LONG-TERM RIDES

Our overseas tester’s Vitus is on the sideline for the time being

The latest on our team bikes – where we’ve ridden, what we’ve changed and what we’re looking forward to this summer

I had some fun days earlier this summer in Schladming, Austria, and the Portes du Soleil, on the Swiss-French border, riding a mix of bike-park berms, fast sections and techy off-piste trails. The good news is that adding another volume spacer (up from two to three) to the RockShox Lyrik Ultimate I fitted earlier this year seems to have done the trick and reduced fork dive somewhat. However, the first signs of wear and tear elsewhere are starting to appear, with the worn rear brake pads being the easiest thing to fix. Besides that, a couple of other issues are on my to-do list.

The Shimano XT front brake seems to have developed a wandering bite point and could do with a bleed soon. A subtle squeaking noise has started to come from the rear of the bike, too. At first I thought it was caused by a dry chain, but after giving the bike a good lubing, it seems more likely that it’s the hub of the DT Swiss EX 1700 back wheel that’s producing the noise.

The Vitus originally came with a 150mm-travel Brand-X Ascend dropper post, which was too long for me, so I swapped it out for a OneUp V1 that I had going spare. The V1’s travel can be reduced, so it suits me better, but this particular post has seen better days and has developed some play, which is a bit annoying when I’m sitting down and pedalling.

However, it’s the Fox Float X2 Factory rear shock that’s giving me the biggest headache at the time of writing, and is the reason why the Vitus is on the sidelines at the moment. It’s been leaking air. I had hoped I’d be able to fix the problem by replacing the seals, but it turns out that doing a ‘small service’ on this shock requires a special tool. Not many bike shops have this in their workshop (around where I live at the moment, at least) so I’ll have to send it off to a suspension technician, which is a bit of a pain. I had hoped that there’d be a quicker fix available.

It might sound like I’m having a load of problems with the parts on the Vitus, but I’ve been riding it hard and they can all be fixed, and then the bike will be great to ride again. www.chainreactioncycles.com