Barel rocking a 0mm stem

... and bars with enough rise to make hipster bike-park rats crap their pants.

it sounds like he's talking with a bunch of peanut butter in his mouth.

All of the mods were done so he could run a longer top tube with a slightly steeper head-angle...he wanted slightly quicker steering for the natural tracks that follow for the rest of the season, but still with the stability of the long wheelbase...new proto frame with ginormous TT, 0mm reach stem, and "only" 60 HA (in Barel's world that qualifies as "steep"...)...so there you go...brought to you courtesy of Iceman's translation Services... ;-)

iceman2058 wrote: All of the mods were done so he could run a longer top tube with a slightly steeper head-angle...he wanted slightly quicker steering for the natural tracks that follow for the rest of the season, but still with the stability of the long wheelbase...new proto frame with ginormous TT, 0mm reach stem, and "only" 60 HA (in Barel's world that qualifies as "steep"...)...so there you go...brought to you courtesy of Iceman's translation Services... ;-)

Haha. Thanks man! Sounds like a pretty unique setup.

Ya know.......I had something really similar to that on an old white brothers fork on my first dh bike. I think it was 10mm.

did you also have the 2" rise Ti bars and a Rotec?

Definitely 2" rise ti butter bars because they were the only ones that fit with that new fangled 24.5 standard. But Karpiel yo. Karpiel.

I believe that his HA is now around 64 degrees. The other bikes were nice and slack at 62. This one is 2 degrees steeper, not slacker. Perhaps I'm wrong. I do however approve of any reason for a long TT. I'm tall, and make my frames with pretty rediculously long TT's, but I keep the wheelbase tight with short rear ends. My DH bike has a 16" chainstays to make up for the 27.5" front end (I measure by the downtube length because the pedal to handlebar distance is what really determines how big a bike feels.) for a wheelbase of 47.5". It's slack and stable at 62 degrees and quick turning with the short rear end. A perfect combination for me. Being so tall, I still run a 50mm stem, not a zero.

Big Bird wrote: I believe that his HA is now around 64 degrees. The other bikes were nice and slack at 62. This one is 2 degrees steeper, not slacker. Perhaps I'm wrong. I do however approve of any reason for a long TT. I'm tall, and make my frames with pretty rediculously long TT's, but I keep the wheelbase tight with short rear ends. My DH bike has a 16" chainstays to make up for the 27.5" front end (I measure by the downtube length because the pedal to handlebar distance is what really determines how big a bike feels.) for a wheelbase of 47.5". It's slack and stable at 62 degrees and quick turning with the short rear end. A perfect combination for me. Being so tall, I still run a 50mm stem, not a zero.

Yeah, I through a wild guess out on the HT angle simply because he's know for having ridiculously slack bikes.

Iceman, is it 64 now?

It's definitely steeper, but he doesn't say by how much - he doesn't give any numbers in this interview. I just threw the 60 in there because you had it in your post and I know he's been experimenting all the way to 58 at times....so I figured OK he's gone to "only" 60 now...