All Things Bikes and Tacos! (...and every vehicle imaginable)

Did my first ever proper mountain bike race. a mini enduro with 2 stages. both stages were super short but still punchy enough. I placed better than I ever thought i would. 5th out of 25th in my category. Cool!

 

Any of you guys every ride in North Conway New Hampshire? I have a pretty decent trail ride set up, but unsure if I need to hit any of the less popular trails.

 

Was that the Flying Dog enduro on Crazy 8 and Ant Farm?

 

New Grips and Chainring day!

 

The only Abbey tool I can afford

 

You love those Supracush grips. My faves so far.

 

I was a huge waypoint fan, but they discontinued them, so the thicker supracushes fit the bill. Love them after 200 miles on my hardtail, so keeping the trend.

 

close. it was on Dropout and then Ant Farm+some of crazy8 as the second stage.

love my supracush. I have them on all my bikes.

 

Would switching between two equally spec'ed stems that varied only in length be a reasonable way of changing the reach of a bike by the variance in stem length?

Really hope I worded that in cohesive way....

 

Of course

Stem length will affect handling however. Shorter = faster. Longer = slower. A short stem may feel twitchy. Depends what your going for.

A different length stem, on most bikes, will affect the height of your bars but that will be very minimal.

Edit:

Here is a simple but effective way to compare various stem lengths and angles. http://yojimg.net/bike/web_tools/stem.php

 

The link is golden, thank you.

I'm tossing around the idea of moving down a frame size to a bike that could be shared between myself and my wife.
Changing out saddle position and stems might make it doable, just not sure its an ideal solution to a problem that doesn't really exist.

Buying her a dedicated bike would be the easiest/wisest thing to do.

 

yeahhh swapping a stem and saddle would get annoying to me haha, depending on how often you plan on doing it. I'd say the hardtail for her is the way to go. Cheaper (than most FS) and an easy way to switch up your riding on occasion.

 

Sharing a bike is a terrible idea, honestly.

I see it happen every now and then. Most come back to the shop eventually to do what they should have done in the first place.

If you're right in the edge of two sizes it's doable but.... It sucks. Swapping parts every time one of you wants to ride will grow old by the second ride. Also... You can't ride together.

 

Oh you're exactly right.

Its a horrid idea but here goes...I found bike A that I've been curious on trying, in a size small. Wife is 5'4" so good for her, I'm 5'7" so would be a bit cramped for me as I'm used to longer reach mediums. I'd ride bike A as a primary, and add a fun hardtail to ride when she goes out with me and is on bike A.

 

I think this is a bad idea and now you're rationalizing in the pursuit of N+1.

 

We're close in ranges. By most sizing charts I should be on smalls, but always size up to mediums. This particular size small I'm entertaining has a substantially shorter Reach than I'm accustomed to. IE, current bike is 460mm reach, the small I'm looking at is 424mm

@Gunshot-6A Yes. Bad idea, but somewhat fun to dissect

 

I'd get her "Bike A" then make yourself an appropriately fit badass hardtail "Bike B" and ride the piss out of that as a primary.

That is a big gap in reach.

 

IDK, having gone through the process of getting my wife in to mountain biking, I'd say get her a dedicated bike for herself and make it a FS. My wife's riding got so much better and more confident when she went to a FS bike. So if it's something you think/hope she gets in to more, get her something that will make it as easy as possible.

That said, what is bike A @backcountryj ??

 

Must be a Fezzari if he's being this coy about not telling us what it is

 

@backcountryj I see your logic and I would say @Gunshot-6A plan sounds like more fun haha. As good as FS bikes are, I love hardtails...I'm debating on building up a light SS hardtail instead of a new FS haha

I would also say though, I think riding a smaller hardtail makes more sense in my head than riding a smaller FS bike.