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Rockshox changes the names of their forks and recycles them on different models with different capability all the time. It’s confusing.
Reba has mostly been used on lower or middle-tier forks. So your fork may not be very good for your riding style and trails. And, it’s old enough to need service, possibly pretty badly, so it may not be functioning even up to its mid-grade standard. If you have a good mtb shop around, they could probably do the seal, bushing, and oil service and that might fix it right up. Or you could try it yourself. The work isn’t that difficult, but finding the right parts kit can be a challenge, again because of Rockshox’ “naming practices.”
In any event, I suspect that it is your fork that is the problem, whether it was not very good in the first place, or is not working properly.
You must consider the Marin Rift Zone (29) and Hawk Hill (27.5).
Some good thoughts here. As mentioned on a similar thread at another site, one thing that a new rider usually doesn’t intuit (unless coming from BMX or trials or something), is that pushing up out of the saddle usually winds up placing weight forward unless a conscious effort is made to shift weight to the rear, which often means getting your butt behind the saddle, and behind to a larger degree than seems intuitive, especially when pointed downhill.
A person who comes from casual road riding does most things in such a way that weight is shifted forward, onto the handlebars, and onto the front wheel. Unless a coach or fellow rider points some of them out physically, it can really take a while to “get it.”
Similarly, most people seem to “get” turning by leaning the bike. But they also lean themselves with it, when you not only want to keep yourself upright and only lean the bike, you want to jam your weight onto the pedals in a centered fashion to keep the tires engaged and “dug in.” That’s a little bit easier to get from watching skills videos as the movements are so exaggerated.
This is what comes from not having a functional legal system. No one, especially a westerner, can hold one of these Chinese manufacturers/sellers to account for shoddy products and business practices.
Western companies know they would be sued into Bolivia, as well as having “customer relations” problems with similar practices.
And while these same Chinese companies (or closely related, “brother-in-law” entities) may manufacture for big name western companies, do not discount the quality control exerted by the western companies. Chinese seem to have few qualms (again likely because of a complete lack of legal ramifications) about selling goods made initially to western specifications, often using idle western tooling (so “counterfeit” to boot), but without western or any quality control.
By reputation, the “Light Bicycle” company has chosen to do things the right way while still availing itself of cheap labor. While it is a company located in PRC, it is directly across the Formosa Strait from Taiwan, which indicates to me that there is Taiwanese and thus western influence on their business operations.
You don’t want to put a 160mm fork on a frame designed for 120mm, 140 probably at the outside. It will jack up the geometry and likely overstress the head tube.
It may be that you want a longer-travel bike. It might be something that suspension parts can fix. Ride someone else’s short travel and medium or long travel bikes on the same trail and see what works.
Also, if I am not mistaken, the Stance frame has the seat and chainstays that bend instead of or in addition to conventional pivots on the rear triangle. I’m not sure you should be banging that bike around as hard as you may be.
Yep, the nature of lawsuits is that a jury determines who was at fault, if anyone. The rider (or his lawyers) apparently have two theories: that the rim/wheel was defective as sold, or that the bike shop made a faulty recommendation (slim chance), or failed to properly maintain or “diagnose” the wheel when engaged to do so.
They’ll get to dig around among Spesh’s product defect reports and the reason for the redesign and question the bike shop people. It will be a pain in the butt to them. but that’s a cost of doing business.
Trying to say what’s “fair”** at this early juncture, before all of the facts come in, is pure speculation. The bike shop could have missed an obvious crack in the rim, or over-tightened the spokes, or God knows what else. Maybe Spesh knew the rim was over-delicate and redesigned it for that reason. We just don’t know.
Yes, mountain biking is an inherently dangerous undertaking. But here there’s at least some evidence of a failed and possibly defective product and injuries resulting. When you make and sell products specifically designed for people to engage in a dangerous undertaking, suits like this are a cost of doing business.
People who are anti-litigation frequently don’t know what they’re talking about and are sucked in by erroneous and fantastical reporting of certain anomalous lawsuits (the McDonald’s coffee case, for a brilliant example). God forbid they are ever seriously injured as a result of negligence or a defective product.
**Reminds me of my contracts professor, who, when someone said “it isn’t fair” in class, asked “are you God?”
Plusbike raises the biggest issue. GX uses the XD driver, which would be needed to go up from GX within the SRAM line. You can get NX Eagle to have 12 speed, but you still won’t get smaller than 11t because of the Shimano driver.
Now, if you wanted to replace the SRAM with Shimano, the XD would actually be a drawback.
In addition to being an inappropriate topic, that’s like six degrees of Kevin Bacon. You can probably find a connection that attenuated between everything and everyone and some more virulent racist than Laura IngrAHam.
There’s anti-fog coatings and highly ventilated designs that can work together to eliminate fog. Some of the more radical Oakley designs apparently are effective at this, along with Smith.
I wear primarily for eye protection and also to prevent the what I call the dapple effect in the woods on sunny days. Glare protection is a distant third.
I found Julbo’s Zebra Light lenses, which change color and are the rose/amber tint, to be pretty effective. As long as I am moving, they don’t fog, but they will when I stop. The frame is a non-radical design though. I think those look really goofy on me, plus I dont want to pay a couple hundo for them.
Yeah if you don’t find yourself bashing trees or rocks or dipping your bar ends (and hands) through sticker or thorny bushes on turns, you may not need the extra protection of some of the heavier duty and more expensive gloves that have “knuckle armor” and the like. I have had both Fox and Dakine inexpensive (<$20) gloves that have been quite nice.
Really need to have a look at the Marin Hawk Hill and Rift Zone. The “1” level is right in your budget and they did a great job with inexpensive but decent components.
Not sure what kind of trails you ride, but gloves have a big protective benefit, as well as grip. I ride in Texas and it’s hot as hell three-plus months a year and I would never ride without gloves.
So far, not real good. I got a Stan’s kit, it’s the widest “rim strip” kit they sell, for 25-28mm width (external) rims, while mine are 29mm internal width.
First bad sign, the tape is 12mm wide, barely wider than my spoke holes. I put in a double width double layer. Ok. Put in the rim strips and couldn’t get the bead seated (no Presta compressor). Tried CO2, no go. Took to a bike shop. Held air at 35psi for 10 days. One gravel ride, one road ride (everything is swamped here). This morning, flat. Pumped it back up, flat again in a couple of hours. Soapy water says leaking around valve. Spun it around some more, wiggled valve, tightened nut. So far holding air again.
I haven’t ridden on trail at low pressure yet, but could tell no difference on gravel and road. I wasn’t having many flat problems, but did it preemptively. Now I think I’m going to be paranoid about losing air through leaky tape or valve. Grrr.
I think we may be conflating unseating a bead with getting the tire off the rim because the tire has a tight (small diameter and or stiff) bead.
The way I read OP’s problem is that it’s getting the tire off the rim, not seating or unseating the bead. I could be wrong.
I think a couple of things are going on here. First, tire manufacturers are making tighter beads that are harder to get over the edge of a rim. Second, the tubeless compatible rim profile has a less deep “well” (further complicated by the fact that the well may be partially filled with tape) and the well (the smallest diameter portion of the rim) is narrower because of the shoulders in tubeless rim profiles. These things all facilitate seating a tubeless tire, but may make getting the tire on and off the rim heck.
The classic answer to a tight bead was to get the beads in that well all the way around the rim, which would free enough bead to get it over the sidewall of the rim. That is harder to do with the narrower and shallower wells of tubeless rims.
Before you go looking at wheels, you need to consider what kind of hubs you have. Thru-axle hubs of two different dimensions (Boost–the new, new thing, and non-Boost) are pretty standard now, whereas it appears that you have 9mm QR (quick release) hubs. Finding quality wheels with those hubs might be difficult (or maybe not, sometimes you can score some pretty good deals on obsolescent stuff). If you do indeed have 9mm QR hubs, then your new wheels, if you bought some, would probably be useless on a newer bike.
Other than “consumables” like tires and grips, the other meaningful upgrade would be an air fork. It appears that your bike has a Suntour coil fork. An air fork will increase your riding pleasure fairly dramatically. Suntour has an upgrade program for any coil fork (made by anyone) that can get you into an air fork for $200-250. And that’s about the point where the cost of upgrading starts to get questionable vs. buying a new, better bike.
1x is nice, but it’s kind of a fancy luxury and unless you are having a lot of problems with your chain slack and front derailleur, won’t “change your life.” An air fork might. With an 8-9 speed rear derailleur, it might be a bigger hassle than it’s worth.
Yep, unless you have firm opinions as to what components you want, and the patience and time to wait for them to come on sale, you will get absolutely nickeled and dimed to death trying to build your own bike.
Those that build their own bikes either have a storehouse of parts to use, very firm ideas what they want where budget is no object, or some combination of the two. For a newb, or even an intermediate rider, building your own bike would be an expensive proposition.
Yeah, it’s probably not going to be worth it unless you stumble onto some really good parts deals. They can certainly be out there. But, one of the biggest things about a new, OEM bike, is that the components are chosen in part on pricing from a supplier for a “gruppo” or other set of components that just aren’t going to be easy for regular folks like us to assemble without waiting an unreasonable amount of time.
For example, a new fork is going to run around $250USD. Hydraulic brakes aren’t that expensive, but add in adapters, rotors, and possibly (probably!) new hubs/wheels to mount the rotors, and you’re looking at $3-400 or worse. Real quickly you have invested the price of a new bike and still may have some fairly severe component compromises.
One of the great things about a lower-cost bike is that you can “get your feet wet,” see how well and how hard you will pursue this hobby, and learn why the sought-after frames, wheels, and components are so sought after and expensive. And if you choose to pursue it to that level, you will have a greater appreciation of the differences and probably make better choices for your future bikes.
Sounds good. But, as alluded to above, and a matter of nomenclature and more, there is no such thing as 2.25″ rims (well there may be, but they aren’t in common use on bicycles). There are rims with 2.25″ tires on them, but that doesn’t tell you anything about the rims and therefore nothing about what tires might fit on them, other than the 2.25″ ones that are currently on it.
Looked up your bike and the rims are listed as ZX24, which I take to mean, most likely, 24mm internal width rims. So, you can use the formulae provided by Plusbike Nerd to determine what tires will go on your rims, but not necessarily your bike, which is also governed by frame and fork dimensions.
Completely psychological. Also, completely reasonable. As mentioned, you are going to have to recondition yourself to riding without unhealthy fear and that may take some time. Some amount of fear is healthy, it’s what makes us examine the risks we take.
But, as midwestmtnbiker notes, while there are many things various types of bikes are good at and can help you with, jumping is not really one of them. That one is almost completely rider technique. About the best a bike can do for you on a jump is survive it.
Ride. Take it easy. Don’t jump anything for a while, and when you do start small.
