Hello Vital MTB Visitor,
We’re conducting a survey and would appreciate your input. Your answers will help Vital and the MTB industry better understand what riders like you want. Survey results will be used to recognize top brands. Make your voice heard!
Five lucky people will be selected at random to win a Vital MTB t-shirt.
Thanks in advance,
The Vital MTB Crew
Don't sleep on Merida, they fly under the radar a bit but they make great bikes.
I figure with carbon they can really do anything they want to tune it just how they want it without loosing much lateral rigidity. Not sure its a great example but remember the first cannondale scalpel in '01? The entire chain stay flexed instead of having a main pivot.
I believe they also own 49% of Specialized still.
As for flex stays, I'd dare to say the range and speed of motion in the area of flex will be far below the point, where the differences in metal vs. composite materials would be noticeable, especially when you have a shock mounted to the rocker. It'd be interesting to know how much force actually is applied by the rear triangle compared to the shock, given how flexy rear ends can be and how little motion there is in flex stays, I'd say te level compared to the shock should be low.
As for Al flex stays, Scott did it on the previous gen (external shock) and still does it on the current (internal shock) Spark.
Hi all, did you see the green light on the left part of Loïc's bar during his crash?
Any thoughts of what it could be?
Maybe you already discussed that.
With carbon you can finely tune the structure through layup, making it flexy in one direction, but not the others. Thus engineered flex and all. With metals that's a bit harder, due to their properties (isotropic, the same in all directions for all intents and purposes, while composites are anisotropic and thus distinctly strong in tension along the fibers, not so much in other directions), so you can only shape the 'joint' to have the flex there. An example of this would be a thinner neck to make it less stiff there.
When it comes to aluminium, the main issue is the lack of of a fatigue limit for aluminium, which is exhibited by some steels and titanium alloys. The fatigue limit means that if you're under a given stress level of the material, you can cycle it to infinity and beyond and not have it crack. Aluminium will always crack, regardless of how low the stresses are. With frames, fork stanchions and seat posts the flexes are nowhere near what it has to be in a flex stay for it function properly.
That's why steel (and Ti) frames are 'forever', that's why any bike Al that gets used a lot for a few years is very likely to crack somewhere and that's why springs are steel or titanium and not aluminium.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fatigue_(material)
@imonly29, re Loic, someone in our group said he broke off a brake master cylinder. Not sure if it was a joke or not as we're constantly joking about Magura master cylinders snapping off left and right with Shigura setups being quite popular around here (among Magura riders of course).
EDIT: thought the question was what happened in the crash, missed the green light part. Ignore me, just rambling.
New downhill bike for polygon or is it just their prototype enduro bike with a dual crown ?
Interesting times...
Racecars (F1) have this, but racecars also have a plethora of sensors and telemetry going back and forth with the pits, so it's not as hard to achieve that.
Plus, at the end of the day, holding back might make you lose the race in the bottom that you would win if you hung it all out and built up enough advantage higher up.
Has a garage door opener with 2 buttons, top is green, bottom is red.
As soon as he see's the split on the live stream he hits the corresponding button. Signal is passed via messenger pigeon which does interpretive dance to the rider.
His wife is pissed because the garage door keeps going up and down
Edit: brash beat me to it. And was funnier.
I am unsure of the rules on communicating with a rider mid run. Why don't they just run airpods etc and yell at them through the phone as required? (apple watch etc)
I know in the AMA SX/MX, you cant have communication with with a rider directly, must be through pit board.
I'll be expecting a call Mr Whiteley