STICKERS!!!
And other things.
I think I have the bike feeling pretty good now. It takes a few rides (it takes
me a few rides, anyway) to figure out exactly what the 'not quite right' feelings from a bike are. In this case, the front end was too low. I'd already swapped the bars and that helped but it wasn't quite enough. So I swapped the forks between this bike and my Giant NRS. The NRS had loads of spare steerer and this one had none. Swapping them over has got them both about right.
When the fork was on the Giant I had the lockout lever connected. I never used it so I got rid of it. Then I found that the fork defaults to the locked out setting without the remote. The fix is quite simple - about an inch of shifter cable holding the lockout dial in the open position:
View attachment 891141
This is the only bit of practical advice in this post. The rest is just fluff.
Once I'd sorted the low front out I started to feel like I was following along behind the bike. Bringing the seat post up and the saddle forward a bit sorted that. I had to re-run the dropper lever so that bit of cabling is now in the same lurid shade of green as most of the other cables.
I've got used to the brifters. They are fine. Good, even. People on youtube should stop chuckling and try them out for a bit. I'll grant that they are quite ugly. Except for the later XTR versions which look great.
My wife has a cutting machine. It's a Silhouette Cameo 2. Quite old but it seems to do the job. I found a Marin SVG file on the information super-highway and used Inkscape (free and really, really good) to make a .PNG which the Silhouette software could turn into a cutting file (Silhouette lock their software down as they want you to buy extra features but taking this approach gets round all that). My wife's box of vinyl bits and bobs had the right shade of green and the cutting was really easy. Once you've cut you 'weed' (taking away the vinyl you don't want) and then you use 'transfer tape' (a sticky, clear plastic sheet) to pick up the cut out shapes and stick them to the bike. This is easier to watch on YouTube than it is to explain in words.
Marin head badges are pretty inconsistent. There's some with five points and some with 6 and loads of other varieties with bears and no points at all. I made up a version with the M from the brand name in the middle. I'm quite pleased with it.
This is what it all looks like:
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The final touch is a couple of stickers from 2nd Life Bikes which finish things off nicely.
Now it's 'finished', how does it ride? Nicely. It's definitely heavier than my Giant NRS, less of a happy climber. But it feels nice. The suspension feels smooth and predictable. For where I ride - muddy bridleways in Southern England - I can't see how it could be improved.
Waffle over.