aerius

The root cause of Crank Bros. pedal failures is loose tolerances in production along with some questionable design choices. If you happen to luck out and get a pedal where the tolerances for all the parts are right in the middle of the spec it'll last just fine, problem is the good ones are few & far between since the tolerances are so wide. Going by the riding groups in my area, somewhere around 10-20% of their pedals are good for the long run, the rest of them wear out prematurely or suffer catastrophic failure. You might luck out and get a good one, but the odds aren't good. Friend of mine was lucky and got a good set on her first purchase, they worked and she liked them so she bought more for the rest of her bikes. The later buys all failed in less than a year.

People love Eggbeaters for cross since they're super light and they clear mud, snow, and ice very well, which is worth the risk of a DNF if the pedals crap out during the race. But for mountain biking they're too fragile and unreliable, and even better, if you get a pedal strike it'll unclip your foot from the pedal. I've seen a bunch of people hit their Eggbeaters on a rock or log and have their foot go flying off the pedal, followed by a crash.

Do NOT get anything from Crank Brothers. Period. Unless you want your leg impaled by a broken pedal spindle. When I go on a group rides, it's almost guaranteed that someone will break a Crank Bros. pedal. Anything from Shimano is good, but my preference is for Times since they're simpler and require zero maintenance, plus they work better in mud & snow. I run Time ATAC Carbon Ti's on my bike, had'em for 12 years, still running like new. They've outlasted everything on my bike except my Chris King headset and 4-piston XT disc brakes. As for clipless vs. platforms it depends on what kind of trails you ride and how often you need to bail off your bike in a hurry. For instance if I'm riding a bunch of skinny bridges, teeter-totters, and other stunts I want platform pedals for sure, for everything else I prefer clipless. A lot of it comes down to personal preference as well, some people like platforms more because it matches better with their riding style, same thing with clipless.

Get ready for the infamous Avid turkey gobble. Most Avid brakes come down with it either right away or as soon as the pads are bedded in, it's just a matter of how bad the noise is and how hard it is to fix.

1996 and 2006 Kona Explosifs. There's just something special about the feel of these frames, maybe it's the fancy steel tubing, maybe it's Kona's special sauce for frame geometry, probably both. They're so fun to ride.

Put a bottle cage on the seat tube mounts and see if it sits straight. There's a batch of R3's and possibly some R5's as well that left the factory with crooked bottle mounts, when you put a bottle cage on them it tilts to the right by nearly an inch and besides looking stupid it may rub on your legs. One of my local shops got several bad R3's with that issue, it's not too big a deal if you use a metal bottle cage since you can rebend it to make it sit straight, but if you're using a plastic or carbon cage then you have a problem.

Finished building it up today and took it for a nice spin this afternoon. Had some fun playing around with the sliding dropouts to see how different chainstay lengths affected handling, ended up with the sliders set to the exact same length as my old Explosif. Rides just the way a Kona should, it's like I've had the bike my whole life.

The Twinkie lives on, at least here in Canada. I can't say I've seen any on display shelves recently, but I'd guess Walmart has millions of them for sale. http://www.theglobea...article5548529/

Thanks! It was much the same with me, I started mountain biking in the early 90's and I always wanted a Kona Explosif, and later on the Ibis Mojo Ti. Yeah, good luck affording either one of those when I was still in HS. I eventually got my hands on a 96 Explosif a few year ago and now I also have a 2006. 10 years apart, and funny enough they're the 2 runs that use shaped Italian tubing; Columbus on the 96 and Dedacciai on the 2006. Friend of mine used to race for the Kona factory team, I rode her Kona Hot once and it was just incredible, it was like my Explosif but better in every way. She also had a titanium Hei Hei which was painted to look like the Hot, I never got to ride that one and I'm not sure if she still has it. The mid to late 90's were a golden era for those bikes, never again will we see that kind of high-end steel and titanium goodness from mass production bikes.

It's a newer version of my current bike so I'm definitely going to love it. It's made from Dedacciai SAT 14.5 tubing which is usually found on road bikes. Nice! But you gotta knock that last ounce off it and get it right to the UCI limit.

Picked this one up on the local classifieds. I haven't decided how I want to build it up yet. Also, anyone know how to pronounce "Dedacciai"? Cause I sure as hell don't.

Carbon allows them to build super stiff bikes at a reasonable weight. It might only take a pound or 2 off the weight of a bike, but since they can use bigger tubes, monocoque designs, and optimize the carbon layup they can make the frames far stiffer than any metal bike. A stiffer frame enables the bike to hold more aggressive & faster lines and lets the suspension work better. And if one of the factory pros breaks a frame they just pull out a new one from the truck.

A good steel or titanium mtb will last nearly forever even if you abuse the hell out of it. My '96 Kona Explosif was raced by the factory team for a year, then handed off to the development team for another year, then dumped for cheap to some guy in BC. He rode the hell out of it for 7-8 years then had it in storage for a bit before he sold it to me, and I've been trashing it for the last 3 years. Other than a small ding in the toptube and a hell of a lot of paint chips, it's still good as new. A good Ti bike will be even tougher than my steel frame. Friend of mine is a former pro who had a full factory sponsorship. She has a few Ti bikes which had the shit beaten out of them on world cup courses year after year, other than a few minor scratches they're all good as new. Those bikes are anywhere from 10-20 years old and have more miles and abuse on them than most people can rack up in a lifetime.

Go old school steel, but with a twist. Firefly Bicycles makes a custom road bike with Columbus XCR stainless steel tubing. Seriously good bikes, the company's run by guys from Independent Fabrication, they have a long history of making innovative kickass bikes. http://fireflybicycl.../road-stainless And just to make your life even more fun, Seven Cycles 622 SLX. Carbon tubes with titanium lugs and chainstays. I saw one this summer when I dropped into the shop I used to work at, I'm indifferent towards carbon bikes at best but with this one I went "shit, if I did road riding and had the cash, I'd buy it no question". Well, I would if they didn't make the Axiom SLX.

Video from yesterday's impromptu bike park session.

Don't buy a Lynskey. Them and Litespeed are the only US companies who somehow figured out how to make titanium bikes that cracked apart by the bushel. Not surprising since Lynskey used to run Litespeed. It's also warranty hell when one of their frames cracks apart on you. Friend of mine used to work at a former Lynskey dealer, former because after the cracked frames started coming in for warranties all hell broke loose and they dropped Lynskey since the manufacturer was a bitch to work with. As in badmouthing customers when they ebay'd their frames after they got sick of dealing with broken frames and warranty replacements. If you want a titanium bike you go with Seven Cycles and have them custom build you a Sola SL. Comes with any wheel size you want, built to your body measurements and riding style with no compromises. And they don't break.

Found a bike park. Had some fun. There will be a video.

Fox has a setup and tech page for the shock on your Cannondale. There's 2 separate rebound adjustor knobs on your shock, my guess is the shop didn't get the one for the long travel mode dialed in which is why you're getting the thump at the top. Go through the setup guide and make sure the air pressure is in right ballpark, then get both rebound adjustors dialed in. If that doesn't take care of it then yeah, Fox will be getting a call from your shop. http://www.foxracing...adrt2.html#asps

Fortunately, it's coming out pretty soon according to the Fuji lens roadmap. Should be out by early 2013. http://www.fujifilm.com/news/n120626.html

Nice, saw your post yesterday on MTBR. The bike rides nicely out of the box but get ready to do some serious suspension tuning over the next few weeks. Once you get the suspension dialed in it takes the bike to a whole new level.

We processed J.Lo and her entourage through customs back when I was working at the airport. Let's just say it was a fucking disaster and leave it at that. Don't deal with her. Ever. Unless you want a migraine where not even oxycontin makes you feel better.

Did a pretty good ride on Sunday, but suffered badly in the last half hour of the ride. 3.5 hour mountain bike ride, 44km, and 3700' of elevation gain. Fuck that hurt. We did about 20km with the main group before a bunch of people had to bail or limp out of the forest with mechanicals. It came down to me and 2 others, and those 2 others happened to be the Provincial champions from last year and this year, and they were on singlespeeds. And I still got my ass kicked on the climbs. Those singlespeeders are animals. On the bright side, it was a pretty epic ride and my new fork is now dialed in. Still getting used to my new wider handlebar but I'm liking it.

Shutterfly gets most of my business since they have the most reasonable shipping cost and their quality is decent. Results can be unpredictable unless you go through the options and disable the "optimize prints" feature or whatever the hell they call it these days, it basically auto-levels and auto-contrasts the photos if you leave it enabled. My personal favourite for when things have to look good and right is Adoramapix. They have a great choice of papers and sizes and their prints just look better. But I get killed on shipping since I live in Canada, I think the prices are pretty resonable for you guys. I'd say try out a few places. Pick out a few sample files and order a set of prints from each place, then see which one looks best. I doubt we're photographing the same kind of stuff nor looking for the same kind of things in the final prints. Try out different papers & finishes too to see what works best. I like all my stuff in super high gloss but others might not.

Nope, I'll stick with my OM-1. I hate EVFs, give me an actual optical viewfinder and at least an APS-C sensor. Given that it's an OM, I can't understand why it doesn't have a full-frame sensor. I just don't get this camera. Mind you I have the entire X-Pro-1 system on order so they'd literally have to come out with a digital OM-2SP for me to buy into the system.

It's close, the K-5 is a little bit narrower, a bit taller, and with the lenses I want it's about the same depth. Hell no, I may be a retro-grouch but I still want autofocus on my digital cameras. I also don't get along well with rangefinder focusing.