- Giver
I've had a bloody good time riding
the Meta HT MA exclusively for the last 30 days.
And I've learnt some pretty valuable lessons.
You might've seen the brand new bike check video we did.
Or the Ellis Lake video where I tried to
ride all those double blacks, as well as that time
I fell off all the skinnies in the snow.
But, today we're going to do two things.
I'm going to share the lessons I've learned that are
transferable to any rider on any bike.
And we're going to see how fast I can actually go
on this hardtail.
Before we get into the lessons, I want to take you back
to day three with the brand new hardtail.
And I jumped right back on my old trail bike.
I wanted to test the hypothesis that my trail
bike would be faster down the hill than the hardtail.
Now I know that it's not going to win me any Nobel prizes
but, I was interested to know after 30 days
of just riding the hardtail, how much closer could I get
to my trail bike time that I was used to.
To test this I did a time run
on my old trail bike had that had 170 mil travel upfront,
150 in the back, immediately followed by a lap
of the new hardtail at 150 upfront, 0 in the back.
Let's go find out.
So, on the way back up the hill,
just set that benchmark time on the old trail bike
Time to beat 3:14.
Probably a good chance to give you a rundown on the court.
So, it's an intermediate trail with three key sections.
First part, really ruddy fast
and tons of line options.
So, we're going to be curious to see if I can hold on
and get on those lines on this bike.
So, you can part there's been recently rebuilt
so a lot smoother and faster.
So, I think the trail bike can hardtail going to
be pretty comparable.
Then the third part is a way faster with a bunch
of little fistulized rocks in it.
So, it's going to come down to how kind of
scared I want to get right now.
Keep grinding on up.
Oh, already!
I feel like that's a huge case out near definitely scared to
get off the brakes because the rear wheels bouncing around
so much. It's not really doing much braking.
It was good.
Oh! That's it.
This right hand corner in squalor rubbing the lowdown.
It's a good rapper.
I'm getting a little bit too
Nice, there we go.
3:27
It was 3:14 last time.
Okay. That ain't too bad.
So, that was actually closer than I thought.
And after the ride and the bike as is for a few days
I wanted to try a few different parts
and see if that would make a difference.
We started in the cockpit, the handlebars
I started wide at 790 mil.
Just wanted to get a feel for it.
Eventually, I brought them down to 770
and that kind of gave me that feeling of being
able to lean the bike a bit better
at the lower speeds I think.
I also changed the steer, out of the box it had a 50 mil
copperhead stem. I went to 35 just
to see how it was for a few days.
Eventually, I found that I felt more comfortable on the 50
so, left it there. I also played with the stack height.
I started with it right at the top
losing one space at each time
aside from adjusting the brake angle quite often
that was really it for changes in the cockpit.
I spent the majority of my setup time
on the suspension or really just the front fork.
I started with the recommended 83 PSI for my riding way.
Eventually I dropped it to 81 just
to give me a little bit more softness.
I started with the rebound accidentally really, really fast.
So I backed that off a few clicks.
And that's now at 16 clicks from close.
Compression wise, I really cranked up the
high speed compression to four out of five clicks
and the low speed compression I left at 14 clicks.
I've got two tokens in there right now.
And I'd like to explore with more, just to
see how that will make the bike feel.
Moving right along.
Let's move to tire pressure check.
I started with 25 PSI in the rear
which I eventually dropped now to 23.
Again, just to get a little bit more softness
out of the rear end
the front stayed the same somewhere 22, 23 PSI.
Where, I it did find a really useful change
was the tire width. I started with 2.35 tires.
Once I put the 2.4 tires on, though
it felt like the bike had a lot more support
and I could really hammer the rear end
and a bit harder to the corners.
Finally, I threw the flat pedals back on.
I haven't ridden flats for the last 10 years
but I wanted to see what it would feel
like and take my skills back to the basics.
But, for the sake of my shins
I'm going to throw the clips back on.
Speaking of taking it back to basics
there were a few skills I had to think
about and practice to make the most out of this bike
but the best way to show you that is to take it
out on trail. So, let's go have a look.
We're a little further down the trail in a perfect spot to
talk about braking.
This was my number one stuff up.
The biggest thing I learned on the hardtail, as soon
as rear wheel got kicked off the ground, there
was no braking.
Unlike the full suspension bike, the rear shock allows
that rear wheel to trek and be able to continually brake.
Mapped out, you don't quite have that luxury.
So, what I found I had to do that I had to look really
far ahead for any braking opportunity.
At the start, I blew a ton of corners at the bottom of steep
and rough sections.
And as I went on, I learned to look ahead
and spot the braking opportunities, a really
valuable lesson, but you sometimes don't have
the opportunity to learn on the full suspension.
Moving right along.
We need to talk about line choice.
This section is a great example of when I started
riding the hardtails, taking the conservative easy lines
but with the correct entry speed, balance and timing
of when I was unweighting, I could still take the
aggressive lines I'd like to on the trail black.
It just meant I had to not be lazy because there
was no rear shock there as my insurance policy
when things went a little bit wrong.
One of the things I've loved learning the most
on the hardtail is pumping.
Without the complication of the rear shock,
we've got two main things I was focusing on.
Firstly, I could tell how efficient my pumping was
without the energy being wasted in the rear shock.
Secondly, it was really easy to work
on the timing of my pumping.
That was because without the rear shock
I was getting immediate feedback on
whether I'd timed my pumps right or wrong.
It's important to have your timing right on any bike
because that's how you're going to generate free speed
without peeling down a trail.
So, those were the skills I focused on and thought
about for the last 30 days or just on the hardtail.
And now I've had a quick look back at the course
and feeling pretty ready to put
down a fast time and see how close I can actually get
to that first trail bike time.
Let's give it a crack.
So, battling up the hill for the final time run.
Supposedly I've learned some lessons.
The bike is in mint condition trails pretty similar
to 27 days ago.
Time to beat from the hardtail was 3:27.
The trail blacks sit in the bar at 3:14.
Let's see what we got.
Where your wheel is everywhere, not on the ground,
there we go. This is the end of the top trek section.
Tires feel way better. So much more traction.
Good cushion even, dare I say it.
More rough, just lots of rocks in the surface.
Ow, that's an ankle smasher.
Okay, and brace my ankles.
Almost slide into a rock,
that's so scary.
And official time.
You little beauty.
3:22. Thanks for coming!
So it just made it back to the track
official, unofficial time of 3:22 for the final run.
The run went really good.
The top section I felt really good on, the lines was dull,
the bike was feeling really good.
Middle section where it's smooth and flowy,
I recognized as fast as the trail black
and then down the bottom section it's really scary
with those fast high speed, really rocky sections.
So, definitely lost some time to the trail back there.
But end of the day, happy with how our pretty C+
grade science experiment turned out.
If I've learned one thing from this 30 days in
this hardtail was it doesn't matter what bike you're on,
you can still have fun
and it's good to take it back to the basics.
So, like they say even plus one
there's always space for a hardtail in the stable,
I'd say. That's it for my science experiment.
Thanks for watching.
Make sure you subscribe and let me know what I missed.
What didn't I try?
Cheers.