A while back I was contacted by Will at WTB with a simple question: “IF I send you set of 40mm Nano’s, will you try them out and report back?” My simple answer was “HECK YEAH I WILL.” This led to other things headed to 44HQ which include WTB’s Trail Boss Tires. See, when I …
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Fresh Meat : WTB Trail Boss 2.4 and 2.25
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Builders’ Ride : Marauder SS w/ 1×11 Option
So a while back I built up a dedicated single speed for myself (view the full Flickr album here) I swap out bikes every now and again as my weekly riding takes shape. Most days I’m hitting the trails on my 1×11 setup. Some days though the hankering hits me for a pedal on the …
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44HQ : XX1 Longish Term Review
Technically this isn’t a full XX1 drivetrain review. At the time of the build, XX1 rear derailleur’s were out of stock at a bunch of my distributor accounts but winter was upon us and I needed a rear derailleur. So technically this is a review of a XX1 Cassette, Shifter and X1 Rear Derailleur. Basically …
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XTR M9000 Cassette Update
So I’ve been digging the new XTR M9000 setup on my trail bike. I wrote about this in a Shake Down ride post earlier, and you can read about that here. First ride out the cassette was (and has been) giving me some problems. Up above I’ve broken down the cassette so you can see …
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44HQ X Shimano XTR M9000 Shake Down
Well, it happened. I ordered myself an XTR M9000 drivetrain for my trail bike. I had been running Sram X9 on this build for some time and it was in need of a change since the cassette and chain were well worn and the derailleur was starting to show signs of wear when shifting (yes …
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Why Taper Matters
Every now and again, I find a discussion online that on the surface has points to consider but when you dig deep… something is missing. That recent discussion about Paragon’s Tapered Steerers started simple enough, then veered off only to discuss the “perceived” or implied notion that the move to taper was not necessarily a …
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44 Bikes : 2014 Year in Review
2014 was a good year. Good year of riding. Good year of building. Good year of designing. To lay 2014 to rest, I’ve picked out a handful of builds that stuck out for me (all of them were good, don’t get me wrong!). These are tough choices to make I must admit. Each build I …
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44 Bikes : 1x Conversion How-To
I recently converted my wife’s 650b mountain bike to a 1×10 setup. With this conversion, we simplified her set up, dropped some weight and reduced some redundancy in gearing. I have a lot of people ask me how to convert a mountain bike’s drivetrain to a 1x setup, and I see a lot of the …
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44 Bikes XXX FAT : My Ride · Part 2
So by now you’ve hopefully read through PART 1 of this Fat Bike Saga. Welcome back – if you haven’t though, you really should read that first as it gives you some back story with where I have been, and how I came to arrive where I am now. Up above is where I am …
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44 Bikes XXX FAT : My Ride · Part 1
This will be the last installment of my “Why I build What I Build” series. This one is on my personal fat bike. To understand where I am today, and where I am headed actually with the next iteration of this monster, we need to discuss where it is I came from. I grew up …
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