You don't need to be an 'investor' to invest in Singletrack: 6 days left: 95% of target - Find out more
Hey all, as the title says I’m a year back into riding after what seems like forever off and after buying a Orange Crush and loving it, my knees couldn’t cope with the punishment so done a deal for a 2015 Orange Five. Now I do love the five but it turns out to have been butchered up over the years, not really complaining as I’m happy to put my own touch on there so I have a few questions as I wasn’t aware there were so many options when building bikes these days.
First off, I have found I’m getting hand pain while riding which I’ve kind of narrowed down to the bars being cut right down from the steerer tube and wondering if there’s a simple (read cheap) way to raise them up a bit that isn’t terrible (already invested in GA2 fat grips to help toward this) or is this a new fork job?
Secondly, I’m going to treat myself to a new wheel set, and probably going to go for a set of hopes as they seem pretty good value, along with possibly a SRAM eagle dub groupset as this is 9 speed and done rather crudely, so my question is which freehub would I need as the SRAM dub says it fits “standard splined freehubs” which I’m guessing is the shimano fit freehub, would that be the one to order on my new wheels (current cassette is shimano and groupset may be bought at a later date) and play nicely with my 142x12 through axle rear end.
Apologies for the absolute newbie questions but I can’t find a definitive answer anywhere.
To raise the grips, the cheapest option would be a set of higher rise bars (assuming the current one new are relatively low rise).
Hard to be sure if that will sort your hand pain out though. Go for bars that are known to be on the less stiff side as well.
DUB refers to the bottom bracket style but SRAM NX 12sp cassette fits on to a standard Shimano freehub.
142mm means you will want non-Boost.
Wheels wise, there are lots of good options but Hope are decent and the hubs are as good as ever.
Bars with higher rise and/or stem would be cheap to raise the front.
Personally if you’re on a budget I think you could possibly spread your money and get some sensible upgrades. If the forks aren’t great then there’s some great deals on at the moment, another thread on here on the weekend highlighted some x fusion and fox deals for c.£250-300. You’d be spending £30-50 on new bars, plus you’d recoup a bit if you sell whatever is on there at the moment.
Superstar were chucking out some great £100 wheel sets the other day. Some bargains around. Appreciate they’re not Hope but likely to still be a noticeable upgrade if you have standard tired wheels on.
Personally I’d go for a cheaper 11 speed drivetrain as well.
Just some thoughts!
Also try bars with a higher sweep if you can find them. But tricky to know what the problem really is.
Hope rims can be quite soft / dented easier than other rims.
I’d get some DT swiss rims built onto either Hope Pro4 hubs or DT Swiss 350’s personally (and thats what I actually did).
As others have advised - what forms have you got on there now - if they’re not great the x fusions sweeps were going for £250 from Planet X recently. They could be a good buy.
If you don’t want to do that and think the front end is too low then get some 30mm riser bars first and if that’s not enough then get a stem with some rise on it.
Thanks for the advice guys, I’m looking the cheaper option first in regards to the bar height as I don’t want to spend a fortune on new forks to find I’m having the same problems as before. I’m always open to other options in regards to anything and have heard nothing but good things about the DT Swiss rims, I am also looking at the hunt wheelset.
On the 11 speed groupset I’m finding a decent one to be roughly around the same as what the base eagle setup to be, but that’ll mostly come down to price when I’m ready to buy, like I said it was more a compatibility issue more than anything so I can get shimano freehub and fit whatever I like.
Definitely seem to be swinging more towards trying bars with a higher rise to maybe eliminate the problem (awaiting carpal tunnel surgery definitely doesn’t help), so that’ll most likely be my next port of call.
Anyone recommend any bars that have a bit of flex in them? I’m led to believe that carbon bars are more forgiving than aluminium but I don’t know anyone with carbon bars that can confirm this for me
On the drivetrain front have a think about what you want before ordering wheels. If you want to run sram with a 10-42 or 10-50 cassette then you need a rear hub with an xd driver.
If you’re going to run an nx eagle cassette or any Shimano (other than 12 speed) / Sunrace than you can use a standard Shimano freehub.
The cranks make no difference to what freehub you go for. If you go sram dub eagle cranks then you have to run a dub bottom bracket but you can use any 11 speed chain with the sram eagle chainrings. I normally buy the steel chainrings as they last really well - but they are a bit heavier than the aluminium versions.
Where you based op? I've got about 6 or 7 rise bars hanging around. Various sizes etc, all used for experimenting with height etc.lol
I'm in Medway, Kent. If local come and grab a couple to try out.
Cheapest option to try for some hand pain relief would probably be some Ergon grips. A few of my riding buddies use these to lessen hand pain.
Thanks, that’s why my main question was about the SRAM eagle so I can have a massive choice when it comes to ordering wheels knowing I’m pretty sorted whichever way I go
@poopscoop really appreciate it but I’m in liverpool so wouldn’t be realistic to do that, but thank you anyway.
@tonyg2003 that’s what I’ve already done, Ergon GA2 fat grips, they’ve helped a bit but my bars are lower than my saddle when raised so just trying to level them out a bit as I find myself leaning over the bars a bit more than I’d like