AndrewMajor profile

Hahahaha. I’m glad to have made your day ;-) #fixed | #thankyou | #yesreally |

I’ve owned a few steel* Honzos since 2012 and I’ve loved them but personally it’s hard to recommend them now over the Growler lineup. On paper, I prefer the ride of the Rocky's longer rear centre - which matches more closely to my custom bike geo. Also, the geometry of the Honzo, which was progressive in 2012, doesn’t stand up on the technical trails compared to what companies (Chromag etc) are putting out now.

I mean - brass [edit] tacks [/edit] - for $1250 Canuck Bucks the Growler frame is every bit as progressive, on paper, as the vast majority of the boutique hardtails on the market (many of which have frames nearing the price of this full bike).

My general rule now for hardtails is I want the sagged HTA to be 1-2° slacker than an FS bike for the equivalent usage. So the static 64° on the Growler lines up perfectly with a ~66° 130-140mm FS trail bike. On the other hand the Honzo has a steeper static HTA than Kona’s current XC race bikes. I can only imagine we’ll see a big update across the whole Honzo* line soon.

I’m not familiar with Norco’s lineup so I can’t comment there.

*for the sliders. No reason not to also look at the aluminum models if the bike will never be single speed.

**that’s just a guess - no inside info.

Basic fork; so even absent a dropper the 20 won’t be light. Awesome geo doesn’t add weight though so I’d bet they’re price point competitive within a pound (tires) despite an upgrade in capability.

Really hoping to have a chance to throw a leg over one to write about it and if that comes to pass I’ll weight it for sure! 

Also impressed they went with the thru-axle. I think it speaks to the upgradeability of any level of Growler.

-

I think I’ve ridden enough hardtails to call this an educated opinion: once we’re beefing up the frame to handle abuse and throwing on 2.6”+ tires the material doesn’t matter. I ride a steel frame because that’s the easiest way to get a quality full-custom frame that can take the abuse of single speeding; if Santa Cruz made the aluminum Chameleon with geo I wanted to ride I’d just own that. 

If the Growler had sliders/rockers I could totally see myself riding one with a custom rigid fork :-)

23-24psi in what tire - size and casing?

I’m ~185lbs. Pressure depends on setup. Speaking to the tires on this bike (29x2.8” dual ply front / 29x2.6” reinforced sidewall rear on i39) I was running ~17/18psi front and 19/20psi rear. 

Similar casings but a smaller size tire - say 2.4” on an i30 - I’d be running somewhere in the 23-25 range depending on the exact setup. If I go to lighter sidewalls the pressure goes up from there.

I find I generally am running >2+ psi more front and rear on my suspension bike. Higher speeds, traction is less premium, and I dent rims if I go too low (before the bike feels squirrely I start wrecking stuff).

Everyone’s mud is different, but my winter SS experiences have been good. I’ve ridden recent winters on the 27x2.6” (s)Laughter and a 29x2.35 LG1 SS and in both cases traction was surprisingly good in all but the soupiest situations.

I was amazed last year in the snow. I didn’t take the LG1 SS off my FS bike and climbing No Quarter I was finding traction much easier than folks with full knobbies. 

There are some situations that are much more spicy - hence running the SE5 on my rigid since that bike more often has a traction deficit BUT, I’d be all over trying the E13 SS if they made a bigger volume version.

Do you think a full knobby like a Butcher would have shed mud better? I was stuck in a rain storm in Moab once and the red-mud accumulation was insane on everyone’s tires. It was like nothing I’d seen. I was running a Crossmark and a 2.5” DHF and they both were clogged.

Awesome first hand info! 

Follow up question, if you were running 2.6” on an i35 with there being no chance you’d go smaller (no 2.4” rubber in your future) but you may jump up to a 2.8” would you go CC-Plus or would you prefer the ride of the standard system to the extent that you’d run it with the 2.6” period?

Thanks!

One more advantage of the heavy duty casings - and actually the SE4 casing should get props too - is I haven’t had a flat in years - although I do seem to go through a few tubes a year helping out my fellow travellers.

In fact, I only carry a tube for myself in case I dent a rim so badly that it won’t seal tubeless and CushCore resolves that issue. For everything else I carry tire plugs.

I’m not going to even bother carrying a tube on my Walt going forward - I’m sure as heck not pulling CushCore out on the trail - and in a worst/worst case scenario (broken off valve stem?) I’ll just ride my bike our flat. At slow speeds this is doable with the inserts.

It may come down to the extra volume (true 2.8” measured at the tread) but the Vigi doesn’t feel as ‘dead’ as true DH rubber (NB. the most recent <2.4” true DH rubber I’ve been on is Schwalbe and E13 mind - not Maxxis). 

It’s not a direct comparison but thinking of my time on the 2.6” TC/HG WTB tires I’d say the ride is similar to the Double Down casing from Maxxis. If Iextrapolate a DD Assegai vs a DH Assegai vs the HC Vigilante I think that adds up. 

I run the same 2.8” Vigi on the front of my FS bike without an insert and love it. With 29” wheels and lots of travel I can run it soft enough and still get good support. That said, I will be trying the CC setup on the bike too for the proper comparison. 

Thank you!

Mind reader! I have an SE2 2.6” ready to try when the SE5 is dead. Not swapping for the sake of swapping for obvious reasons. A (s)Laughter 2.6 would be a good candidate as well.

Mainly concerned about a loss of traction in very loose conditions we don’t see here in winter. I’ve ridden am SE2 in the winter otherwise.

Howdy folks,

If anyone came across one of those fancy-pants Ford Chip-Key-Fob things on Fromme today please PM me or e-mail me to major(dot)andrew(dot)r(at)gmail(dot)com.

In addition to making someone’s day the owner will definitely beer you for the effort.

Thanks,

Posted by: Brocklanders

No one has a right to these trails, we are guests. The more these things resemble motorbikes, the further we move away from it being mountainbiking to it being a motorsport. Then who knows where it all ends up. Will we lose trail access? I guess it's up to the land managers.

My post was un-necessarily cheeky & sardonic because that's how I deal with sh*t - apologies. I have the same concerns as you, as do many people. I've already seen throttle actuated pedelecs on Seymour for example.

What is most surprising to me, that I tried to capture, is the cultural shift (adoption & acceptance) from the first big dump of snow to this spring. I feel like Rip Van Winkle. I have a number of friends and acquaintances who have gone from extolling the virtues of the self-propelled mountain bike and the local culture to explaining why their unique needs justify* an offroad pedelec.

I'm just really hoping they don't f*** it up for the rest of us. Access, keeping experienced trail builders, relationships with other users - there's a lot potentially at stake to be able to punch out a longer and faster after work lap and it definitely needs to be talked about.

*I chose 'justify' because most these folks I know seem guilty about the choice.

Posted by: tashi

BREAKING NEWS: Mountain moped company employee thinks it would be best if mountain mopeds are allowed on non-motorized trails.

In other surprising news, the sun rose in the east this morning and human activity has environmental impact. Groundbreaking.

If you go back and read the 'MrSimmons' (note air quotes) post it's a pretty standard trolling recipe.  A pinch of sanctimony, a very (very) light dusting of non-fiction, dump in some ad hominem attack, stir in heaps of false equivalency, a bit of fatalism, more ad hominem, and then, in conclusion, just sprinkle of nihilism. 

Maybe I'm wrong, but I just assumed it's an anonymous poster with a provocatively chosen user name. I'd be really surprised if MrSimmons is actually Mr. Simmons. For one, Wade is fully aware that people really do "[give] a shit" about both access and the culture of mountain biking. Two, I don't think he'd comment if he didn't have anything intelligent, constructive, or at least experiential to say. 

There's also no advantage to any e~bike brand, or their representatives, to pop their heads up right now. The hard work and marketing are done, the silence from land managers is deafening, and people are buying the machines - lots of them. Now's the time for them to be engaging with dealers to make sure that when the e~bike curious customer is coming in their brands are well positioned compared to the competition - there's a lot more differentiation in the market than just comparing frames with Eagle components hung on them.

I hate being the harbinger, but anyone here who hasn't noticed the massive archetypal shift this Spring on Fromme and Seymour isn't riding their bikes enough. Sorry. You can't ride up No Quarter on the weekend without being chased by someone's kitchen appliance at some point - WHIRRRRR WHIRrrrrrrr whirrrrRRRRR.

The cat is out of the bag and it's f***ing everywhere. And the thing about cats f***ing is that they multiply exponentially. And there's nothing that's going to slow down that momentum and no enforceable rule or guideline that's going to make things the way they were even a couple of years ago. Anyone thinking of e-mailing their local trail association who wants to know what they can do about it - they can advocate for uni-directional trails and clear signage before there's a serious accident now that trails like Asian Adonis are two-way-possible for more than a tiny minority of riders. That's it. Sorry again.

"But it's a different activity, they should advocate for their own access," you say. Within less than ten years half the board and builders with the NSMBA, and probably every other trail association - even WORCA - will ride offroad more with electric motor assist then solely under their own steam. Sorry.

Recently, Wade Simmons told me that in ten years half the bikes I regularly see on North Shore trails will be Pedelecs. I think he 's wrong. I think it'll be five years. There is a dam holding back purchases right now as the joiners wait for Pedelecs to be mainstream enough. And as my friend Alex says, "taking the easy way out has always been mainstream." The Dam breaks this year. More sorries.

Right now you have friends who are walking back all the venom they've ever spewed about Pedelecs. The machines are already accepted for commuting and all the Armageddon and catastrophe predicted hasn't really occurred (just endless anecdotes about assholes riding way too fast on shared resources). We're well beyond the early adoption stage with mountain Pedelecs and people are buying them right now who were looking to join a lynch mob last year. Yes, Dave Norona called it - wrap your head around that. Yeah, sorry.

North Shore shops will sell 100+ offroad Pedelecs this year. Next year it will be thrice that at least. Being an asshole to one person on a Pedelec is like killing one spider in your kitchen. It would probably be better for everyone if you just let it go. If not this year, then definitely next year, every time you walk into a local shop there'll be a 50/50 chance that someone who works there will bring up Pedelecs unsolicited. Sorry.

It's not doom-and-gloom, it's the reality. You can quit and do something else with all the free time and money you'll suddenly have. You can join and be one in a sea of e~mea culpas. Or, you can just keep pedaling your person-powered-bike in the woods with or without your like-minded friends. Sorry.

If you can't stop thinking about it on the trails then I'd recommend single speeding and harder tech-gnar descents. There's no capacity for bicycle philosophizing when you're eating your own lungs climbing No Quarter and trying to survive down Boundary...

Sorry,

Posted by: DanL

Did I miss an episode or have you done a strip down of the one up dropper?

I haven’t had a OneUp post for testing; not something I’ve been inside.

I run the, coil spring, e13 TRS+ 170mm on both my personal bikes. Awesome remote and 100% mechanical with nothing that can really fail (like anything it does get sloppy and require new key ways). An adjustable wrench, strap wrench, and Shimano cassette tool are all that’s needed besides hex keys for a full rebuild.

I recommend pre-stretching the coil spring and a bit of Slickoleum under the seal head for best performance.

Gentlepeople,

The entrance to 7th Secret smells like the un-serviced port-a-pisser at a week long asparagus growers convention in August. 

In other words, its f*cking disgusting. 

Obviously there’s a need to answer nature’s calling in nature but let’s spread it out it a bit please. 

It is not hard to jump in the bushes at the 6th or ride up around the 7th and as an added benefit to a piss-smell-free trailhead you won’t flash unsuspecting fellow trail users your sweaty junk. 

Please ask your friends to urinate sociably when urinating socially.

Thanks,

Lots of service only shops open(ing).

Bicyclehub (Dave) and Wheelthing (Jeff) are both service only bike shops in North Van. There’s also Essential (Jaclyn and Jessica) which does repair and rentals but doesn’t sell bikes. There’s also Inside Line in Calgary and I know of a few other service only and service primary shops starting up in BC and Alberta.

Actually, I should include Darren at Dream Cycle on that list. He sells custom builds but it’s a service primary shop and he’s been on Commercial for more than a decade.

Here's another one: Bootleg Bikes in Kimberly BC. Jody has a great reputation as a tech (and for customer service) coming out of Winnipeg and Canmore.

Lots of service only shops open(ing).

Bicyclehub (Dave) and Wheelthing (Jeff) are both service only bike shops in North Van. There’s also Essential (Jaclyn and Jessica) which does repair and rentals but doesn’t sell bikes. There’s also Inside Line in Calgary and I know of a few other service only and service primary shops starting up in BC and Alberta.

Actually, I should include Darren at Dream Cycle on that list. He sells custom builds but it’s a service primary shop and he’s been on Commercial for more than a decade.

...

That said, online (and previously mail order) bikes have been a reality forever. I’ve never worked in a shop that wasn’t happy to charge a fair price to build a bike out of a box or install a part bought elsewhere and I’ve been around a while.

It’s a problem when folks show up with incompatible parts and expect a shop to trade them, and it takes longer (and therefore costs more) than most people expect to do a pro job building (or rebuilding) a bike out of a box. There’s also a queue for service from April-ish through early September.

Aside from being realistic about those factors I can’t fathom where the issues being brought up derive from. In my experiences - and again I’ve worked for a few shops and with a lot of them - that’s good paying work anywhere people are charging money to turn wrenches on bikes.

Sherry @ Sateen. 20th & Lonsdale.

http://sateenalterations.com