Recent content by HikerDave

I have the 2018 4.0 which came with Suntour shock and fork which I’ve since upgraded to Fox. I think that the newer ones are the same but the 5.0 has better Rock Shock suspension and better components than mine. I think that the newer bike is a good value; plus you get a fresher battery that...

After that time I forgot to unhook the charging cable and ripped the charge connector apart I always charge inside. Plus my Arizona garage is hot as hell in summer so I need to bring the battery inside anyways for 8 months of the year.

No way. I spent four hundred dollars to upgrade to a custom-tuned damper on my 2016 Fox 36 fork and another two hundred on the shock. Suspension performance is very important to me and bicycle suspension is by nature already a bundle of compromises without adding the extra complication of energy...

Not a Levo owner but I recently replaced my Butcher 2.6 with a DHF 2.6. The DHF might have slightly less traction but has a lot better feel; the slightly staggered outside tread blocks make a big difference; I really like it. About five years ago I replaced a Butcher 2.3 front with a Butcher...

There are a couple of tricky and steep rocky trail sections that I haven’t made with my eBike that I could almost always clean on my previous trail bike. I think that it’s a combination of bike weight and geometry. Also some people just have incredible skills; I saw a local Phoenix rider “Gabe”...

Perhaps I have been lucky. My Haibike powered by Yamaha PW-SE has been reliable over 4500 miles; probably 1/4 of that rocky Phoenix Trails. The only minor problem has been wear on the rear hub which I inadvertently disassembled because I didn’t understand how it was put together when attempting...

I think that they must have figured out that the eBike apocalypse isn’t happening. I ride my eBike at South Mountain park where the trails are legal and eBikes are probably only one out of fifty. Half of the eBikers I see are mixed in with normal mountain bikes and the rest are mostly older guys...

My next helmet will have a lightweight face guard; about six weeks ago my bike was upset by a loose rock that I hit just wrong before a fast corner and I went over the bars. I wasn’t strong enough to keep my face from smashing into a rock and the resulting puncture wound on my nose bled enough...

Years ago I was riding with a couple of friends up and out of the Idaho’s Snake River Canyon (think Evil Knievel) and then back down when we startled a small herd of steers. They thought that was fun and circled around us to run ahead and be ‘startled’ again two more times; it was weird and...

I bought a bike once and the sales guy handed the manual to me and said “Nothing in this manual will benefit you in any way but I am required to give it to you”. He was right.

New tires this week Maxxis Minion DHF 27.5x2.6 to replace worn-out Specialized Butcher of same size. On our rocky and sandy Arizona trails I’m very impressed with the DHF; it’s much more predictable on sand over hardpack; where the Butcher breaks loose all at once the DHF gives some warning and...

I’ve given up on tubeless after having been spoiled myself with Mavic EX823 rims and then trying to seal budget 27.5 inch rims with tape. It just never works for me; there’s always a leak.

A new chain, and then a new cassette, because it turns out that my 12 inch steel rule measuring method isn’t accurate and I had 0.75 percent wear so the new chain skipped on the old cassette. Not bad since I got 3400 miles / 1 year out of the combination - could probably get more out of the...

Dammit, you’re right. New chain compared to old I have 0.75 percent chain wear and skipping under moderate load on the 11 and 12 cogs; that steel cassette isn’t going to wear in to the new chain any time soon. New PG-1130 cassette will be here tomorrow so a day without my bike or put the old...

In addition to adding acceleration sensors and creating auto mode, Yamaha improved the torque curve at higher RPM on both PW-X and PW-SE models. So 2020 is going to be lots better than 2019. It’s not that a 2019 is bad; just that 2020 is better.