After riding my hardtail for about a year, having been seriously bitten by the mountain biking bug, I started looking out for second hand full suss frames that had compatible mount points for all of my components.

Having kept my eye on the buy/sell section of pinkbike for many months, I found a 2017 Transition Scout frame in good condition at a great price, and ported all of my components over – I just needed a shim for the different seatpost size, and an adapter for my wheelset for the thru axle.

Technically speaking, if all but one component remain the same, is it still the same bike? Even if that one component is the frame? Philosophical questions aside, here's the transformation. The only other components I upgraded/changed at this time were:

• A dropper seatpost
• Shorter stem
• Replaced the cheap unserviceable pedals whose bearings were shot after about 3 months

I rode and loved the Scout for just over two years. It's such a versatile bike. From local loops to all-mountain trails to bike parks… this thing does it all. I even entered my first enduro race on it.

Over time I made a couple of big upgrades:

• the wheels: Stans S3 rims on DT Swiss 350 hubs
• the forks: I switched from the 140mm Manitou to a more burly 150mm Rockshox Pike

So why change?

There were many things about the Scout that I liked, but a few things I wanted to be sure to address with whatever I moved to next.

• Wheel size: when I built my bike, I plucked for 27.5" wheels, thinking this was the happy medium the industry has settled on. It turns out that aside from weight, 29" is just better. Everything seems to be heading in that direction. I really noticed the difference of momentum carried over rough ground when riding with friends on 29" wheel bikes.
• Seat post insertion: modern dropper posts have drops up to 200mm, but the high seat tube and my average inseam meant that a 150mm drop is all I could fit on the Scout. A lower seat tube would mean I could fit a larger drop seat post and properly slam that saddle out of the way.
• Refined cable routing: the Scout had a pretty basic form of internal cable routing, in that it had ports at both ends with mounts for zip ties. This looks nice, but as soon as you hit a rough trail, the cables slap around inside and the ride sounds like a bag of nails.

The new new build

In a serendipitous conversation with the mechanic at my local bike shop, I mentioned that I'd done some research and the bike I'd probably upgrade to was a Sentinel – a 29er with a bit more travel than the Scout, from the same manufacturer, Transition – but I would probably keep my Scout for another year or two before doing so. Little did I know that he was about to be selling his. The opportunity was too good for me to turn down… so I didn't.

So there I was again, building a bike up from scratch. Many of the interfaces were different to my Scout (axle dimensions, seatpost width, wheel size, fork travel). So it made sense to keep that as a complete bike to sell later on.

The new frame is a 2019 carbon Transition Sentinel in Pinot Noir (red).

I set myself a few loose rules for the rest of the build. Everything had to come from either a UK or European brand who (ideally) manufactured the part in Europe or it had to be second hand. I'm not quite sure why I did this. I don't think it really makes a difference in terms of sustainability… but it definitely made me more conscious of the impact of the bike industry on the world around it, and made me consider some smaller and more interesting brands.

The bike was wrapped in Invisiframe by its previous owner. I opted to peel this off and apply a fresh kit. This grave the frame a new lease of life – the Invisiframe wears and degrades over time and starts looking a bit scruffy. The only problem with this is where there are paint chips from contact that has penetrated the protective layer, you risk removing more paint when you peel it off, so it's best to take it slow. I used a hairdryer to warm it up and peeled gently.

After the slightly laborious frame protection work, the build process was pretty quick since I'd waited until I had everything before starting.

First few rides

My first impressions of the bike were:

• It's BIG. More travel, larger wheels, longer wheelbase, wider handlebars – no matter what way you measure it, it's bigger than my previous bike. This is neither a good nor a bad thing, simply an observation.
• It feels like the larger wheels carry more momentum and loose less energy to rough trail surfaces
• The seapost drop gets right out of the way
• Despite the increased size and weight, I perceived the Sentinel to climb as well as the Scout, if not better. The steeper seat tube may contribute to this.

Initally I struggled to find a good suspension setup. It took me around fives rides before I arrived at a setting I was happy with and a further few to get properly used to it. Having moved from a Rockshox Pike to the Fox 36, I would definitely say that the Rockshox is more comfortable and "plush". By that I mean that it is quicker to move into its first part of the stroke, whereas the 36 feels quite stiff off of the top. Being a lighter rider probably falling off of one side of the bell curve, I wouldn't be surprised to find that it works better for heavier riders (or ebikes).

Another thing I struggled with for a long time was the power and feel of the brakes. This was really disappointing, since I splashed out on the fancy four piston Cura 4s, and yet they felt less powerful and less effective that my 2-pot SLX brakes. Only after multiple bleeds, working free some stubborn and sticky pistons, and realigning the calipers did they start to feel good.

After I got the suspension dialled, I really started to enjoy riding this bike. It was a bit of a transition (pardon the pun). The following pics are from a Southern Enduro Mashup event in Hampshire.

👋

Forgive me if I unsolicitedly directed you to this post. If you got here because somebody shared this with you, well thanks! This general election, I've been campaigning on the doorstep in Bristol – so it could be worse, rather than reading a blog post you could have me standing at your front door letting all your heat out. At least you can close this website 🤷‍♂️

I don't want to insult your intelligence – I'm going to assume that you're all smart people. But I'm going to assume that you don't spend as much time thinking about politics, economics and social justice as I do – it's a borderline unhealthy obsession of mine.

If you're already planning to vote Labour or Green, great! If you don't know, or you're thinking about voting for the Convervatives (or the Brexit Party) then please please read what I have to say. If you're planning to vote Lib Dem – I couldn't, because I think what they did in the coalition government was unforegiveable – but I guess it's better than voting Tory.

Money, money, money 💰

I would presume that you all (well most of you… 😂), care about other people, but let's assume for a second you are only voting in your own self-interest. This is one of the ways in which the Tories pick up a lot of votes - by convincing you that Labour will tax you up to your eyeballs and nationalise your house.

Putting aside the fact that your taxes get spent on things you rely on every day, from tangible things like infrastructure (roads and bridges) to more abstract things (the basic education of everybody around you – oh and yours!), the truth is, unless you're lucky enough to earn £80k+ (congrats, you're in the top 5% of earners in the country!) there will be NO rise in your income tax under Labour.

If you happen to earn £81k, the beauty of progressive tax rates mean that you would only pay more on the amount over £80k, resulting in 96p more per week. Sounds affordable to me, especially when you consider what you'll get in return.^(source)

The majority of the money Labour plans to collect in revenue is by enforcing big corporations pay their tax, and bumping the corporation tax rate from 19 to 21% and eventually to 26%– for reference at the end of Thatcher's premiership this was at 34%. As well as raising the rate, it will be enforced on big corporations by the biggest crackdown on tax avoiders and not fall on the shoulders of you and I!

Successive Tory/coalition governments have convinced people that it's not possible to spend money on public services. It's always been possible, it was just a political choice. The global financial crisis in 2008/9 was NOT caused by Labour's public spending, it was caused by the banks (the Big Short with Christian Bale is a great film about this) – even George Osborne, the Tory chancellor, admitted this in a recent interview.

The failings of this government ❌

I said you probably care about other people – well here's where that compassion comes in. In the last 10 years, the Conservative government through deliberate lack of adequate public spending have made the following devastating effects on our society. How does their record make you feel?

• Thousands of people have been forced to turn to food banks because they can't afford to eat, and over 50% of the 1.6 million food parcels provided by the Trussel trust last year were for children^(source)
• 130,000 people suffered preventable deaths as a direct result of austerity^(source)
• Thousands of people died within two weeks of being declared "fit for work" by the DWP^(source)
• Schools have been starved of the money they need, such that schools are turning to parents to crowd fund necessary supplies^(source)
• The NHS has been systematically de-funded, such that hospital wait times and waiting lists are at an all time high^{(source, source)}
• Areas of the NHS have already been privatised behind the scenes, and the NHS has now even been sued by private companies such as Virgin "Care" when they didn't win a lucrative contract^(source)
• Local government funding has been decimated - youth services, roads, public toilets, libraries, local public transport^(source)

A Labour government will invest in these vital public services – and much more – reversing these callous choices made by the government for the last decade.

And if you think yeah, but the Tories are promising to spend as well – stop, look at their record, peel back the spin. Did you hear about the 40 new hospitals, which was actually 6? The 50,000 nurses that included 19,000 already working in the NHS? 200,000 starter homes, which turned out to be… zero. And if they were going to do any of this, why not as the government just do it, rather than wait for a general election and announce it then?

The B-word 🙊

Notice how I didn't talk about Brexit. The Tories want to talk about Brexit because it's a good excuse not to talk about all the reasons they've run this country in to the ground. Labour's policy is to negotiate a soft-brexit where we remain in the customs union and single market, and then put the final decision back to the people with that deal vs. remain. This will settle it – unlike the "get Brexit done" deal from the Tories, where we will then spend years negotiating trade deals (having left the single market). So I guess I did mention Brexit 🙈.

A green industrial revolution 💨

If you're thinking of voting Green, you're in good company. In every general election to date, I've voted for the Green Party. We have to face up to it though – we need immediate and urgent action on climate change, and Labour are the only party who have both a plan and importantly, a route to power.

Without rapidly decarbonising our industry and infrastructure – which by the way, would create thousands of new "green" jobs – we will run out of time. We can only do that if we get a Labour government now – we can't wait 5 more years! That's why if Labour look like they could win in your consistency, I urge you to vote for them over the Green party. In many seats, a vote for the Green party makes it more likely for the Tories to get in.

I could go on and on, and it looks like I already have.

Please vote Labour (or anything but Tory, really) on Dec 12th ✊

Links

• Read Labour's manifesto!
• Watch a video on how the billionaires control the media
• Watch a video from an economist on how government borrowing and capital investment works

Yesterday I gave a talk at the wonderful BathCamp short talks event. Lots of info/examples on the slides, so hopefully fairly useful in the grand scheme of things.

Thanks to everyone who came along to the talk night, and special thanks to Paul Leader for all the effort that goes into organising such a decent event.

Slides.

This post is part of a series on my bike build:

1. How it started
2. Frameset and forks
3. Assembling the stem, headset and forks
4. More assembly (this post)
5. Mission accomplished

Much to the amusement of my colleagues, boxes of varying sizes have been turning up at work over the last few weeks and I’ve been lugging them home – begging the question, “why didn’t you just order a whole one?”. It’s a great question, and I probably should have done, but hey, this is fun 🤓 .

Choosing a groupset

Choosing a groupset begets a whole bunch of other decisions, including bottom bracket and wheel compatibility. I definitely wanted a 1x11 setup, which is increasingly popular in the MTB world and my choices were Sram NX or Shimano SLX. After totting up the permutations of buying a bundle deal vs. buying it all separately, it turned out that separate was the way to go.

The price difference between SRAM and Shimano was almost negligible, and I found myself hinging the decision upon the fact that the SRAM GXP bottom bracket (BB) had terrible reviews. The Shimano BB, although cheaper had significantly better reviews, and since the BB is at the centre the groupset, I felt going for the better option here would stand me in better stead in the long run.

Bottom bracket and cranks

I had to buy a special tool (pictured) in order to fit the BB and the BB came with plastic adapter shim. Annoyingly this means it’s not compatible with the socket-style BB tool, which in turn means it’d be compatible with a torque wrench. As it goes, I had to torque it by feel (with the rather short tool). Whether I got it anywhere near correct is anyone’s guess!

Routing the shifter cable

The frame has some rather neat internal cable routing. Pretty fiddly job to feed it through – involving a head torch, an awl and lots of cursing words of encouragement.

Fitting the cassette and derailleur

Assembling the cassette was a pretty basic job, except I had to borrow a cassette tool to get it tight. It’s only a £6 tool, but it’s probably not worth having for now…

I attached the derailleur to the hanger and did some initial adjustments, but I’ll tune it properly once I get the chain installed.

Fitting the disk rotors

Somewhat foolishly, I plucked for 180mm rotors which offer improved braking over 160mm (what I know now is the standard size). So I need to purchase a mount adapter.

Here I am fixing one of the rotors to the hubs.

Saddle and peddles

Lastly for this episode, a couple of parts that will actually touch me while I’m riding; saddle and peddles. I cheaped out on these as I figure it’s an easy update in the future. I’m used to clipless pedals from my past riding experience, so I will probably upgrade at some point.

Parts summary

Purchases added in this post:

It’s starting to resemble a whole bike now! Stay tuned 📻 .

This post is part of a series on my bike build:

1. How it started
2. Frameset and forks
3. Assembling the stem, headset and forks (this post)
4. More assembly
5. Mission accomplish

After accruing enough headset spacers and finding a clear evening, I assembled my stem, headset and forks. Now, I managed to save myself some expensive use-once tooling (or a trip to the local bike shop) by buying a frame with an integrated headset, but a little creative DIY was necessary when fitting these parts.

Fitting the crown race

The only aspect of the headset that needed “pressing” of any kind was the crown race – basically a snugly-fit washer that sits on the part of the fork crown that interfaces with the lower headset bearings. Due to the snug-ness of the fit, this part essentially needs bashing on, and the traditional method is to use a piece of plastic tubing. I had some lying around the house which was almost wide enough, so I made some vertical cuts in it to allow it to flare. Perfect!

Below: DIY crown race tool.


Above: DIY crown race tool in use!

Cutting the steerer

Forks are sold with steerer tubes (the part that sticks up into the frame) that are generally too long, such that they will fit any bike. You then have to cut them down to an appropriate size for your bike.

Conventional wisdom stipulates that to cut the steerer a special tool is required so that you achieve a perfectly straight cut with your hacksaw. However, these tools a) cost money b) don't result in a perfectly straight cut anyway and c) you don't even need a perfect cut. The top of the forks is pressed by the stem top cap, but it's not a proper load-bearing surface, it's just used to preload the headset before the stem bolts are tightened.

So I dry assembled the forks, headset, frame, spacers and stem and marked out where I wanted to cut. With a combination of tape and some used spacers set up a crude DIY jig, carefully made a straight-ish cut with a junior hacksaw, then tidied it up with a file.

Below: Cutting the steerer.


Above: The cut steerer, before filing.

Setting the start nut

The aforementioned headset cap needs something to pull against. This part is called a star nut and it gets inserted in to the top of the steerer tube. This is another place where a specific tool exists but you can do a perfectly reasonable job with a modest combination of the top cap bolt and a hammer.

Below: The star nut on its way in.

All together now

With the crown race, steerer tube and star nut all sorted, all that was left to do was assemble it. I lubed up the bearings and races with Shimano workshop grease and the stem/steerer interface with copper grease to allow it to grip, but prevent the surfaces from fusing. And that’s all for now!

Below: Assembled!

Parts summary

Purchases added in this post:

Last night I did a talk at Bristech. A few people asked about the slides so here they are! There was a lot more info in my notes which isn’t in the slides, so I plan on repurposing it as a blog post at some point. For now though, here they are.

Thanks to everyone who came along ☺️ !

This post is part of a series on my bike build:

1. How it started (this post)
2. Frameset and forks
3. Assembling the stem, headset and forks
4. More assembly
5. Mission accomplish

Last month I spent a week snowboarding in the French alps. With the end of the trip drawing closer, I found myself thinking what a lot of effort, a lot of money and lot of waiting goes along with these trips. Whilst they are insanely good fun I couldn’t help but think there must be something I can do with a better effort to fun ratio (see, I promised nerdiness). My thoughts were compounded by the fact that my buddy wiped out on the third day, basically writing off the rest of the week for him. Given all the traveling, time, money and effort all concentrated into one week, it’s a lot of proverbial eggs in one basket. And also… 51 weeks is a long time to wait for the next one 😁 .

So it got me wondering, is there something I could do closer to home that maybe doesn’t have the intensity or concentration of thrill, but that I could do frequently, without a massive outlay of expense and flying to a different country? I recently moved to Bath in the West of England. On our doorstep lies a ton of open countryside and so the most obvious answer is of course mountain biking. Not only are there trails locally, I’m also not far from Ashton Court in Bristol, the Forest of Dean, and Wales – all playgrounds for off-road cycling which I can reach within a few hours.

To buy or to build?

I had a gut feeling that a ~£1k budget would get me a pretty decent hardtail. From my initial research this seemed about right. My choice then was to look for a fully assembled bike, or to build one up myself.

My first job as a teenager was working at (look away now brand snobs!) Halfords, building and repairing bikes, so I kind of know my way round most of the components. I’ve also got a bike stand and fair amount of tools kicking around at home. So I thought, “why don’t I build this thing myself?”. Well, here are some things that put me off that idea:

• SO MUCH CHOICE – seriously. It’s hard enough trying to compare fully-built bikes, let alone figure out every component, read reviews, making sure it’s compatible with all the other things I’ve bought, and making sure I don’t get ripped off.
• My knowledge is nearly a decade out of date and the industry has moved on. There are new technologies, new standards, new best practices, new terminology. Two new wheel sizes?!
• I’d probably need some expensive specialised tools (headset press, bottom bracket, cassette) and some generic ones that I don’t yet have (torque wrench).

Pre-built options

There are some really solid looking bikes out there for a grand, and I strongly considered the following:

• Ragley Marley
• Boardman Pro
• Vitus Sentier
• On One Parkwood
• Forme Ripley
• the Bird Zero TR also looks very decent but was slightly over my budget.

One thing that really fucked me off while I was trying to research these bikes was the perpetual obsolescence of the models. I get it – the brands need customers, in order to generate customers the they need to generate hype via magazines and websites reviewing their gear. In order for magazines and websites to want to review something, it’s got to be "new". So brands are incentivised to discontinue whole product lines, stick new paintjobs on them, give them new names and market the hell out of them. I found a really sweet configuration of a 2016 Marin Nail Trail at an amazing price point, which had great reviews. All gone, and product discontinued 😠 .

Build!

So the obvious conclusion is that I’ve a decided to build this thing myself through a combination of:

• my stubbornness and cynicism preventing me from wanting to buy a "2017" bike
• there’s more likely to be 2015-2016 components in stock than entire bikes, and potentially some deals to be had
• a little encouragement from Ben
• the fact I’m a geek and like assembling physical things
• spreading the cost of the build over a few months will make it feel cheaper and easier on the wallet than a single lump sum
• building it myself from scratch means I’ll know exactly how to adjust/service it

Stay tuned for updates. I’m going to cover the build in great detail from purchasing bits to assembling it.

🚲