- Welcome to this week's Ask GMBN where we try
and answer all your mountain bike-related questions.
If you have any leave them
in the comments section down below, we'll read them
and you can always email them to ask@gmbn.com.
Right, let's kick this one off
with a question from Henry Kuemmel,
and it's about trials bikes.
It says "Loves the channel", thanks for that,
"I'm thinking about starting to ride trials,
"any bike recommendations?"
- I was talking about trials bikes with Martin, actually.
Yeah, he was talking about the Inspired Hex,
so that's a 26-inch wheel street trials bike.
So it's pretty versatile,
so you can jump on it and do other stuff,
and it's got normal saddles
so you can get away with sticking a saddle up to it,
to your riding area.
- It's a normal-looking trials bike,
it's not a 20-inch or anything crazy like that?
- No, it looks similar to what Dan MacAskill rides,
but it's the bigger version, essentially.
- Similar to what Martin used to ride a lot of, I suppose.
- I think so, yeah, same sort of bike, yeah.
- Cool, right, next question comes from Darren James,
he's purchased his first mountain bike back in June,
it's a Voodoo Hoodoo hard tail,
and wants to know if he can remove his front derailleur
without changing crankset straight away.
- Yes, you can, but you may need
either a front chain guide to keep the chain on,
or one-wide chainring.
- So--
- So a narrow wide.
- So he's got a three wide set up at the moment,
so what'd you do,
you'd leave the ring in the middle position?
- Ideally in the middle, yeah.
- Give you a good chain line.
- Yep, and then one of the two options,
either new chainring or some sort of chain guide.
He should only need the upper chain guide though,
so they're not too expensive,
similar price as a chainring actually.
- Right, this is a good question.
Diego says "I don't get why the bigger rotor
"is in the front wheel, say 200 mil rotor front
"and 180 mil rear."
He rides gravity enduro trails
and his main brake is the rear one.
"Or am I doing something wrong?"
- I don't think he's doing anything wrong, no,
cause I guess it does depend on your preference,
but you bear in mind that when you're pitched down a hill
you've got more weight bias to your front wheel,
so that's got more traction on it,
so your braking power is more controllable through there.
- I've questioned this, personally.
I don't know, I'd love to do a test to see, actually,
cause the common sort of thing that people say
is that the front brake does the most stopping,
however in that situation I find that,
obviously if your front wheel slides you're in trouble,
so I think you would tend to bias the rear a bit more.
I think we need to do a video on it,
and test out which brake is actually,
let's say getting hotter,
therefore we'd know which one was doing the most work.
- I think it also does depend
on the specific trails you ride.
Like if you're riding a bike park,
I think you run the back brake quite extensively.
- Yeah, true.
- You don't really use the front brake as much.
- I think we need to do some tests into this.
- Yeah.
- Kay, Josip Glasnovic. "I have one question" for us.
For you, you.
"I heard somewhere that a noisier freehub
"is better and more durable. Is it or is it not?"
Why are some noisier and some not?
- It's not necessarily better or more durable,
it just so happens that a lot
of the better ones are noisier.
- It's a bit of a sort of trade mark.
- Stronger springs, basically.
But you get other designs,
so in a typical one you've got a pole,
that goes like this, like a ratchet system,
it's got a powerful spring that makes it click,
that's what you hear.
But other designs like the DC hubs,
they've got like a circular ratchet,
so you've got two discs and they click into each other.
- Yeah.
- And they're actually fairly quiet,
but they're every bit as reliable,
so it's not always the case.
- I'm sure that's not the first time
we've been asked that question, actually, but--
- But they do sound nicer.
- Like yourself.
John Bradbury.
"I have a dropper post from a previous bike"
and he's just purchased a downhill bike.
Is it worth putting the dropper post on his downhill bike
as he does a fair peddling, a fair amount of peddling?
- I don't see why not.
If it fits, as long as you can slam it down low enough.
- That would be my issue, yeah, it depends,
cause you wanna get--
- Depends on your frame design, doesn't it?
- Yeah. Don't see many people riding drop posts on downhill,
not saying its the wrong thing to do.
- Lot of people did it in Maritzburg, that year.
- It's gonna be a bit heavier.
- Rossio and a few others.
- You can generally get away with really short,
lightweight seat posts on downhill bike, but.
- If you've got it lying around,
and you want to give it a try.
- But why not check out our video on
"Will a drop post make you faster"?
- Here I've got two bikes that
both could be described as cross-country marathon bikes.
One has a dropper seat post,
the other doesn't, has a normal seat post.
I'm gonna test them back-to-back to see
if you really do need a drop seat post for cross country.
(techno music)
- Jmattias Folestad.
"I've got a downhill bike
"with a Marzocchi triple-8 RV on it.
"When I bought the fork, had a lot of stiction,
"so I've given it a full service
"with an oil change and full greasing.
"it's still got some stiction. Any tips?"
- Well I would say it probably needs a bit of an overhaul,
rather than a sort of a light service.
Oh no, he said did do a full service.
- Yeah, but he also mentioned bushes and stuff.
- Yeah, true.
- I mean, he hasn't said he bought the fork new,
so we don't know that.
It's possible, if it was new,
it's not even bedded in in the first place.
- True.
- Some of them were sticky to start with.
- But generally Marzocchi's a pretty sort of plush.
- Pretty slick, yeah. - Yeah.
Sort of thought there's something going on there,
need to work it out,
yeah, maybe a full service.
- Popular topic at the moment for us.
Jesicka Labud says
"I'm a big fan of GMBN, have been for a long time,
- Nice. - "and mountain biking.
"My question is though,
"will GMBN ever introduce a woman mountain biker/presenter?"
- We have had that question a few times.
And rightfully so.
Yes, we're trying to,
at the moment we're struggling to find the right person.
So what we're trying to do is
find some girls that we know of,
like Annie Last,
where we'll go out and visit these girls
and do a load of videos.
Definitely some women-specific tips would be really cool.
- Definitely.
- So yeah, super open to doing that stuff, definitely.
- Shay Benno.
"What is the reason that new bicycles
"come with front left rear brakes.
"I'm riding with front on the right like my motorcycle."
- Front on the right is definitely a UK thing.
US tends to be the other way around.
So I guessing Shay's probably from the US.
I don't know why it's like that,
it's just a geographical thing, isn't it, really?
- I think it was originally, way back,
I think it was something to do with road signalling,
so if you drive on the left hand side,
you have your front brake on the right,
and the reason for that is,
when you pull across the traffic,
the safer brake, technically,
to use would be your back brake.
- Yeah.
- So you don't mess around with the handling.
But I think that's pretty dated.
- They ride a motorbike and a mountain bike, obviously,
and I can't imagine having to do
one on one and the other on the other,
you know, have it the other way around,
so for me it just seems natural
to have the front brake on the right side.
- Yeah.
Sam Brown.
"Is it a good idea to make a gap jump
"and make the landing moveable
"so you can improve distance and technique
"without having to build loads?"
- That's a pretty good idea,
I'd say the easiest way is probably
to do it the other way around,
get a take off that's moveable
and then just build the biggest downslope you can,
and then you can just move that around.
I did that as a youth,
with pallets in the car park,
you just make a massive--
- Yeah, you move it all back as you get better.
- Definitely, yeah.
- Yeah, that's a great video here,
so a beginner dirt jump construction video up,
by Blake, really good one that, check this out.
- Woah.
Wow.
Man this location is sick,
the dirt is perfect for digging in.
Today is the day where I show you
how to build a progressive jump,
one that you can progress on,
and just get all your skills up together.
But first you need one of these.
The spade.
- Next question comes from Hudson Carmouche,
who's got a five-inch travel Yeti,
and he's in the market for a pike.
Rockshox pike fork, I presume.
Lives in Austin, Texas,
where trails are made up of
50% technical and rock garden terrain,
so pretty technical,
"Would I be better off with 150 or 160 mil pike?"
So it's a 5-inch travel Yeti,
so that's 113 of travel, front and rear, at the moment.
- I think you could definitely get away with 140 or 150,
I probably wouldn't go any higher than that myself,
cause you're firstly going to
raise your bottom bracket height,
and obviously your bars are going to come up higher as well.
With the longer travel fork you do,
the sag ratio will sort of bring it down again,
but the bike's never gonna handle
quite as well as how it's originally designed,
with less travel.
- Yeah, especially I think if you're pedalling stuff,
I'd rather keep the front end a little bit lower,
so 150 sounds good to me.
- Yes.
- You won't notice a huge difference,
I don't think, between the two anyway.
Frank Wilson has set his fork
based on the manufacturer's specs.
"However I feel,
"I like the feel of an 10 pounds of pressure.
"After watching Doddy's video on volume spacers
"I'm starting to wonder if
I should be adding spacers instead? Thoughts?"
- Yeah, experiment with it, that's what they're there for.
I mean, most fork sets,
they do come with a couple of those,
they've very cheap to get ahold of for your forks,
so get some and try it.
- I've always said that
the manufacturer's specs aren't that accurate.
Having said that I bought,
I didn't buy it, sorry,
I tried out a set of Rockshox pikes last year,
I found their gauge was actually really accurate,
but it depends on the fork I suppose.
It's a good guide to start with.
- Yeah, don't get too stuck to the guide,
sort of use it as a base setting,
and then just sort of write down where you are,
so you experiment.
- Yeah. Sam Millidge.
"I've been riding my local trails for six months or so now,
"and I'm loving it.
"I would love to race eventually, and I was wondering,
"how good do you have to be
"before you enter a local enduro race?
"I'm prepared for getting my butt kicked
"and finishing towards the bottom,
"I just don't want to finish dead last by a mile."
- I think you kind of answered it there yourself.
I think you just need to go and try a local race first,
you know, it's no biggy if you don't do well.
- Don't worry about it.
- Gotta gauge yourself, don't you, yeah,
get out there and do it.
- I did my first bike race
within a week of having my first mountain bike
and came 28th out of 30, I think,
when I was 14,
so the field wasn't exactly the strongest,
but who cares, doesn't matter.
- Just get out there and do it.
- Yeah. Paul Herberholz.
"I've been riding for about a year on a 600 pound hard tail,
"when would you recommend is the right time
"to upgrade to something of a higher quality?"
- I think when you start out-riding the bike, really,
and I would recommend not actually spending any money
unless you actually have to,
so if you start breaking stuff,
upgrade those components, and wheels and stuff
with the next level up.
There's no need to just keep buying new stuff,
what you have is probably quite good for purpose.
- Exactly how I did it was sort of
thrashed my cheap bike to death,
bought new wheels when they needed replacing,
and then eventually after a year or so
I probably found a bit of money to find a better bike,
but there's definitely no rush to do it, I don't think.
(swoosh noise)
- Time for the quick fire round
where we've got to answer your questions as fast as we can,
cause that's the rules.
Henry Morelake.
"What are your thoughts on the Evil Insurgent?"
- Very nice, I prefer a following though.
Olen Dobak.
"Can I use a Rockshox Lyrik fork
"and a Fox DPX2 Shock together?"
- Course you can, what a silly question.
(both laugh)
- Phil Adams.
"Have you got any more fat bike videos planned?
"Can you do another next,
"can you do another one, next time we get some decent snow?"
- We're going to do a fat bike video tomorrow,
Blake's going to ride a fat bike, can't wait to see that.
- We're not going to hold our breath for snow, though,
cause we don't get much of that here.
- Although I would love to go
and do some fat biking in the snow.
Sounds like fun.
Tomkwe. Kweb.
"After an hour of trail riding
"my right pinky and ring fingers go numb, any suggestions?"
- Possibly your bars are too low.
Sounds like there's a lot of
weight on your hands doing that,
or you might be holding on too tight.
- Potentially. Could be a lot of things, that, I reckon.
That's not very helpful, is it?
- No. Sorry. - There you go.
- It was quick-fire there.
Teo Barrachin.
"Can you run a 26-inch wheel on a 27 and a half-inch fork?"
- You can. Would you why?
- I don't know if you'd want to,
because it's sort of, not really designed for it.
(Neil laughs)
That was a quick answer,
the longer one is about fork offset,
but maybe that's a separate thing to--
- Fork offset, sounds like you're
saying something rude there.
Matthew Jaggard.
"What do you guys think about LaPierre Spicy 327?"
I have no idea.
- It's an alright bike.
(both laugh)
- Don't know anything about it.
- Steven Smith. "Who makes the best sounding hubs?"
- Oh, I don't know, that's a good question.
Hope makes some very loud hubs.
But does everyone like loud hubs?
We've talked about this.
- We did, sometimes a quiet hub's good,
especially you riding naughty trails.
- Chris King hubs sound good.
- Yeah, that sounds like a really good hub, that.
- A bit of a classic, innit?
- Guillio.
"Can I put a 200 mil travel fork
"on my 2014 specialised enduro 29er?"
- Yes you can. But don't.
- But don't.
(both laugh)
(swoosh noise)
- Right, so now it's time for
the correct me if I'm wrong section.
You can always send your videos
through the email to ask@gmbn.com,
we'll take a look
and we'll try and help you out with some tips.
This one comes from Finley Hawkins, who's 13,
and he's been trying to get more height on his jumps.
- [Doddy] Almost a bit of a step-up, I'd say.
That's good, he's got some decent height there.
- Big old.
Yeah, I like that, that's cool.
I think you could probably get
a little bit further back on the take off,
but I like the style,
you see when you do actually,
your back wheel takes off,
you're really stood up tall,
so that's always going to give you pop,
but try and get a little bit further back
on the bike on the take off and then stand up forward,
you'll get some height,
but it's good, innit Doddy, what do you reckon?
- Yeah, it's a good start I think.
- Put it in slow-mo, it's mega-height there.
Look at that, pretty good.
- [Doddy] That is good, isn't it?
- Four or five foot out of that jump.
Just don't be so hard on yourself, that looks really good.
But yeah, I'd try those little tips,
hopefully that'll help you out.
(swoosh noise)
- Right, that's it for this week's ask,
so definitely keep sending your questions,
I love this doing this bit,
it's one of my favourite videos of the week.
- Yeah, it's all good.
Make sure you fire those questions in to ask@gmbn.com,
and like Neil said, comment in the comments below.
- Now hopefully you've noticed
that it's freak week on the channel
so if you want to see a freaky video
click over here for Blake being an idiot
and showing us some freaky tricks.
- Yeah, and right down here
if you want to see Martin's freakiest bikes.
So that's a real cool, random collection of bikes.
- Give us a subscribe if you haven't done already
by clicking on the GMBN logo,
and thumbs up if you enjoyed this video.