LONG TERM RIDES

Our tech-ed-in-chief’s grown to love his time aboard this big-travel 29er

The latest on our team bikes – where we’ve ridden, what we’ve changed on them and what we’ve broken this month!

For a few of us here on the mag, swapping between bikes is a big part of our job. That means getting used to a new bike or readjusting to one of our regulars almost constantly. And that’s where the good, easy-to-ride bikes really shine through. While I may have grumbled about the G-170 29er not being quite as fun as its 650b counterpart in my early days aboard the bike, I’m starting to rethink my take on it. Every time I swap from a test bike and sling a leg over the G-170, I’m straight away reminded just how easy this long-travel big-wheeler is to ride. A quick blast down at Wind Hill B1kepark a couple of weeks back confirmed this, when I instantly felt at home slapping turns and launching jumps.

People regularly ask me what size bike I ride. I’m on a medium, which sports 450mm of reach, 435mm chainstays and a 341mm bottom bracket height. At 5ft 8in, it fits me really well, even if my little legs struggle with the 844mm of standover height. While I do feel fast and confident when trying to hit things at pace, my trip to Wind Hill proved the Whyte is still a seriously fun bike too.

The enjoyment of owning (or borrowing) a bike doesn’t just come from how it performs on

the trail though. How well it’s put together and holds up is, for me at least, a big factor too. A bike may be blisteringly fast to ride, but if it needs maintenance after every single outing, some of the enjoyment is definitely diminished, especially if you’re tight for time, like many of us are.

Thankfully, after all these months of hard use, the G-170 is still doing well. It’s had a couple of little creaks, which have been remedied without major incident, and I recently had to pinch up the rear shock mount (which involves removing the shock yoke to access the shock bolt) a couple of times after some hard rides. But there have been no major maintenance dramas, which I consider a real win.

What of my woes with gear changes last month? They turned out to be down to a bent mech hanger that needed replacing. Luckily, the pricey Eagle AXS rear mech is still running without issue (read the full review on page 79) and gear changes are back to their old, accurate selves. www.whyte.bike