KatjieStewels

Consider Paarl. The houses are affordable, we have access to world-class cycling routes, and we have great fibre (I work from home as a full-stack web developer). I hit the trails here every day. My wife and I moved to Paarl at the beginning of 2020 and we love it. Friendly people, and a strong cycling culture. It has all the benefits of a large city but feels like a rural town.

Everyone seems to focus on the great performance and ease of use of electronic shift groupsets, which is cool. However, planned obsolescence and the right to repair is also a thing. I fear that the manufacturers pull a John Deere or Apple and force you to use certain "approved" technicians for repairs. Your LBS might not be one on the list and now they have to break TOS and try to "jailbreak" your components to fix your bike and you end up losing your warranty on an expensive groupset. See John Deere and Apple for examples of this. Another example from Apple, is the new MacBooks' SSD and RAM are soldered onto the motherboard, and can therefore not be replaced. These are wear components as an SSD has a finite number of read and write cycles, especially when you render large video or graphics files. So if your SSD dies, which it will at some point... You must buy a new R25k laptop instead of just popping in a new SSD for R1000. Apple also pairs phone screens and other components on their iPhones, so switching them out is a pain. It isn't just Apple and John Deere that do stuff like this, they are just the first examples that come to mind, with a Google search, I am sure you can find plenty of other examples. Next is maintenance, can I still get firmware updates after 5 years? Will the App that comes with the groupset still work in a few years, and must I have it to update the firmware? Do I need an internet connection to ride my bike now?

The only gripe I had with my Avalance Solo (2020 model with the Shimano Claris Groupset) was it lacked a carbon fork. I see the Dust also has an "alloy fork". I rebuilt all the components onto an old Schwinn Fastback Pro with a carbon fork and chainstay, which is a noticeable difference. I have also had some bad luck with second-hand mountain bikes in the past, but with the gravel bikes, I'd check out the second-hand market first. Plenty of people buy gravel bikes, hit the "sinkplaat" and go back to their mtb, or they stick to the tarmac which means the bikes had a fairly comfortable life. This has been said numerous times on the hub, but Avalanche resale value is terrible, I ended up literally giving away the Solo frame, lol.

Thanks for the tips. Yeah, the replaceable battery was the major selling point. I initially thought a firmware update would fix it with the Polar Flow app. I don't recall ever washing them in cold water, but that makes sense. I usually shower with my watch and then just rinse it and dry it off and I've never had any issues with corrosion from sweat on the charging ports. We initially bought these heart rate monitors before getting watches and we'd use the Polar Beat app while doing indoor training. The moral of the story for me is that the watch is more durable and suits my use case as a non-professional athlete.

My wife and I each got about 2 years out of our Polar H10's before they died. I bought mine in December 2019 and my wife bought her H10 in June 2020. They both stopped working in 2021, about a month apart. It seems that chest HRMs are kind of disposable. Friends of mine that use the Garmin also get about a year, year and a half before they die. We use our watches (both Garmin) for HR now. It works well enough for us.

I just replaced my entire drive train this week on my mtb, I recently asked this same question at my local LBS, they showed me… so the jump of the tooth that you hear comes from the worn teeth that you described on the cassette. My front chainring was also worn, but the source of the sound was the worn teeth on the cassette. Depending on the components that you have it can be expensive. I paid R3260 to replace the whole 2 x 10 Shimano drivetrain including the front and rear brake pads. Which sounds like a lot of money until you look at the price of a new SRAM GX cassette, lol.

Which is why I go to Kroff in Paarl, lol. I recently decided to start mountain biking again. I bought a second-hand mtb which was my size, according to my own research for R11k in 2019. A Momsen SL929 with a Shimano XT groupset (10spd if I remember correctly) Picked it up from BMT in Stellenbosch after the seller sent it for a service there. Turns out the whole drive train had to be replaced as the gears were slipping... spent about R4000 there, ouch... Then 2x new tyres ended up costing another R1800... Then headset bearing and shock service... another R4000... I nearly spent R20k, almost double what I wanted to spend... What I did last year. Went to Hein at Kroff Cycles, and told him I was in the market for a second-hand mtb. I only want to ride gravel roads, my budget is whatever I can get for my TT bike. He (Hein), helped me sell my TT bike and got me a great deal on a 2018 Scott Scale 950. I had to wait a month for Hein to get a bike, but it was worth the wait. They even did a FREE bike fit and I've been riding it daily with ZERO extra expenses incurred. I can recommend your LBS, just make sure you pick the lekker one (read reviews, certain shops have reputations in town, wink wink). Second-hand mountain bikes can end up breaking the bank if you don't know what to look for, luckily there is a rating system here on the hub and if you use Bikehub pay, you should have some form of protection.

I’ve seen a few prices drop on the older bikes. During lockdown people where asking R6000 and R7000 rand for bikes that should be about R3000. You can actually get decent used bikes now for R10k and less, especially 29er mtbs. I recently bought a mint condition 2018 Scott scale 950 from a local bikeshop for that price. However I do agree that the YT influencers are exaggerating.

I’ve only seen a white one with Flashy low profile wheels that looks like it belongs in a 2000’s rap video in town. This is the only black/blue-ish one that I’ve seen. But yeah, might be not be the guy. The yellow plates do kinda stand out. I spotted it on my daily mtb route outside a house close to the Engen opposite autozone.

Quick question, did the hummer in question have yellow CJ plates? I saw one in town earlier and the black does have a dark blue tinge to it.

The shop that I use to help me with my "projects" is Kroff Cycles here in Paarl, Western Cape. lol, I've built a few franken bikes during the last few years, and they help me modify parts where needed. Your situation typically sounds like one of my projects. It's fun. Please remember to post pics when you are done. I am also genuinely interested in how your solution works out, it might give a few old dual suspension bikes new life.

In your position, I'd probably take it to the local bike shop and ask them what they have that will suit your use case. I've taken plenty of project bikes to my local shop and gotten some sound advice from the mechanics there. Heck, they might even have the right shock gathering dust in a corner somewhere.

never mind

Never mind, I realised what happend. The classifieds and the forum have 2 different messaging systems. When I copeid over the URL from chrome it worked in Safari. I suspect people might get mixed up, between the two like I did just now. I tried messaging someone earlier and I thought the chat disappeared.