after cooking them in Scotland over a weekend but I'm fairly heavy and with an ebike too it was a bit much for them.

For context the Levo was 5k when I bought it and it doesn't feel like bad value, so getting nearly the same component setup on a traditional bike for £2k is fair value and will last you a long, long time without anything changing (bar grips, saddle etc to personal preferences)

 

[Andrew Moore]

Order cancelled firs thing this morning. Went and purchased the Status 160 earlier straight after from Evans as they were the only store withing 100 miles who had the size, dropped in after it was built and took it away.

The 820mm wide bars are an accident waiting to happen, they need dropping to 780/760 to feel comfortable but I am used to the thinner bars of yesteryear.

I now need to set the PSI on both shocks to take my weight as its set up for a Gorilla. The Sag is currently set to about 8 and 12% after measuring the drop and respectively using scrap book math to get this figure, Id like to see it more like 15 and 27% ish so a smidgen of the pressure needs to be released. My tool doesn't arrive until tomorrow so I will need to wait for that.

The seat is also horrific. If I don't have piles in the next few days I will be amazed. Dropper post is a fantastic addition but its a little slow to rebound back. I have no idea if this is a feature or just a bit of a "meh" product. Either way, something to watch.

 

[PapaLazaru]

Went out on it tonight, huge upgrade, could barely see as the sun went down and it was quite foggy but absolutely flying on the descents, just rolled over everything and riding away from my mate who usually leaves me for dead when I was on my old 27.5 scott scale.

My mates has also bought one, loves it as well.

 

[nick-fury]

Dropper post is a fantastic addition but its a little slow to rebound back. I have no idea if this is a feature or just a bit of a "meh" product. Either way, something to watch.

Check the torque on the seat clamp bolt, make sure it's not too tight.

You could also try adding more tension to the cable at the lever which may speed up the rebound.

 

[fez]

Check the torque on the seat clamp bolt, make sure it's not too tight.

You could also try adding more tension to the cable at the lever which may speed up the rebound.

Yep, if you have overtightened the seat clamp that will slow it down. Other issue could be a lack of pressure in the post.

 

[aVdub]

Order cancelled firs thing this morning. Went and purchased the Status 160 earlier straight after from Evans as they were the only store withing 100 miles who had the size, dropped in after it was built and took it away.

The 820mm wide bars are an accident waiting to happen, they need dropping to 780/760 to feel comfortable but I am used to the thinner bars of yesteryear.

I now need to set the PSI on both shocks to take my weight as its set up for a Gorilla. The Sag is currently set to about 8 and 12% after measuring the drop and respectively using scrap book math to get this figure, Id like to see it more like 15 and 27% ish so a smidgen of the pressure needs to be released. My tool doesn't arrive until tomorrow so I will need to wait for that.

The seat is also horrific. If I don't have piles in the next few days I will be amazed. Dropper post is a fantastic addition but its a little slow to rebound back. I have no idea if this is a feature or just a bit of a "meh" product. Either way, something to watch.

Any issues get Evans to sort out and tbh they should have set the shocks up for you.

Perhaps they still will if you say you are having second thoughts and are within the cancellation period

 

[arknor]

The 820mm wide bars are an accident waiting to happen, they need dropping to 780/760 to feel comfortable but I am used to the thinner bars of yesteryear.

MTB bars usually have cut markings on them hidden under the grips and a warning marking for how short they can be reduced to.

any bike shop should have a pipe cutter or they are cheap on amazon anyway.

I've got 780mm wide bars on my bike and they are still kinda wide, I don't think I could fit them through a doorway without turning the front wheel.


Suspension sag
Make your that you only add/remove a small amount of pressure at a time, like 5-10psi, remove the pump and cycle the forks roughly a few times.
you need to keep the air chambers pressure equalised or the fork can end up with suction.

My forks are 160mm so I can just measure the stanchion, if its not 160mm long and the bike fights me when I try to pull the fork to the full length I know a pressure difference is sucking down the fork.

you can only fix it by going fully up/down the psi off the fork slowly until you find the sweet spot where it equalises.

I'm guessing a lot of people new to MTBs fully empty the fork to 0 at home, then pump it fully to 80 or whatever psi they need, and end up with a dodgy fork because the air chambers can't equalise




The dropper rebound will probably be quicker if you adjust the cable so it's slightly tighter.
also if your remove your seat, under neath it on top of the dropper is probably a port for adding PSI to the aircan inside it.

I doubt you need to add any though, on my bike the rebound seems to depend on how tight the cable is, so just rotate the cable barrel a few turns.

if you can't get the seat high enough with the dropper, you can also pull the dropper out of the frame a bit more like with a normal seat post.

 

[Andrew Moore]

MTB bars usually have cut markings on them hidden under the grips and a warning marking for how short they can be reduced to.

any bike shop should have a pipe cutter or they are cheap on amazon anyway.

I've got 780mm wide bars on my bike and they are still kinda wide, I don't think I could fit them through a doorway without turning the front wheel.


Suspension sag
Make your that you only add/remove a small amount of pressure at a time, like 5-10psi, remove the pump and cycle the forks roughly a few times.
you need to keep the air chambers pressure equalised or the fork can end up with suction.

My forks are 160mm so I can just measure the stanchion, if its not 160mm long and the bike fights me when I try to pull the fork to the full length I know a pressure difference is sucking down the fork.

you can only fix it by going fully up/down the psi off the fork slowly until you find the sweet spot where it equalises.

I'm guessing a lot of people new to MTBs fully empty the fork to 0 at home, then pump it fully to 80 or whatever psi they need, and end up with a dodgy fork because the air chambers can't equalise




The dropper rebound will probably be quicker if you adjust the cable so it's slightly tighter.
also if your remove your seat, under neath it on top of the dropper is probably a port for adding PSI to the aircan inside it.

I doubt you need to add any though, on my bike the rebound seems to depend on how tight the cable is, so just rotate the cable barrel a few turns.

if you can't get the seat high enough with the dropper, you can also pull the dropper out of the frame a bit more like with a normal seat post.

Sorted the sag at the front, ended up adding 15psi over the course of about 600yards or so and all is now perfect.

It’s still soft at the front when on softest setting but when fully tightened is exactly where I would like it to be for the casual churn to where ever it is I am going to have fun. I need the front end to take the heavy hits anyway when I’m hanging back over the rear tyre so I think it’ll be near as can be perfect.

The rear was a completely different story, that thing took more PSI than you can shake a stick at, 310 to be exact. The very relaxed geo and body position plays no favours on this bike that’s for sure. I sat on a Scott Spark 970 (bright orange thing) that was set to 225psi and it dropped less. Strange.

Dropper post is not working much better, it turns out a gentle alcohol rub over the post was needed as there was residue from stickers that had previously be placed on the post. Issue averted.

Next week when I’m back from my business trip in Nuremberg I’ll sort out the bar width. A quick measuring at a shop would indicate I would be best served knocking around 20mm off of each side so that would mean a bar reduction to 760mm with the added width of the grips taking me up to a smidge under 780mm, essentially where I thought I’d need to be.

Now to get fix, lose a few KG and hopefully keep my teeth.

 

[arknor]

The rear was a completely different story, that thing took more PSI than you can shake a stick at, 310 to be exact. The very relaxed geo and body position plays no favours on this bike that’s for sure. I sat on a Scott Spark 970 (bright orange thing) that was set to 225psi and it dropped less. Strange.

Yea on my bike I run the rear can about as high as my pump will allow or it sags below 30%, my shock pump is just a crappy beto one though... I think about 260-280 is where it just becomes impossible to pump.

I should get a decent rockshox high pressure one, cos I'd prefer less sag.. 25% sag ideally
On my front around 95psi but I'm tall and weigh a lot because of that.

Some shocks have a QR code that links to a calculator, might be a rockshox only thing though.

Dropper post is not working much better, it turns out a gentle alcohol rub over the post was needed as there was residue from stickers that had previously be placed on the post. Issue averted.

Silicone spray is the best for dropper posts and suspension stanchions.
also safe on rubber so it won't degrade seals etc, IDK if rubbing alcohol is bad but I guess it evaporates and leaves no residue.

You can use it to polish a frame back to factory sheen too., but keep it away from your brakes, socks and any hard surfaces people walk on.

Halfords do a can for around a fiver I think, I just always buy muc off stuff from my local bike store and hope the store makes good profit margins on it.

My fork cleaning routine after every ride is remove any dust on the stanchions, put a few drops off https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B07DXCFGLG/ so it runs around the fork seals. (wow that got expensive might be better to just buy some normal fork oil that goes in the lower legs and use that)
pump the forks a few times so it pushes any dirt up onto the stanchions, clean it off, repeat.

Then spray with Silicone shine, leave for 10 seconds and buff them with a microfibre cloth.

Good idea to keep any pivot points on the rear triangle clean too, rest of my bike I just brush the dirt off when its dry

 

[SDK^]

Seeking some advice please.
I'm looking to order two eMTB's - one for me and the other for my son.

The current options are:

• Specalized Levo Comp Alloy : £5.5k - Motor : Brose 2.2
• Canyon Spectral:On CF8 £5.5k - Motor : Shimano EP801)

Canyon have just reduced the price of the Spectral:On by about 10% so makes this the current lead option
Is there anything against the Spectral:On / Shimano EP8, which is worth considering to hold out for a potential price reduction on the Levo?

 

[arknor]

Shimano have a rep as the most unreliable motor for good reason.

one of them was junk and they had to give people extra warranty..

an old 2021report in Deutsch

https://www.wertgarantie.de/sites/default/files/2023-04/wertgarantie-e-bike-reparatur-studie-2021_final_de.pdf

Damage distribution for e-bike motors
Convincingly robust: Yamaha Pwseries ST
The Japanese model has only 4.3% defective engines
points, there are also some engines from Giant, Bosch and Fischer
very reliable. Significantly more vulnerable: Brose Drive S Mag mid-engine
and Shimano Steps E6100 with over 40% each.

I don't know how big their sample size was but thats probably accurate at the time and why people dislike shimano motors

Brose has a decent/good rep now, most their issues seem to be down to a belt they use in the drive snapping whicvh has long since been fixed AFAIK