Living with a freak!
The idea of building a big wheeled freak first came to mind last year while my BlurLT was out of action and I was waiting for the warranty replacement to arrive. However, once the replacement frame arrived and wanting it up and running for a trip to Wales I put the idea on the back burner. Over the winter I kept reading on internet forums about tall riders who found riding a 29er beneficial to them for various reasons and so the idea kept niggling away at me. When the Blur broke again in February I started to feel that maybe full sussers weren’t for me and that I should go back to a hardtail so looked in to what frame options could be had cheaply. It was while looking around the internet for a cheap hardtail frame that I stumbled on the Viper 29er frame on the Chain Reaction Cycles website for £125 and before I knew it the Parcel Force lorry had pulled up outside my office and I was signing for the delivery.
The new frame sat in my shed for a few months as yet again I rebuilt the Blur for a trip to Wales but having ragged it round Afan etc over a long weekend I started to feel that something still wasn’t quite right with it and I wasn’t as confident as I really should have been on it. So, I priced up getting the 29er built which really only involved getting a set of forks and some wheels, tyres etc plus transferring some bits over from my unused Rockhopper. The forks where another bargain courtesy of Chain Reaction. I knew that I wanted a 100mm travel with a bolt through axle to help with wheel tracking up front so it wasn’t going to be cheap but £250 for a set of Manitou Minutes was a lot cheaper than I thought it would be and managing to snap up an almost new set of Halo Freedom wheels for £120 from a guy over in Brighton meant that before I knew it I was out early on a Friday morning for a quick spin on the new bike.
At this point I would like to say that I have never really felt 100% comfortable on either of the bikes I have owned or any that I have had a demo on but this was something different, I no longer felt perched on top of the bike but felt like it was part of me. Where as before I have felt on steep descents that I am going to land on my nose even with 130mm travel forks the 29er seems, even with 100mm forks, that it can handle whatever I point it down. The climbs in the past have always been a slog and I have quite often lost traction meaning a bit of a hike at times where as the longer wheelbase of a 29er allows for more traction on the climbs which also makes the climbs feel a bit easier than on a normal sized bike and I can now clear some climbs that I have failed to in 2 years of trying. A 29er also rolls a lot easier, I quite often sweep past riders at the bottom of descents on their 26ers without pedalling when they have started to turn the cranks or at least keep up with them where as before I would run out of momentum before them. It’s also a lot more stable when just riding along or at slow speed.
Ok that’s the pros so what about the cons. Well the main one that I was worried about was how it would handle in the singletrack and I have to say that for the first few rides it did feel a little odd but once you get used to the fact that it needs a little more space to turn, and I am only really talking about small amounts here, I feel its even quicker given that I feel more confident on it. So what is it like in the air? Well jumping has never really been high on my list of priorities and I would say that if you want to pop off everything the trail throws at you then you might want to think long and hard before investing in a normal 29er, although longer travel options are starting to appear with fork lengths up to 135mm available, but it will quite happily handle the small hits and kickers I’m likely to go off of and allows me to at least kid myself that I will one day be a freeride god ! The main drawback that I have found is the lack of information that there is on 29er specific items such a tyres, wheels, forks and frames because lets be honest they are the only bits that are different on these type of bikes. However, I have recently discovered that MTBR, which is a US website, have a rather useful 29er forum where riders and industry types can share info on the latest advances in everything 29er related including sneak previews of what the manufacturers have got planned for the coming year and most on-line bike shops have a range of 29er specific stuff, just don’t expect to be able to walk in to your local bike shop and get a choice of tyres, your lucky if they have any at all in some cases.
So to sum up I would say that if you are 5’10” or over it would be worth at least trying a 29er, even if you have previously tried one of the older style frames as they have apparently sorted out some of the issues that early 29ers suffered from. They roll well making them ideal for covering long distances, I loved riding mine at Mayhem and can’t wait to spend 12 hours on it this coming weekend at 24/12. They are stable even at low speed, have good traction when climbing and cornering allowing for quicker ups and downs and are not too shabby in the tighter stuff as well.
Try one, you never know you might like it!
BigSi
July 21st, 2009 at 8:29 pm
Freeeaaaakkkkkkyyyyyy!