"The Lively Monster Truck"

[millemille]

I can tell you one thing it's piss poor at; overgrown, tight, nadgery, muddy, rutted, walking pace single track. But then that's not exactly a surprise is it?

[millemille]

I've spent most of the afternoon with the police.

Feeling terrible and violated and like I've been taken advantage off.

My wallet has been raped.

I went into LBS to get a pair of tyres for the monster truck. Came out with a pair of Maxxis tyres, minion dhr front and an aggressor rear...

...and a £140 shaped hole in my wallet.

[MingtheMerciless]

That’ll be the Ebike tax

[millemille]

That’ll be the Ebike tax

It's the perfect storm of needing super heavy duty casings because a) e-bike b) heavy rider c) Peak District rocks and then them being 29" and then a general lack of availability in the country and wanting to support my LBS rather than an online retailer.....

[millemille]

Been putting a fair few miles in on the monster truck; rides round the High Peak, local stuff at Black Rocks and Wharncliffe woods and also stuff further afield at Cannock Chase and the Quantock hills when I've been travelling for work.

It has been awesome in pretty much every respect. It's massive overkill for Cannock and the Quantocks but even though it's a single pivot rear suspension design it don't feel like ot bobs excessively and that you're wasting energy, or battery, carrying all the unused suspension travel around. It's currently set up with the flip chip in the rear drop out set to the lower position, even with a healthy dose of sag I've had very few pedal strikes.

I'd like to give the mullet set up a go, other focus owners speak highly of it, but sourcing a reasonably decent 27.5" wheel is proving difficult..let alone the cassette.

The only problem I have had is the rear axle - a hollow bolt through design - keeps on coming undone while riding. Apparently not an uncommon problem with the focus design.

I stripped the complete assembly down yesterday and it's evident that if everything isn't spotlessly clean when the axle is assembled and dirt trapped between the wheel and drop out or drop out and flip chip or axle head and flip chip then prevailing torque will be lost. So cleaned every last part and put it all back together, correctly greased and torqued, with some torque seal for easy visual checking with the plan to head to Black Rocks for a couple of hours this morning and see how it held up..

For those who don't know Black Rocks, it's near Matlock and is like an unofficial bike park. A couple of hundred acres of hill side with a drop of about 600 feet between the trig point on the hill top and the river Trent in the valley bottom. Open moorland with natural, rocky, singletrack downhill at the top. Then into rocky tracks in the woods about half way down and then into tight loamy single track descents at the bottom. Some tracks are natural, some are man made. There's loads of different trails, you can spend a whole day there and not get bored. Difficulty wise, reds to double blacks. There's an old railway line incline that you can use to get most of the way back up again.

Good news - axle stayed tight the whole time.

Good news - found some new, super steep super technical, descents in the woods.

Bad news - lost the front in the loam on a ridiculously steep section and the bike went egg beatering off down the hillside. I'm lying in the dirt and the sound of the bike crashing through the undergrowth and clanging off rocks seems to go on forever. I feel sick, I'm convinced it's going to be destroyed, smashed to bits. It takes me 10 minutes or more to get down the hill and find the bike and drag it down to the bottom of the hill. It was covered in mud and loam and was wrapped in so much bracken it looked like a sniper in a ghillie suit. Cleaned it down as best I could and against all the odds it's nigh on untouched! The only damage are some small scratches on one of the fork stanchions. I'll take that...

So I'll be on the phone to tftuned tomorrow to talk about replacement stanchions (which I suspect will probably actually need to be crown and both stanchions, but may be complicated by Focus using a non tapered steerer, 1.
5" top and bottom)...and as they're going to be taking g the forks apart they might as well stick an updated damper cartridge in there...and maybe liberate some more travel...

[MingtheMerciless]

At least the bike didn’t land on you! I had a Marin Quake which was 44lb with 26 wheels and 180/160mm travel of fantastic “free ride”. I tried making up 10 seconds on 1 jump in the Surrey Hills to the youngsters in front and massively Cocked it up and took a long tumble through the deceleration brambles. As I was was laying there thinking “that was close” the Quake landed on me pedal first right on the bum cheek to leg joint. I was limping for a year!

[millemille]

Having spoken to TFtuned and Focus it looks like I'm getting the araldite and wet & dry out....

Over £400 to replace the "Combined Steerer Unit" if I go with a standard tapered steer from Rockshox, which means an adaptor for the top bearing and new stem and cables, and a 5 month lead time.

Nearly double that to get the non-tapered steer version from Focus with an even longer lead time.

If I want to get the full monty charger damper cartridge that's another £350.

TFTuned have got complete Zeb forks on the shelf at £900 and some pounds.

But TF said, when I suggested I'll araldite the scratches and polish them out, that they are doing the same on quite a few forks.

[Couchy]

Black rocks....I have memories of sliding on my front for a fair way down some steep bank there and having to fetch the bike which was elsewhere on the hill, lovely place

[millemille]

Black rocks....I have memories of sliding on my front for a fair way down some steep bank there and having to fetch the bike which was elsewhere on the hill, lovely place

Mate, that wasn't a steep bank...not when compared to the stuff in the woods further down the hill.

But it was fucking hilarious that for about 6 months after your prang there was a slide mark in the mud and drift of leaves that your face pushed down the hill. If you looked at a certain angle with the light in just the right place I swear you could see a shadow of your face in the dirt, like you get when a pigeon flies into a window...

[millemille]

With the worlds fattest bike tyre...



Ended up leaving the flip chip on the low setting as that seems to be the consensus for getting the most out of the mullet set up, but we'll see how it goes with pedal strikes on the rocks up here.

[millemille]

Mullet appears to be the way forward, no pedal strikes of note, so now booked in to the LBS for the latest Bosch software update and to get the rear wheel size altered to 27.5".

Slightly surreal afternoon though...

Got to Barber Booth early afternoon with the intention of having a go at the Kinder Enduro loop. Pedalled away from the van toward the bottom of Jacobs Ladder and the drive train was making some very peculiar noises. Looked down and the cassette is shimmying around and wobbling all over the place.

Sudden dawning realisation that I'd missed out the spacer between the free hub and the back of the largest sprocket. Drive back to Chesterfield and sure enough, there's the spacer sitting on the old 29" wheel.

Quick job to whip the cassette off, slip the spacer on, cassette back on tighten it all up again and sling the wheel back in the bike.

Back in the van and another half hour drive back to Barber Booth.

Get back and it's now mid afternoon, have a brief and not entirely successful go at riding up Jacob's Ladder. It's absolutely covered in loose rocks, which wasn't how it was the last time I rode it.....but that was in 1997 or thereabouts.

Got about a third of the way up and then turned round and rattled back down, past the van and over the other side of the valley to the top of Hollins Cross.

Spent a few minutes admiring the view across Edale...and watching a class 66 struggling to pull away from a red aspect with 10 quarry wagons on the Hope valley line...and the span back to the van.

There's a woman sitting on the back bumper of a van and we get chatting, she asks me where's good locally for a coffee so I give her a couple of suggestions and then we get chatting about emtb's and she mentions in passing that her husband is off riding one right now.

A couple of minutes later her husband, with a couple of other guys, shows up.

It's only bloody Steve from the EMBN youtube channel!

And who's one of the guys with him?

It's only bloody former world bicycle trials champion, Laguna Rad founding member, GT cycles world ambassador, Mountain Bike Hall of Fame inductee and all round mentalist Hans "No Way" Rey!

Now, I met Hans on a trip to America in 1988 - not that I would expect him to remember - so there was some catching up on mutual acquaintances.

Steve took the piss out of me for not riding all the way up, they'd been higher up watching me struggle.

I then did a piece to camera with steve, chatting about Jacob's Ladder and riding in the Peak District and old school mountain biking.

[weeksy]

Nice!

[MingtheMerciless]

. I've only ever ridden down Jacobs Ladder, first time on my RM Element with 26inch wheels and 120mm travel which was rather like taking a knife to a gun fight and the second time with "Reasonable Grounds for Divorce" my Speccy 29er Enduro which went a bit better but I was still bouncing off the dry stone walls on the bottom bit. I'd have a go at taking an EMTB up but never an Amish bike.

This is one of my favourite routes:
https://www.strava.com/activities/72929 ... 1437157325

[millemille]

Probably the first time I rode up and down Jacob's ladder would have been late 80's on a rigid hardtail with terrible - by modern standards - cantilever brakes and the last time, before today, would have been in '97 on a GT LTS 1 DH bike, like this one....

[millemille]

[Rp1]

Heading over jacob's ladder way on sunday, once we've made it down might give it a go at getting back

[millemille]

Heading over jacob's ladder way on sunday, once we've made it down might give it a go at getting back

I'm taking a mate who's an mtb novice round the ladybower loop on a hired emtb on Sunday...

[Couchy]

Make it a Saturday next time

[millemille]

Make it a Saturday next time

We did, and you couldn't make that either....

[Couchy]

Make it a Saturday next time

We did, and you couldn't make that either....

There is that too