MORNE

since the topic is about cheap brakes i’d like to share some recent experience. So my local were kind enough to organise me a demo bike while I await my one way flight overseas. Its mid level so has deore groupset, MT501 4-pot brakes and performance level fox suspension. Nothing fancy…borderline NOT peasant level. Having ridden top end everything for most of the last few years on my own bikes…i’ll say that i was pleasantly…no, shocked at how good this bike is on trail. Yes im missing the finer damper settings, i kniw what i want by now and i cant get it from something with just open, mid, closed on it. But i put it in semi closed and just gooied…and the thing took it in its stride. now for the brakes. Im tall, ride XXL bikes, so sh!t brakes are i instantly noticeable. These 4-pot MT501’s are amazingly good brakes and im sure they cost relatively nothing. I know you can buy deore m6100 4-pots locally for under R3k a set if you know where to look. Amazing bang for buck…and i havent ridden shimano brakes for 2y now. I just instantly felt at home and they offer i credible power and just enough modulation. The whole experience had me thinking how we always want the best - because reasons. I’ll maintain that proper suspension will still make the biggest difference on any bike, the difference is that big if properly set up. But man, you don't NEED dominions, transmission or carbon. I’m willing to guarantee that nothing from anyone else offered in the price range of MT501 or 6100 even comes close to the same level of performance on offer. You certainly dont even need XT. The value proposition of SLX makes everything else look silly. You must just be willing to ket your own hangups go. TLDR: id buy MT501 4pots before temu trickstuffs

I havent followed all the posts in here so excuse me if it’s been mentioned…but a one thing that always slips under the radar is that an avarage mid level full squish bike will cost more than double in maintenance for a year compared with a similarly specced hardtail. Thats my experience at least. Unless you run coils, airshocks are a pretty penny more expensive to get serviced than a fork lower etc. My own data showed that my enduro bike cost me about R6-8k a year in maintenance. Thats Vs about R2k for my hardtail. If you’re unlucky enough to still own a fox x2 (or dpx2 for that matter) you are looking at about R3500 for a rebuild. A fork is about 500 for lowers or free if you dont have two left hands and can do it yourself. A full rebuild depends on the fork but usually around 1-2k. Then, depending on your bike, a set of pivot bearings could cost anywhere from R2 - 5k excluding labour. Again, if you own bearing drifts and tools to do it yourself you’ll save that R1250 ish in labour. all things to consider. And yes you can leave it, not do it yearly i guess…lie to yourself that it still feels fine, but you’ll pay for it in the longrun if you dont do it at least once a year…not to mention every 50h-100h like recommended.

And he did is faster than people that seeded in group 3 on proper road bikes? Define what the right bike was😋? the right thing to do is to ride whatever you want and have fun. Ive ridden the CTCT on everything from hardtails, to gravel bikes to enduro bikes to single speeds. They were always the right bike.

I rode the last WC enduro on a slack, rowdy HT, ive also done a Jonkers enduro on one. I placed exactly where i would have if i did it on my big bike…smack bang lower midfield😅. But it feels great and much more of an achievement doing it with no travel in the back. its also nice chasing guys on full squish bikes for the hell of it. Trailside peeps cheer you on like some kind of working class hero haha. Yes it’s more rowdy, not as fast as just smashing through stuff with 170mm enduro bike, sometimes it hurts more…but it’s also super rewarding and more than anything…super fun. A different kind of fun, a more visceral experience, but still fun. All Bikes are fun.

Posted in the other thread a few weeks ago. Bottom of bloemendaler. If you ever wondered…PSSSPSSSPSSS works on a rooikat too…

Ps. Banshee trough the @droos, Evil through @Andre Pretorius at AP in kzn, and Commencal has a coza store locally and are here in CT.

https://www.bansheebikes.com/rune-v32 https://www.evil-bikes.com/products/insurgent-ls https://commencal-store.co.za/collections/clash/products/clash-signature

Why Lyne’s last AMP crankset was such a unicorn. Looked like Hope’s, had Shimano spindle/mounting interface, sram dm chainring interface. Best of all worlds. And also came in 165mm. Ive tried asking why they stopped making them…but im convinced the answer is legal 😅 we need @cSixx to start making us blingy cnc cranks👀 save us from the corporate juggernaught!

I don’t mind it, sure..i prefer the conventional way for efficiency - i mean, thats why you spend years building a squeaky clean rep isn't it? I once had a request to use bikehub pay for a relatively low value item. Around the 3rd DM it became clear to me that the buyer was not 100% sure about what he was buying…and it took me another 10 + messages / interactions to explain to him what he was buying wouldn't work. He insisted though, so i was worried that i’d send it, he’d try for himself and see i told him so, and then use the BH pay quirks as an easy way to get out of the sale. Again…all for something worth under R1k. But i thought i’d trust the guy and felt i did enough to be open about the fact that it would not work as he was intending…and just sent it. Everything worked out. Now…Was all the comms, effort, waiting, worth it? No. But then, sometimes you have to go the extra mile for that 5 star review to keep building the trust i guess. I essentially paid for that review in time and effort😅 Over the years ive made immediate / blind sales purely based on BH trader rating. Its like presenting your passport on here to the people who know. I do the same when buying. Your 5star rating is enough for me to trust you fully. And thats why the rating system needs to be validated, protected.

As mentioned in the post, back then there were literally no cars on the road due to restrictions, so i felt safer being invisible to the sticky/spiky. Having been a victom of a bike jacking myself, and recalling how it happened back then…they saw me coming from a distance lol. Granted, that happened in clear daylight. Of course i wouldn't ride on the road, with cars, without lights.

During the covid early morning exercise allowance days i used to sneak out an hour earlier and do a 60km loop around the northern suburbs before 6am. Different times, no cars, but i felt safer switching off the lights on my bike and riding in the pitch black, knowing i’m basically invisible to anyone from a relative distance. For some reason i still rode with a buff over my face for some self induced waterboarding - now that was admittedly really dumb. What a farce all that was👀

They should use it on XL/XXL bikes and stop shafting us tall guys with compromised bike geometry. Maybe then my bikes will finally look and ride similar to size mediums. No way in hell a bike with 450 chain stays and 470 reach rides the same way as the same bike with 450 chain stays and 520 reach. Maybe we can finally have XL sized stack numbers too. If it helps address those things, i’m all in.

I wouldn't want any of those sub 10kg twigs for mountain biking purposes. Not even for free. At least not for having fun on. “Best for climbing performance”. Ok. Fine, if thats your vibe. There are better tools for everything else.

Yes…Not a so much a ‘separation’, more of a ‘rearrangement’ haha. This happened in January 2025. I still don't have full range of motion and still suffer some minor pain if i do certain things. Certainly not riding anywhere near the level i was before..partly due to mental gymnastics but also just not being comfortable on the bike in all situations due to limited movement. I struggle to get really low now for instance. Not the same injury know, but ive also dislocated them a few times…and the rehab sucks for those too. The only advice a would want to give someone with any kind of shoulder injury is to try working on mobility, rotation, strength in all directions as soon as possible or allowed. After this injury i now fully appreciate how important the shoulder is the the movement of the whole arm. Once all those little bastard muscles around your shoulder, neck and upper back freeze up and/or wither away…you’re in for a pretty long stretch recovery wise. Plus most of my nights also now include a session with a massage gun to help.

https://bikehub.co.za/classifieds/item/rear-derailleurs/829176/shimano-grx-rdrx812-derailleur

I mean…yours doesn’t even have a chain? 👀😋

Had this exact setup on my wife’s gravel bike, except 40 up front. It worked fine with the tanpan. I agree that you are likely to find a rear mech for not that much more these days…and you could sell the XT to offset costs. But yea, those 1k series shimano 11 speed mechs are/were bomb proof…and if you are a tinkerer, why not.

(Offtopic sorry OP) Rotors? Yes, 203 front and back lol. I like big stoppers. and here be mountains…i said i ride it everywhere i ride big bikes. I think it has been established on here that my 197cm frame doesn't fit size medium bikes haha, so i ride big boys. It’s for all intents and purposes a hardtail version of my enduro bikes. RXF38 (coil version) - nice because you can adjust travel between 130-180 in 15min. Running it 150mm on this. Virtually maintenance free too. Renthal 60mm riser bars, cut down to 800mm - because tall people problems, but they pair well with the latest BFE and its huge stack height (~670mm) and longer rear centre. The tall stack is something that was nice on the Paradox too. The reach is 20mm longer on the BFE though so it fits me better. The straight seat tube also swallows my 240mm dropper no problem. Something i couldn't do on the paradox. love this thing.

*‘Bigfoot sighting’ level pic on purpose😋 - i don’t like sharing detailed pics of my current bikes on here.

I had one too! Amazing bike. Plus, rare as unicorn poop. Have a Steel Cotic BFe at the moment.

I think he might be referring to the lack of feeling he’s getting from his DS on the trails he’s riding. maybe even the kinimatics under braking (anti squat etc). Not fit or anything. That was my take at least. Sure, if you get your suspension totally out of whack it could contribute to feeling uncomfortable or not confident..but these days you’d have to fill your shock with oros and pump it to 400psi with an open rebound circuit to get it to suck to the point that makes it unridable. For me it's trail dependant when it comes to confidence on my personal bikes. I have HT PR’s down specific trails that i cant come close to on my DS bike. Surely that means I was more confident/ comfortable going fast on the HT on those specific trails? Similarly, the other way around too on other more chunky trails with the big bikes. I’m more uncomfortable and LESS confident on black trails on a hardtail…but i still enjoy the challenge, and its just different. Still a bike on a trail. Fun = more confidence. Then when you go back to the ‘mattress bike’ …you are so confident from all the HT fun that you tend to do stupid things in your quest to go even faster😋

I get this. i’ve been lucky enough to have some pretty awesome full-retard, full squish enduro bikes…but for some reason always yearn for the simplicity and feedback you get from a hardtail. There is nothing like it. Mid travel trail hardtails are so much fun, and i ride mine on everything i ride big bikes on. Yes slower, but thats not the point. They are so much more engaging. 170mm bikes just delete trails. A 140mm hardtail will make you FEEL like you are going mach3, whereas on big squish bikes, you kind of have to go mach10 to feel like you are going mach3 - if that makes sense. I rode the last WC enduro on my hardtail…and i placed exactly where my lack of talent gets me…even on a big bike - lower mid field lol. But somehow it feels like much more of an achievement on the hardtail…plus bystanders are always super stoked when you come smashing past on one - almost like you are some kind of hero haha. In summary, no you aren’t crazy. Hardtails are metal AF.🤘

If those 3 were my options..then UPS. Only if there was a DHL EXPRESS option would i choose it over UPS..and then purely because of DHL Express’ self service through the app, and not having to deal with the local UPS agents over the phone or email. Just faster. It has been discussed already. DHL and DHL Express, although different divisions of the same company, are not the same thing. Vanilla DHL is basically german SAPO. DHL Express is a premium courier service with their own separate logistics. Think SAPO vs Courier Guy - to simplify. UPS usually implies a similar service to DHL Express..it should therefore cost more than vanilla dhl, but its a door-door service.

https://shredshed.co.za/products/hope-tech-4-e4-black-black-setfront-back R9999 for tech4E4. But yes. i know one of the faster guys on the local enduro circuit who has that E4 Aliexpress set linked above on his bike. With all due redpect to everyone who has commented here….if they work for him, we wont get close to their limit. He is very impressed with them. He told me they use hope pads and many hope spares too.…although he said the stock pads were rubbish, so consider a pair of hope pads will cost you another 1-1.2k.

Yes lol. But it’s an elastic one..and too stretchy..and basically doesn't do anything. I might try some other laces. The hellcats have a velcro strap at the top which goes over the knot…the tongue doesn't slip on those…and they are basically the same shoe.