camelman

Just put 720 Ritchey Trail ones on my XTC Hard Tail. They are great, but get caught everywhere

Just bought the lady in my life an Epic Expert 29r. She is 1.63 and rides a small. What handlebar widths do people out there ride. She has a Syntace Duraflite 640mm/8deg on her Scott Scale and it seems ok. The handlebar on the Epic is a 700mm. Do we go up to 700 or go down to the 640? Your input is appreciated. Just add your riding style, height, handlebar width and back sweep on your comments so I could make an educated guess.

Used to be a real Fox fan pre 2013 CTD. My RL's and RLC performed well and still do. Last year I bought a Specialized Stumpjumper FSR 29r that came with a 2013 FOX 32 130mm CTD FIT. Feels like a noodle under those big wheels when the going gets rough and turns are tight. Dives under braking. Climb mode uses 50% of the travel when standing out of the saddle. Problem with the Climb mode is that there is no adjustment like they used to have on the RL and RLC. If you are a bigger (90kg+) rider then I would steer clear of Fox and CTD as climb mode is a slightly stiffer trail mode. I have sent multiple emails to their head office in the USA asking technical questions and have been met with absolute silence. I think their servers around the world put all emails with a "2103" in it in the spam box. Also had the fork in for a service in Switzerland and it came back with a white crown as a warranty repair. I sent it back and have been waiting for a black crown now for over 2 months. Terrible service from Fox. Also mailed the local (SA) dealer to hear about a solution for when I come back to Cape Town in December. Nothing. They must have the same spam filter. They also had a lot of failures on their Open Bath Dampers(Evolution series) on their 2013 CTD. So I would suggest RS, if only to save yourself from a lot of trouble, heartache and money. Sorry for the long winded rant but it had to come out.

At the moment I have a Garmin forerunner 305 with speed/cadence sensor and have been quite dissapointed. Just a few things on the Garmin to consider. You have to charge your battery often. If you ride every day it is a hassle. Forgot to charge it one day on the epic and 3 hours into the next day nothing. The toy was very nice for about the 1st 10 times. I have since bought a blackburn delphi 6 and have found it gives me everything I need for around R1300(no calories though). On the road I have a cs200 Polar and have found it to be very super reliable. Oh and I have also had to replace the battery on the garmin strap twice this year. Any buyers for the Garmin?

The first bottle is energy dynamics and some perpetuem from hammer in a tube and when the first bottle is done whatever is at the next stop. The ED unfortunately goes off pretty quickly when it is warm so it is not good for an all dayer. Hammer's cuppacino flavour gels are very good to. The little bit of caffeine also picks you up a bit. For recovery only the mountain mocha flavour recovery drink from cytomax.

Use a torque wrench and tighten it to the required torque. Sometimes we are prone to underclamping it in an attempt not to break anything. A wider clamp might also help to maximise the area of friction. As previosly suggested, cleaning the whole area with surgical alchohol might also help to increase the friction between the two.

Have travelled overseas numerous times and have always used a bike box. Now with regulations in place (23kg max) the bike box is a bit obsolete as it weighs 13kg. A cardboard box is good with the spacers in the shock and frame. Bubble wrap the frame. Let down the tires all the way and remember to let down the pressure in your shock as well, You dont want any blown seals on the other side. And remember no CO2 cartridges, and if you do forget it on your bike, please dont say "Oh, ja i'll remove the bombs quickly bombs"