How To Make Your XC Bike More Downhill Capable | Downcountry MTB Mods

cross country bikes are well known for being extremely light and fast across the ground but not exactly confidence inspired when you point them down or through technical terrain so today we're going to look at a number of things you might want to do to your cross country bike to get a bit more performance and confidence [Music] this is my canyon lux cross country bike it's super light super fast and as stock really well it would make an incredible race bike for anyone i don't race though and there's a few things i've changed on this to give me a bit more confidence for the way i like to ride and the places i like to ride and there's definitely a few takeaway things that could help you out so to the cockpit first and you've probably noticed i've got a pretty wide world very wide set handlebars on here now cross country buys tend to come with handlebars up to about 740 mil like this one with a built-in 80mm stem because they offer the best compromise of control versus lightweight versus riding position there's a lot of things at stake bearing in mind that you've got to be super efficient up along and down on a cross-country bike it's all about maintaining speed the whole time however i'm on the tall side so this doesn't always play very well with me so i've actually taken a weight here by putting an alloy bar on that is 800 millimeters wide now this might seem excessive to you but i'm about 194 centimeters or nearly six four six three and a half something like that and they re like the riding stance it puts me in is much more aggressive and it's much more comfortable okay so i'm not a cross-country racer so i'm not looking as such to really cut off the weight like you would with something like this what i'm looking for is that riding position it really does make a difference it lowers me on the bike as well it opens up my chest it makes everything that little bit easier for me the one downside with the super are two downsides with a super wide bar the first one is your clearance when you're going through the trees now i feel pretty well adjusted to it you know i do i do have you know the cat whiskers thing going on my elbows i kind of know when i'm in the region of about to hit my hands but it's not for everyone some people want to go that bit narrower another thing of course is by having a wide bar on you expose flex in other areas of the bike if your frame is exceptionally lightweight you can feel flex in the front end of the frame you can feel flex in the fork in the wheel and in the stem from a wide handlebar so you do need to take that into account now i swapped the stem out because i wanted to maintain the rough riding position on this bike for something like for like so it's an 80 mil and it's a minus six exactly the same as what what it came with so i didn't want to disrupt that i just wanted that wider stance on the front end and it feels brilliant for me now while we're here something important to talk about is the stem length now you see on a lot of trail bikes people running shorter and shorter stem lengths yeah that's great but the bike has to grow proportionately to allow for that if you have to just put a shorter stem on a cross-country bike and hope your handling will improve actually you'll probably find it'll be worse the cross-country bike has been designed around a stem length this is an xl comes with the 80mm stem other bike sizes will come with shorter or longer stems accordingly okay so think about it on the triangle sort of basis right so your wheel axles and where your head is should really form in an ideal world like an equilateral triangle between the three yeah if you've got a short stem your effective position is going to come up slightly so your hands are going to be closer to where your feet are yes you're going to be more upright that means less stability when you're stood up and also means for extreme climbing and extreme descending you're going to be moving your your weight much more further forwards and rearwards the entire time to maintain a good balance yeah if you're in a good stance on the bike where your bars are wide enough your whole position is balanced front and rear you're gonna feel so much more confident the whole time now there's two more things you can do to the cockpit your bike to give you a bit more confidence one of them is your handlebar grips you get different diameter bar grips there's just a thinner side and the bigger side okay so you might be thinking a bigger grip is more comfortable and that's going to give you more confidence right well not necessarily because if your hands struggling to get good purchase on there that itself leads you to death gripping death gripping on the bars gives you more fatigue and it will make you feel panicked when you're riding rougher more technical terrain typically when you're descending so a thinner grip even though it has less cushioning actually means you can hold on much lighter on the bar avoiding that death grip and you just get more control it's about being loose and relaxed and fluid on the bike as soon as you're like you're tired and your tents and stuff you're going to be all over the place it's going to feel awful now even though i've got quite big hands i prefer a thinner handlebar grip for that exact reason i like my hand to just be relaxed when it's on there the more relaxed your hand is the more control you have so if your grips are a little bit big try some thinner ones definitely makes a difference for control brake lever angle makes a big difference as well now the typical advice you'll get with setting up your brake lever angle will be to get on your bike with the saddle at the correct optimum riding height and run your brake levers roughly in line with your forearms and then make adjustments up or down from there to get your preference now it's widely accepted the downhill riders will have a slightly higher position and cross-country riders will have a slightly lower one now the theory behind running your your controls quite low is when you're out the saddle you're really hammering everything is in line with your arm feels really good it's a really strong stance the problem with that is when you're riding technical terrain you're actually putting your wrist at a bit more of an unnatural angle to reach those brake levers and controls that's a weak position and it's not good puts more strain on your hand by bringing your brake levers up you get much more control and yes it might feel a little bit weird when you're out the saddle with your brake levers feeling quite high but you do dial into it when you're reaching for those brake levers you put so much weight and stress through your thumb because of the fact that you're trying to stop yourself rolling forwards on the bars when your brake levers are much higher up you actually put your weight on the palm of your hand much more your thumb doesn't have to sort of grip the bar as such so everything relaxes and it becomes a lot easier for control try running your brake levers a bit higher you'll be surprised how much more confident it feels when you're riding descents okay next up we're going to talk about pedals now cross-country bikes tend to have clipless or clip-in style pedals and like these ones they all tend to be fairly small now the reason for that is most cross-country shoes are very stiff so that does the bit with supporting your weight so therefore the pedal can be much smaller now the pedals tend to be quite close together now the reason for this is ultimately the narrower your q factor or the closer your pedals are together the more efficient it is for pedaling the further apart the less efficient for pedaling but the more stable you feel now just think about this for a minute if you're to stand with your feet wide apart and someone pushes you from the side you're nice and stable yeah if you put your feet close together and someone does the same thing you're going to put your foot out for stability yeah you're not stable and your feet are close together okay so a narrow q factor or in case you wonder about q factor it stands for quack factor okay so it's referring to the gate or the stance on a duck which always wide apart yeah so a narrow q factor is necessary on cross-country bikes and road bikes for ultimate pedaling efficiency you can move it slightly to give yourself a lot more stability it makes a massive difference so on the pedals i've got here i've actually got longer axles on them this is the axle that came with it and if you look at them close up you'll see my axles are actually quite a bit wider now if you didn't want to change your axles you can make a change basically by moving your cleat inboard which in turn moves your foot slightly further out on the pedal i promise you it makes a massive difference you've only got a look at the position of a world cup cross-country rider versus a world cup downhill racer just to see the difference yeah the cross-country ride is going to be like this moving knees out side to side to keep balance great technique but it's not going to improve anything downhill rider powerful stance it's designed to be well stable basically so anything you can do to move your feet apart it's going to help you with that now of course if you're a sort of rider that values all out pedaling efficiency on a bike then you won't want to go too far but i'm running the same q factor on this as i am on my trail bike and i've never had any issues with my peddling and i've got loads of stability from doing this okay so you've got your cross country bike you've got your super light pedals and your fishing shoes no doubt that's what you're supposed to be using but the lack of feel that you get with shoes like this can actually lead to your bike feeling a bit nervous at times so perhaps you might want to consider something a bit more flexible right so a trail shoe like this this is an enduro focus shoe yes okay it's heavier it's bigger it might look a bit clumpy on your cross country bike but i promise you you'll get loads more feel back if you've got different style riding shoes definitely have a little experiment you'll be amazed at the difference i mean the first thing you'll notice is the lack of efficiency difference between them if you're looking for more control or you want to have a bit more fun on your bike why not consider a slightly more flexible shoe and a pedal to match it really can make a big difference drop a post come on don't be such a purist you don't think you need one drop a post make descending much easier you lower the center of gravity on the bike and you get more clearance why would you not run one okay they are a bit heavier and mistly now this bike came with a 60 mil drop post which some cross country races are finding enough and that's actually what i ran on my previous bike but i fancied something a little bit longer and have actually fluked out on this one so this one has 160 mil drop but what it also means is it's completely slammed in the bike so it actually looks neater as well it looks really good now if you're on the taller side or the shorter side you're going to get the biggest benefits from running a dropper post most smaller racers now are tending to run 29-inch wheels on the bikes and giving yourself the extra clearance makes a massive difference when you're descending and taller riders like myself well we've got a higher center of gravity the lower you can get yourself on the bike it's not just about the clearance the lower you can get yourself when you're descending the more confidence you have it's that simple dropper posts make a massive difference to your riding promise you try one you won't regret it [Music] if your cross country buyer has rear suspension get it set up correctly and use it okay we see far too many people struggling on cross-country bikes running not enough sag i guess thinking perhaps that they're going to make the bike handle a bit more efficiently for pedaling but that's the case it's not going to be absorbing the bumps properly you may as well have a hardtail get your sag sorted out and use that suspension travel okay you want to be bottoming out your suspension every ride i know i bought my ring out a couple of times every ride the o-ring on my shock that is if you're not using that travel the bike is not handling like it should do now this one has a fox shock they recommend 15 to 20 sag as your travel setup i run 20 because i want to use it the whole time honestly get your suspension set up we've got loads of videos on setting up your suspension in fact there's going to be one underneath this one watch it get your suspension set up and enjoy it it's brilliant okay now up to the front suspension fork on your bike now there's a few things you can do to eke out a bit more performance on your particular cross-country bike one of them if you've got an air fork is by using volume spacers in there now it can feel quite intimidating when you have your suspension set up for the correct weight if you're just using that travel the whole time sometimes you might want to run some air volume spaces which make your fork feel a bit more progressive it makes a huge difference to how your bike handles when you're clunking through stuff especially downhill honestly it makes a massive difference but also the wheel travel that you have on your bike now you will be limited depending on what fork you have this bike actually came with a fox 32 and the maximum travel was 100 millimeters i've actually swapped it out for a 34 which yet is slightly heavier but it allows me to run a 110 mil travel a teeny amount but it makes actually quite a big difference to me it's also a little bit stiffer and it has more importantly more tyre clearance [Music] now the wheels themselves that you choose on your cross-country bike make a significant difference okay so you've got carbon and alloy options out there and then you've got the size of the rims now if you're a heavy rider you need stronger wheels the only way to really get stronger wheels light enough but remain stiff enough unfortunately for you may well be carbon like i'm using here now these got 28 spokes on them but they've also got 28 millimeter rims so they're nice and wide in fact you can even get up to 30 mil rims for cross country now if you're a bigger rider it's definitely worth considering because the volume it helps you get on your tyres again more air volume lower the pressure you've got a better footprint on the ground for more stability all of these things add up now alloy wheels it's possible to get the same weight but they're not often quite as stiff so that's probably one of the only places on the bike where you get a significant advantage with carbon fiber cross-country wheels light and stiff that's what you want for tracking and performance now there's a couple other things as well with tyre setup tyre pressure makes an immense difference i still see people running tires way too firm for off-road use take a little digital tire gauge with you and experiment with your tire pressure if you're struggling as in like you're getting punctures or you're not getting it where you want there's a few things you want to consider one of them is by running tubeless i run tubeless on everything there's no way i would consider running inner tubes in this day and age and i'm also now running an insert on my rear wheel i don't choose to run one on the front i've not needed to yet but running one on the rear enables me to lower the pressure i'm not going to damage the rim hopefully not going to split the tyre and it also means if i was to do a race i've got to get me home yeah so the whole point with these sort of inserts is if you do slash the tire you can get back to the feed zone so all things to consider if you're either a racer or a rider looking for more performance from your tyres again it's a contact point with the ground when you're on the bike so it gives you a better feeling gives you more confidence all of these things combined together i promise you make a significant difference when you're descending well that's how i set up my cross-country bike and as you can see i love riding the thing feels great and it still is a lightweight cross-country bike hopefully there's some tips in there that help you feel a bit more confident out on the trails if you want to ask anything about this bike or the way i ride it let us know in those comments and if you've got any ideas fire away as well see in the next video

Channel: GMBN Tech

Views: 140,820

Rating: 4.9438043 out of 5

Keywords: downhill, cross country, upgrades, modification, mtb upgrades, down country, downcountry, handlebars, wide bars, pedals, suspension, set up, bike set up, gmbn tech, mtb tech, bike tech, mountain bike, Bicycle (Product Category), MTB, bicycle, gmbntech, GMBN, Global Mountain Bike Network, mountain biking, Downhill, XC, Cross Country, Enduro, MTB skills, bike skills, mountain bike skills, bike, bike riding, cycling, gmvn, doddy, andrew dodd, Қ, scany15, scbpgmbn15, 1k, 1o, ኽ, ው, 1w, ዝ, ꔇ, Ҡ, ፕ15, Ҫ

Id: 5C8OTWx-sw8

Length: 14min 35sec (875 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 28 2021