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Hi all,
I've recently inherited a 1998 specialized stumpjumper and was after a bit of advice. I'm into my bikes but more on the road side of things and so am not really up on all the latest going son in the MTB world. Apart from to know how dated/classic this looks with the long stem, narrow bars etc!
Please could you recomend some decent/mid range 26" tyres for all round use (cross country tyres)? Would mostly be riding things like canal tow paths, the odd trip to Epping Forrest and maybe London to Brighton off road.
Secondly, I'd like to get new forks eventually as getting a servicing kit for these seems impossible and for the cost I could probably get something better. Do I need to bother match the fork geometry (trail etc) or just go for something the same length from axle to crown?
I was thinking of adding at couple of cm to bring the front up slightly.
Thanks in advance!
For forks its well worth going up a bit in travel and increasing the axle-crown distance. It relaxes the geometry a bit and makes older bike ride a bit more like newer ones. Good 26" straight steerer forks are getting harder to find but there's still plenty of budget ones out there that would be a lot better than the originals. If you shorten the stem and widen the bars a bit as well that'll help the handling. 25.4mm parts can be bought dirt cheap so this shouldn't cost much. No need to go too crazy for canal tow paths and the like but if you do get a bit more adventurous it'll help.
Can't really help with tyres, but again 26" tyres are very cheap (now they are obsolete 😈 ). Have a look on the classifieds there's usually a few.
you can get specialized ground control tyres for £20 each. size 26 x 2.1 should fit that OK.
re: forks - you could probably get away with a 100mm fork on that assumming it has 80mm at the moment. quite a lot of 1 1/8 forks at the lower end that still come with v brake mounts e.g. rockshox xc30 from merlin or similar
Thanks both that's great.
Yeah I'd like to keep the V-brakes so guess that will limit the choice on forks. Will check out the XC30s.
Might stock up on those tyres then, sure they'll be back in fashion soon enough 😉