Seems a few have had problems keeping racing ralphs and similar (eg. Specialized S-Works Control) inflated when new. Had the same problem followed the standard practice of shaking the wheel so sealant covered the sidewall, so experimented and think may have found a way of doing it simply and quicker that I haven't seen suggested elsewhere. After two days still couldn't get tyre to seal, Put wheel in bath of water to cover the valve and found dozens of small pin pricks in the tyre wall leaking air very slowly.

I'm not looking to buy, but since I'm fixing my Spesh Stumpjumper FSR 100 up currently I idly searched around and I didn't find a single XT level 26" bike, or race light frame, from any of the big brands.

They all appear to be fully pushing 29ers, even though they may prove to be a fad and/or get superseded by 650b.

I'm only about 170cm tall so I can't imagine a 29er working for me, especially as I like to carve through singletrack best.

Test rode a bike awhile back with some ZTR wheels, and Specialised ground control tyres.

Apart from the tyres being extremely sketchy when pumping hard or landing, the biggest thing that killed my ride was air burping out the rear. Happened a few times up Rocky, twice down Mercury when I railed a corner hard, and again when I popped off the end of that log. Both times the tyre collapsed awkwardly and I nearly stacked. Ended up stopping 3 times to pump. All this and I was running more pressure than my XT and Maxxis LUST combo, which have never leaked any air.

Do you find it's worth servicing your Fox forks and rear shocks yourself, or do you leave it to your bike shop?

I've looked around websites I know from the UK and some I've found here, and it seems to me that Fox have made this as awkward and expensive as possible to promote non user servicing.