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Jim Clarkson

Lakes based mostly mountain biking type, with the odd foray into gravel, 'cross and even road. Fuelled by coffee and porridge. Driver of Van. Known to race at times. Happy place being out the door and in the hills - local or further afield, all is good with two wheels in the dirt. 

4 comments

5 years 3 months ago

Question for owners of a Merida Silex bike. Merida provided fixing points for a rear rack already integrated. But on my bike these points differ 1 mm, so my rack is not vertical. Everything, rack and bags, is leaning to one side. 
Do you have the same problem? 

5 years 5 months ago

@Jim Clarkson - Is the Merida marketing worth its hype with the Silex range? which In the nicest possible way, this review seems to regurgitate. The MTB centric geo seems to make sense for a gravel bike, but not all brands follow this "trend"(?).

5 years 9 months ago

Oh, and the tyes fitted are not that good. They are too narrow to really get the most out of the bike (interestingly, the marketing photos for the Silex bikes had a guy riding one that's fitted with some much bigger 700c rubber). The Razzo tyres roll well enough but offer little grip on loose or damp ground. After finding I couldn't run 27.5 x 2.1 Schwalbes, I fitted some Panaracer GavelKing SK in 700x43 size. Good grip off-road in all but mud (not MTB level grip, but then it's not an MTB) and they still roll really well. The extra width made a massive difference to off-road confidance and also improved comfort all round, especially when loaded.

5 years 9 months ago

Not the best review. The bike does indeed ride well, is very well built, and the concept is excellent, but ..

1. second bottle cage is too high, meaning that on a small frame you can only just get a normal 750ml bottle in, and it makes the use of a frame bag and too bottles impossible. There is loads of room for the mounts to have been lowered.

2. You don't seem to have looked to test Merida's claim about the Silex bikes being able to take 27.5x2.2 tyres - if you did you'd have found that with the Alu frame, that's complete rubbish. At most you can run WTB horizon (47mm), which given that you can run 700x43c tyres without issues, makes 27.5 pointless and means Merida have either miss marketed the bikes or someone didn't tell the designers of the Alu frame about the need to take the same tyre width as the carbon forks (which take 27.5x2.2 quite happily).

3. They could I think have taken the MTB geometry thing a little further - my small frame is a bit short on the reach (maybe due to the effect the higher handlebar has) while there is only just enough room for a dropper post (due in part to the fact that dropper posts with less than 100mm travel are hard to find).

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