You made a final decision glitch?
I'm still faffing about actually!
Finding it extremely hard to get test rides on suitably-sized frames and as such am reluctant to jump in at the deep end and spend the money on something that's not going to be a good fit. LBS have an excellent selection of bikes... alas all are smaller sizes and none of the larger frames are of similar geometry to the short list.
Fortunately I was down the LBS last weekend and it so happened that a customer had just popped in to collect his 21" Cove Stiffee that had been in for service and I got the chance to ride around on that for a few minutes. Lovely bike, seemed slightly large but still very rideable, but at £550 it's way out of my price bracket.
I'm currently looking at the Maxlight Pha5e frame and hoping to get a test ride on one in the next few weeks, otherwise it's looking likely that I might even go with the Orange P7 in it's 'Pro' incarnation, depending on the '08 spec and price.
With the P7 most of the kit I'd want to buy would already be on the bike and I'd just need to upgrade the fork from the Vanilla R to the RLC.
Annoyingly the spec for the '08 P7 Pro seems to vary from place to place and Orange haven't yet updated their site, even though the launch day for the '08 range was sometime last week.
Spec seems to be similar to
this with various types of brakes being listed, depending on where you look. Juicy 3's seem a strange choice as the P7 Pro was running 5's on the
2007 model, but I guess the final spec will be revealed pretty soon.
Should I go frame-only, what forks would you recommend? I really like the look and feel of the Fox range, but at £400 for the Vanilla RLC, I'd rather spend the extra £50 and get a set of Pike's, or save £50 and get the Rock Shox Revelations.
so thats why i got 18"
