Innholdsfortegnelse for April 2023 i Mountain Bike Rider

“Sometimes we open one up and water will run out literally all over the floor. Then it’s a race to dry it out inside before the fresh oxygen turns the steel parts to rust – you can actually see it happening before your eyes.” That’s Peter Collard, a man who started an e-bike motor repair business from a log cabin in his garden four years ago, but now runs an international business fixing out-of-warranty motors. He proudly shows us his wall of horrors: motors with snapped axles, broken teeth, rusted components seized hard, and wiring that’s carried water right up into the motor’s circuit board. “People will swear blind their bike’s not been near a pressure washer, then you open it up and it looks like this,” Peter says, holding…

SHUTTLE RUNS Unless you play football or tennis regularly, moving laterally is not something that mountain bikers do very often. It’s a great skill though. To perform shuttle runs, hop sideways for a set distance then when changing direction hunker down and touch the ground with your outside hand. Go back and forth like this but go slowly at first as they will get your heart pumping, and fast. There is simply no denying the benefits of Zone 2 training. And while it’s easy to dismiss it as base building or low-intensity cardio, the profound adaptations that are taking place at the cellular level make Zone 2 training completely transformative. Simply put, Zone 2 training makes your mitochondria, the powerhouses of each cell, more efficient. This, in turn, allows the…

£3,339 (Pike upgrade) • 29in • alpkit.com NEED TO KNOW ● Updated 3Al/2.5V titanium 29er hardtail with a boutique finish at a competitive price ● Optimised for a 130mm-travel fork to complement the trail hardtail geometry ● Semi-size-specific chainstay lengths offer a semi-balanced weight distribution ● Equipped with Sonder’s Alpha 29 tubeless-ready wheelset – assembled here in the UK ● Four frame sizes, S-XL, all rolling on 29in wheels, there’s also a frame-only option for £1,399 ● Order online or try one for size at Alpkit’s stores British brands have a long history of turning out well-executed hardtails, especially those of a more hard-hitting nature. And while aluminium and steel tubing seem to rule this genre, titanium is making a resurgence; with smaller, direct-to-consumer brands pushing hardtail design forward and…

With the speed you can ride on modern mountain bikes, it’s a good job helmet construction and safety technology has kept up. More stable and assured than ever, the latest machines allow you to ride technical trails faster than ever – with the added risk that entails – and no one wants to second-guess whether or not a helmet is going to protect their head if the s*** hits the fan. As trail and enduro helmets have evolved, they’ve picked up more features along the way, with many becoming standard issue on premium helmets. These include technologies like MIPS (and equivalents) that aim to reduce rotational impact forces by twisting a fraction in a crash, while special layers and varying material densities hidden inside helmet shells offer better ability to…

Although the spring thaw has started, there are still a few lingering pockets of winter if you know where to look. If you’re lucky enough to find some, you get to join an impromptu high stakes game of Where’s The Grip? Rock and Mud are reduced to bit players, while Ice ignores all the rules and leaves you utterly bereft of traction, just when you need it most. Today’s contestant is Jim Clarkson from Kendal (honestly, he’s there if you look hard enough). James Vincent Gee-man has had an incredible roller-coaster career of highs and lows. Beyond his downhill successes and all those brutal crashes, Gee Atherton has competed in no fewer than five Red Bull Rampage events, finishing second in two of them. After his horrendous crash during the…

MOST WANTED AVA PRESSURE WASHER GO P40 L £144.90 Ava of Norway might sound like the grand title of a minor royal, but it’s actually a new pressure washer brand with some interesting models stacked with new features, not least the 10 to 20-year warranty on all models. Ava says its ethos is to make products that are sustainable, that have a long life and let you, the end user, repair the product. As such it’s a member of the Right to Repair Europe scheme, which requires companies to supply parts and user manuals for 10 years after manufacture. Attachments like the lances and guns are all repairable too. The Go P40 is the dinkiest in the range and is designed for people who want a small unit to wash…

£8,899 • MX • santacruzbikes.co.uk NEED TO KNOW ● 5010 ditches the small wheel up front, and moves to a mixed-wheel set-up: 29in front, 27.5in rear ● Kinematics overhaul, Santa Cruz has reduced anti-squat and added progression, so it’s plusher with less risk of bottom-out ● Carbon-only frame choice, C or lighter CC grade, and all get size-specific chainstay lengths ● Glovebox storage added, with space for a Tool Wallet and Tube Purse ● Six sizes to pick from, bikes from £5,299 up to £9,599 for the AXS X01 build Santa Cruz says this bike is for playful riders, riders who want to roll up a tree trunk and fakie out of it and grind their mechs off on stumps – big kids who won’t grow up. “It’s a trail…

CONTACT US mbr magazine, Future PLC, Unit 415, Eskdale Rd, Winnersh Triangle Business Park, Winnersh, Reading, RG41 5TU mbr@futurenet.com ★ STAR LETTER ★ ODE TO MOUNTAIN BIKING This Sceptred Isle, these Glens and hills Can lift our spirits, cure our ills. So put feet to pedal, hands to bars Climb into the mountains, away from the cars. Improve your fitness, clear your mind Freewheel down singletrack, freedom you’ll find. There is no bad weather, only bad gear So go on, try it! Make it this year. Our bikes are our passion, skills are the key So kit-up! Get out there and enjoy all you see… Kev Muir Ed – Love that little verse, have a jacket. Drawings and ditties in homage to the mtb are also welcome WINS a Madison Zenith waterproof…

BEN’S PRIVATEER 141 ÖHLINS £4,499 • 29in • privateerbikes.com MONTH 10: Air or Coil? RockShox or Öhlins? Heavy or light? Ben rides two different 141 builds back-to-back to try and answer these questions THE RIDER BEN SMITH Position Art editor Mostly rides Forest of Dean Height 5ft 9in Weight 76kg THE BIKE ■ Progressive trail bike from UK direct-sales brand with 141mm travel, coupled with 150mm-travel fork ■ Special-edition bike features Öhlins RXF36 M.2 Air fork and TTX2M coil-sprung shock, and tougher wheels and tyres ■ Long, low and slack sizing and geometry with proportional chainstay lengths ■ Shimano SLX/XT drivetrain and Magura MT5 brakes offer no-nonsense performance without sky-high pricing There’s something about this stealthy black bomber that attracts a lot of positive attention, more attention than I’ve experienced…

Let’s quickly get one thing straight, Dyfi bike park is actually pronounced dove-ee, so it makes total sense its new rhyming red trail is called Lovey Dyfi. With that cleared up, let’s dig into this brand-new red-graded track that’s the longest trail so far in the park. Dan Atherton and the team have spent almost a year clearing out the hillside, all the way from the drop-off point under the shadow of Gee Atherton’s notorious Ridgeline, right back down to the café. It’s designed as the easiest trail at Dyfi – for less advanced riders to enjoy and also to potentially open up the park to those riders intimidated by the scale and technicality of some of the harder tracks. Personally, we don’t blame ’em: Dyfi is not for the…

SOUTH EAST NOT PEASLAKE – ELSTEAD 36.2km (22.5 miles) The Surrey Hills has a huge catchment area, and with a first class trail network tucked away between the trees it’s no surprise it’s constantly buzzing with riders. If you want an alternative to the usual Peaslake pleasers then head a little west, as the area between Godalming and Farnham has managed to, so far, stay relatively under the radar. This ride orbits the town of Elstead while deftly avoiding it, instead taking you on an alternative tour of some of Surrey’s hills, commons and woodland and proving that it always pays to think different. GPS download: bit.ly/ElsteadRide SCOTTISH BORDERS NOT THE TWEED VALLEY – SELKIRK 29.3km (18.2 miles) The gravitational pull of the Tweed Valley is hard to escape. Glentress,…

€8,999 • 29in • scor-mtb.com NEED TO KNOW ● 29er e-bike designed for trail riding and so much more ● The ST pairs 140mm rear travel with a burly 150mm-travel Fox 38 fork ● Power supplied by Shimano Steps EP8 motor and custom 720Wh battery ● Angle-adjust headset and shock flip-chip offer stacks of geometry options ● Short 436mm chainstays give snappy handling ● ST and LT versions share the same frame, but LT has 20mm more travel “What is it with you Brits, that you have to try and slash every corner?” That was a comment from one of the SCOR team after tucking in behind me on a trail in Punbino, Italy. It was at the launch of the 4060 Z e-bike, and while it was meant as…

TESTED THIS MONTH Here at mbr, we’ve always been big fans of shorter-travel trail bikes. Bikes capable enough to ride everything on, but still tight enough, and light enough, to let you interact with the trail. Bikes that will showcase your skills on your best days, and hide your lack of fitness on your worst days. They bring trails dulled by ever-increasing suspension travel back to life, where pedalling efforts are rewarded in spades too. Flowing sections don’t get sucked into a soft mid stroke, as these short-travel shredders accelerate forward rather than simply tracking the contours of the trail. That’s the theory, at least. To put it to the test, we’ve rounded up three premium short-travel trail bikes from three boutique brands: Pivot, Santa Cruz and Yeti. All three…