Future Bike Plans

pirwin1

I am thinking of buying a more DH bike in the summer (depending on how much I earn!). Was automatically thinking full susser but just now I have had an interesting thought, what about a burly hardtail with big forks?

Have only ever ridden XC but want to start doing some DH as it looks great fun. What's it like to learn DH on a hardtail?

One plus I can think of is it will be much cheaper!

phz

as many different 'correct' answers to this as there are riders i guess but heres my 2p worth -

you say youre from an XC background - if you want to get into DH big time then heavy duty FS is the only way to go

but

if you want to do a bit of 'light' DH along with some other types of riding then you have other options -

the 'all mountain' route of a lighter slightly less travel full susser (maybe with suspension lockout) that can climb a bit as well as handle the rough stuff

or

(obviously from my sig my preferred option - but thats personal opinion only) your mentioned hardcore hardtail - what i would call a hardtail playbike - with reasonably long travel forks - will do XC - will do a bit of jumps - will do a bit of 4X / DS - will do a bit of tame-ish DH - will do a bit of everything really

obviously a full susser will make the biurlier bits of DH a bit easier to handle but if you dont want to go 'full-on' downhill then a hardtail MIGHT teach you to ride lighter and pick better lines

slainte rob

Northwind

I've got a feeling that learning DH stuff on a hardtail might be an awful lot harder than doing it... People do amazing things on long-forked hts but I reckon most of them learn the way down the hills on full sussers then translate that into hardtailism. Could be wrong though.

The Northern Monkey

Hardtailism... love it

Long travel super tough hardtails are awesome!!

Whytepeak

Burly aluminium framed long forked hardtails aren't very forgiving when you blast through the rough stuff.

If its a rocky downhill bast you crave.... go fs.

That said, on smoother downhills things are a lot more fun on a ht. Esp the jumps and berms.

Its ok for bigbenj_08 because he is young (ish ), but arthritic limbs are no match for hardtail rock skipping.

supersonic

How hard and steep will the DH be?

pirwin1

Thanks for the input guys.

When I'm at home (near Edinburgh) the DH would be mostly at Innerleithen I suspect and maybe some trips to Dunkeld.

When in Southampton, there are a couple of DH runs in the woods but not much so the main usage down here would be when the club does trips to UK bike park. UK bike park seemed pretty steep to me when I was there for the BUSAs (doing XC), but not rocky.

I also hope to go on the uni mtb club annual alps trip next summer, so would want to use it for that.

Whytepeak - I'm also young so no arthritus for me (yet!)