silverbansheebike profile

Welcome! It's cool to see what others have done/could do with their bikes, and I think the min-max attitude is easily relatable to many folks. I agree it would be cool to see a hardtail, there seems to be more one-bike hardtail options than ever lately, and they aren't something new either. Lot's of min-max potential!

Nice! On the topic of posts... been thinking about how one might cut a seat tube shorter. I think the limit might be where you could reasonably get a drill to fit without interfering with the top tube when drilling the stress relief hole at the bottom of the slot. I can't imagine having that hole drilled on a huge angle would be ideal, but maybe it works? Maybe a dremel is the way forward here?

right on, another min-max! Gotta love the father-son devinci's. My dad rode a devinci when I was younger (still riding it), and I always wished I had one just like his!

Hard to see from the pics, but I imagine the bearings are a standard size? It's tough to think of anything that would need to be changed, save for maybe the tires and a 29" front wheel, but this looks like a really fun bike.

I would say a coil shock would be key, but if you can get one cheap and service it (it sounds like this is no issue!) I'd say it would be hard to argue against a DHX RC4 (did these come in 200x57? I've always wondered about custom travel reductions, given the availability of 8.75x2.75 shocks...). Sure, maybe not the lightest, but easy as anything to service, especially with the schrader valve on the gas side.

I'm surprised with the swap-able dropouts they don't offer anything that would change the geo. It sounds like they might be open to it, selling raw aluminum and whatnot... Could always bring your dropouts and a drawing to a local machine shop!

I bought my V2 Banshee for the same reasons! Everything listed is worth the weight penalty.

Newer stuff from SR and microshift is great, too! The brand-driven looks from people sure can be funny, though. In one day I had one guy who was stoked to see another Banshee, and then someone else ask if I was a new rider because it was not a new bike... hahahahaha. Like you say, lets just go ride bikes and have fun!

Wow, what I would give to see suspension dyno data to compare between popular brands. Combine that with a simple kinematic model and you could really nail down what you want in a bike. Having worked at a suspension company, dyno data is collected from other brands for benchmarking purposes, but for obvious reasons not shared. And those who could share it (ie media outlets), likely don't have the access to a dyno. Frustrating! I would really love to see a quantitative comparison from an older shock like the cane creek DB air to something newer like an X2, see how much difference in tune-ability you're getting for your buck.

If you know what you want/are doing I agree that buying a frame and putting parts on is the best way forward. Throw in a few pre-loved parts, skip the flashy bits, and avoid the cheap-out parts that sometimes come on complete bikes, and you have a hell of a machine for under MSRP.

My front has the microleak issue, and I'm not sure where to go from here, but I hear you on the last part. Maybe nowadays its tired to think that something with brake fluid is something to avoid, but I also spent my early years riding and trying to fix lower end Hayes brakes. I guess I haven't ever actually ruined paint on anything with brake fluid, only ever expressed fear of it. It's cheaper than mineral oil anyways...

Great article! Reading this might be the final nail in the coffin of changing brakes next time I come around to it... I've been a die-hard fan of the hard biting shimano XT 2 pistons for closer to 2 decades, but needing a lever replacement right before a bike park trip, and then recently bending a lever and somehow letting air into the system on said replacement... I'm starting to wish I committed to something more serviceable. Maybe like you, I'll keep my eye out for a low cost rebuild project. Cheers!

Olfa all the way!

Some notable mentions from my at home shed-shop are a Workmate folding bench with attached vise, mitutoyo 6" scale, and most importantly a BMF'er of a flathead screwdriver that I've had forever. Need a prybar? chisel? extra leverage on a pipe on a set of vise grips? an actual screwdriver?! BMF'er!

Posted by: Vikb

The metric to look at would be the cost to get a solid bike that performs well and then the total cost to own for maintenance/service life. I'm a frame up build rider and in some ways costs have come down for great parts since I can ignore the current crop of latest tech porn and shop from a pretty great set of "obsolete" options that are priced more reasonably. I'm happy with metal frames and those prices haven't gotten particularly crazy.

What goes on with wireless shifting 15 speed carbon wunderbikes with their electronic this and Kashima that really doesn't matter to me other than to grab some popcorn and watch the shitshow that is that end of the MTB market develop.

As for reasonably priced, not-bleeding-edge great parts, I'm always really happy to see things like wide-range 1x-able 10spd (and even maybe 9spd) cassettes. This was such a nice response by the industry to the large +1 cog alternatives in the early 1x days.

Posted by: nolookdoug

Yeah, that was my reaction too. I think most people would be surprised ¯(ツ)/¯

Here's an image for those that don't use TrailForks. I pixelated it to hide the trails as I best could while still showing the situation..

not nearly pixelated enough.

Posted by: Timv

Vanier park (south end of the burrard bridge) has 2 dirt pump tracks that are both kid friendly, and both NOT good in the wet. Get some.

Richmond Railway park has an asphalt pump track that's fun but full of little kids laying down and gawking parents wandering around with phone-cameras out.  The pumptrack itself is not dissimilar to IR's new asphalt one.

Do you know who helps to maintain Vanier? the smallest pump track could use some love, and the "collector" side of the smallest jump line is pretty rough too. I would love to help, but don't want to step on anyone's toes.

Posted by: Vikb

I could be riding my 2009 SC Nomad today no problem. I mean I wouldn't prefer to, but I can't point to anything it couldn't do well enough to make me happy. 

I could ride my 2019 Daambuilt as my only for the rest of my MTB career without any sadness. As long as I could get spare parts/service.

Those nomads aged like fine wine! I always wanted one at the time, but i lived somewhere a bit more flat...

Maybe that's always the limiting factor to some degree, spare parts support. With a hardtail you probably have it pretty good in that department though!

I've just mentioned this in another forum but I wonder if there's some crossover point where we can say that everything past a certain year was surely too old or out of place to ride or won't help with skills etc. or if the point of an "old" bike will always be a certain number of years back from the present.

There certainly are improvements that have been made that make riding "easier" (larger wheels, slacker geometry to name a couple), but I don't think the limit has been pushed appropriately for the average rider. The trails are largely the same as they were when everyone was riding 26" and 70deg head angles. But who cares anyways i guess, it's fun to ride regardless.

Posted by: fartymarty

A little off topic but https://m.pinkbike.com/news/opinion-are-we-trying-to-make-mountain-biking-better-or-easier.html isn't too bad a read from Mr Quinney.

Nice read for sure, a bit of a fresh perspective from over there in my opinion.

I think this might be a good topic for a Meatengines post or even a summary of the min-max series, but after looking at these older rigs that are being upgraded to compete with today (or at least be ridden today), it would be nice to think about what all of these changes over the years have really brought to MTB. Are we developing bikes to make riding easier? better? harder? allowing some to push the limits and the rest to access trails we couldn't ride 5 years ago? Wheel size, geometry numbers, suspension linkage...

Surely there is a line, maybe it is similar for most, but I wouldn't ride a bike that dates past a certain year unless I'd lost a bet. But is there a year that we can say, yeah, anything built after this year is decently approaching the limit of how good bikes can really be? or will the sport always evolve so much that you won't want to ride something more than 15 years old?

Posted by: nothingfuture

I'm old enough to have raced on friction downtube shifters- and while I've no urge to go back to those days, I'll say that getting a friction shift *just right* is a special sort of joy. It's a little like when you rev-match a downshift on a manual transmission and you bang-on get it.

It sure is satisfying. I ride an old road bike/commuter conversion frankenbike to work everyday, kept the downtube friction shifters as it allowed me to "upgrade" to a 1x8 (!!!) for a bit better range, and looks, without needing a new shifter.

I was just telling somebody about it the other day (they're too young to have ever come across friction shifting), that it's a lot like playing the violin. There are no frets on a violin, you just have to know, but once you get the feel for it, it hits just right.

Posted by: joseph-crabtree

Andrew, since someone brought up automotive and such. One thing I laugh at in the last few years is in somethings the sales talking point of "military grade". LOL....military grade is really the piece of crap made by the lowest bidder.

LOL, reminds me of 6061-T6 aircraft aluminum... yeah, and just about every other structural aluminum application too.

Anybody know if the creekside closure will affect TOTW? Was hoping to get up there this year.

Posted by: craw

Posted by: craw

Posted by: silverbansheebike

Posted by: SixZeroSixOne

Well, there's One less e-bike on the Shore now...

Yikes! Hope the damage wasn't too bad. Thankfully it happened not on the trail, but I think most battery fires are when charging, if i remember from a few pages back.

Some of the commuter ebikes are absurdly cheap so I think we can reasonably expect stuff like this to start happening more often.

It's weird to reply to myself but here we go. Check out this video of a bike with a cheap aftermarket ebike conversion kit on fire.

https://www.reddit.com/r/MTB/comments/uava47/ebike_caught_on_fire/

yeah, that looks nasty... I think you're right in saying the absurdly cheap ones, or even the conversions, are where we can expect to see some catastrophe.

To Vikb's point, I wonder if it would even be possible to have a buy-back or crash replacement program for issues like this, or in that case would the manufacturer be taking on the responsibility of any other damage that the fire caused too?