This was my first serious effort in building on a basic frame. They’re seriously solid quality for the price. She was a on-one inbred 29er. She took a beating and didn’t miss a beat, I ended up selling, and the next owner had a serious rear end accident to their bike rack on their car to retire her. RIP. (funny or not the frame looked hardly dinted and the rest of the bike was terribly mangled.)
Okay so I’ve had my new anthem for a week now and its great, i haven’t had to use the granny gear as yet, but on some hills pushing the 38 chain ring gets a bit much, i thinking of going down the 1x10 path, and many run a 34 or 36 front ring, so heres my question do i need a new rear mech the current one is a shimano XT deore shadow plus, there is a little switch on it with an off and on, is this the clutch?? I’m not to familiar with gears haven’t had them in years. the rear cassette is 11/36 can i just get away with something like a wolf tooth front sprocket or do i need a chain guide also.
thanks for any info…
cheers,
cam
Yup. thats the one 
Hey Cam,
Nope your current rear derailleur will be just fine. If you did hit something bust it off you would replace it with a GS (mid cage) instead of the stock SGS (long cage), but its really not worth the money and effort to just do off the bat IMHO.
Yes the switch on the RD is the clutch, personally I’d just leave it on all the time and just switch it off when you need to remove the rear wheel.
Have a go at riding with a wolftooth ring without a chainguide. You should be fine. I ride mine guideless on rough DH trails over here and I don’t have an issue with it. You may get some chain drops later down the track when the drivetrain gets worn and if that eventuates just get an upper chainguide such as the MRP 1x or e.13 XCX. I have heard reports that the Wolftooth has better chain retention than Raceface’s NW rings, as their tooth profile is taller.
Re ring size 36T is getting up into big dog racer territory, personally I would have thought that that was a tad high if you do any long sustained climbs. I would probably recommend a 32T for general trail riding or 34T if you are a strong rider and don’t have much vertical. FWIW I have a 30T on my 26" Tracer - this is equivalent to 28T on a 29er - but where I ride the climbing is averages 200-500 metres vertical over 3-6kms and has sections that get up around 20 degrees, I’d struggle riding up that with a bigger ring.
Thanks mate, yeah I only noticed the switch last night and it’s been on the off position, I’m surprised the guy didn’t t tell me about it when I bought it ! So I’m keen to see how different it feels now. I might try a 32 then and see how I go. Wow that’s steep the highest around here is about 400 but that’s only at the highest mostly around 200 to 300 if I go right into the mountains. Going off the topographical lines. I thought I read somewhere the wolf tooth needed a special adaptor ? Or does it bolt straight on my cranks are slx
Just checked out wolf tooth website and for a 32 you need spacers or file the arms as the chain with rub on the mounts 34 and up work fine with out spacers.
Yeah the riding here is great - it was definitely one of the reasons I moved back (along with being closer to family).
Nah no adaptor required, just buy the standard 104 BCD ring.
NB - Mike D mentioned that he had an issue with the chain fouling on the spider arms of SLX cranks and had to space on (inboard) using washers. I don’t know if they were current generation or older… I think they were older.
Reasonably sure El Mar was the choice of ol’mate Liam and his 4th place in the TD. He is now using it in anger (with front cush) on trails around vic with glorious abandon.
user scottles (scott from commuter) has a raven and seems to have no issues with making it go well on trails from the YTs to buller. he recently put a rigid fork on and used it with great success for the recent Melbs GG.
theres a fair few crew i know who swap rigid and cush on the same bike as the need arises.
Current gen, 2x10spd cranks. Just need ~2mm of chainring bolt spacers to push it off the spider, or file the spider, if you space it you need longer chainring bolts to the single speed length ones that come with the crank.
I am pretty sure this is the case with all shimano 2x10 cranks as there is only one spot for the big ring and that’s always larger than 34t.
Scott’s is a 650b/27.5 and didn’t Liam say, “next time carbon, everything carbon”
theres a fair few crew i know who swap rigid and cush on the same bike as the need arises.
but def look into a rigid carbon fork, Specialized have tapered ones at reasonable prices. Or even one of the new carbon fargo forks with the “braze-ons” (what do you call them on a carbon frame) though the geo might get wacky with the fargo.
edit: they don’t seem to sell the carbon fargo fork seperately
Well I just had a couple firsts on a borrowed bike from JP.
First 29er Hardtail
First SS MTB
First Rigid.
Thoughts (in comparison to duallie 26er):
29er wheels hold momentum well and you can mash at things (particularly with 2.2/2.4 ardents)
I found it hard to hold good momentum sometimes with SS (I think it’s a bit overgeared for me) but for some reason I got NONE of my usual knee pain which makes little sense to me, any ideas?
Rigid is good for fire trails and smooth singletrack but rattles your brain a bit over fast rough sections and drops.
Hardtail is definitely the bike for me, was so fun to sprint out of the saddle coming out of singletrack corners and accelerate so fast.
Yep! Great for Bruce but not so much for Stromlo.
Yeah they do. They call it a Firestarter fork (the new steel fargo fork also goes by the same name). Seen it for sale on some US and Euro sites. About $100 more than the Spesh Shank or whatever they call it, but I’d totally pay the extra for those cage mounts and a 15TA.
Been putting in some enquiries for a getting an El Mar. Agree carbon would be nice but I think like Ti its a bit out of my price range for the moment.
UPDATE:
Rode a carbon scott scale 910 (rrp 4000+ eek) today at Stromlo at a demo.
Was super fast on the climbs, PR’d everything.
Felt nice and carvy in the corners, perhaps low BB + relatively slack HT angle (69.5)
Amazing modulation on the new XT brakes, the rear barely locked up/skipped over braking bumps.
The fork didn’t feel as plush as my old 26" recon, perhaps because I didn’t set up the compression/rebound myself. I left it in the descend mode the entire time (it was a CTD fox model).
The bike didn’t want to get airborne as much as my duallie 
Went straight back to my older 26" duallie afterwards for back-to-back loops and really noticed the rear suspension, felt really good over the rock gardens and such but definitely a bit slower.
Overall I think if I got used to the hardtail 29er I’d probably be a lot faster.
ONE MORE UPDATE:
I just discovered the Cell Awaba 2.0. It ticks all my boxes , is 400 bucks cheaper than most of the other options and is in stock with free shipping. However Cell aren’t known for their MTB’s and it has an offset fork (similar to trek’s g2 geo I think, is this bad? would it make handling wack if I put a rigid carbon fork in there)
Cell 2014 Awaba 2.0
Fresh Product: Cell Awaba 2.0 29er – Flow Mountain Bike
Here are some of the specs
Lightweight Rock Shox Reba RL suspension fork w/ Motion Control Lockout, 15mm thru-axle and 51mm offset
Shimano Deore XT 2x10 speed drivetrain with Shadow Plus rear derailleur
Shimano SLX hydraulic disc brakes
Tubeless ready wheelset - Alex Volar 2.1 rims laced to sealed bearing thru-axle Novatec hubs
Continental X-King / Race King folding tyres
Shimano SPD pedals
Vibration dampening Cell Pro carbon fibre 27.2mm seat post
Thoughts?
The guy who designed & specced the Cell Awaba, Dave Musgrove, is a great mtber, great guy and fantastic mtber of all disciplines. I have ridden with him a few times, many years ago, and he has been in the NSW MTB ‘scene’ for as long as I can remember. I was at Cell a few days ago and checked it out in the flesh and it is damn nice. I wouldn’t hesitate in buying one, if it is what I wanted.
edit: link to flow mtb review.
edit 2: link removed cuz repeated. d’oh!
Yup - nothing wrong with that bike.
Yeah that looks nice, good specs too! Oh and the perfect colour 
Buy a Cell
Do like, ticks all the boxes.
What is this on the junction of the chainstay and the dropout?
Thats a really nicely spec’d bike for the price.
The longer fork offset/rake is really there to speed up the steering slightly. Running a rigid with a regular 45mm offset will ride differently - slightly slower steering,but if you ride with a stem that is 10mm shorter and bars that are 50mm wider I doubt you’d be able to tell the difference.
Assuming the frame’s stated geometry is measured at 25% sag the 100mm fork will have an A-C measurement of 480mm. By running a rigid fork (470mm seems to be the std rigid 29er A-C), it will result in 0.5° being added to the head and seat angles and the BB dropping by 3.7mm. The adjusted geo 70/73 is pretty generic still.
This is a good calculator for seeing how swapping out forks will adjust frame geometry.
geometryCalc
And here’s a good article on fork offset:
Art’s Cyclery Blog » Ask a Mechanic: 29er Forks – 46mm or 51mm Offset?
The only thing that I don’t like about the Cell is the cables being routed down the underside of the downtube, but I guess you could reroute them with cable ties using the single cable bosses on the underside of the toptube. Hardly a deal breaker in any case.