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
The Trans Am is back Baby!
Word on the street is we are going to see an E-Slash next year running the motor similar to the fuel.
With this new, overly complex, heavy, and expensive Cane Creek shock, I'm curious why we don't see two stage springs in mountain biking, like this:

From my experience, progressive coils shouldn't be about bottom out resistance, but a lighter top-out. With either a reverse-progressively wound coil, or just using two coils, I feel shock performance would be best with a softer spring rate until a little past sag, then a heavier coil weight for the rest of the travel. An oversized elastomer bottom-out bumper (thats designed appropriately so it doesn't reduce travel) seems to be the cheapest, easiest, and lightest way to get better bottom out resistance. The Cane Creek has to run such massive high speed rebound that they had to dump the external adjustment for it.
These look kinda like helper springs (the weird part is that they are round though). Helper springs are not there to be progressive, they are there to prevent the spring from flying around on full extension when you put massively stiff springs on a car that otherwise uses softer springs.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/XkkALfh-59Q
Dude, the best way to do rear shock is linear spring and sorted kinematics, everything else is band aid to poorly designed frames and/or marketing BS to sell new stuff. Good kinematics do all you mentioned without adding weight and complexity and allow the spring rate change to work in harmony with damping. Not to mention related cost issues for absolutely zero added benefit...Cars need very different suspension setup, as primoz mentioned, when you run stiff enough springs to support heavy cars in the high G corners and add high ground effect on real race cars to it, you can either use very little (or even zero) droop setup (droop has pretty much the same meaning as sag on MTB, with same drawback of not enough negative travel) or get helper springs to keep enough preload on the main spring to prevent them from rattling around when the car is unweighted. Give it a rest already ffs.
Whether out of naivety or preference, I personally disagree. I think more linear kinematics with a good long stroke shock that can be set up any which way you want is the ideal scenario for me.
The problem is that the ideal setup for each person is subjective (despite what engineering and science says) and if the control is baked into the kinematics, you are stuck with that whether you like it or not.
I do also agree that many shocks on the market also aren’t up to the task of fully controlling things, but that’s another story.
The frame designer needs to worry about flex and geo and space for water bottles etc. if they can just make a more linear design (not completely linear) that doesn’t rely on the shock as a structural member, then they can let the suspension engineers actually do their job instead of having to work around the multiples of kak frame designs that are mostly different just for the sake of marketing and patents.
but that’s just my opinion 🤷🏻♂️
Looks good, very similar Geo to the Norco torrent which is such a fun bike to ride. Love mine, I am blown away with the wild stuff you can ride on these modern HT's
I have to agree here with @Sonofbovril2 and the reason is rider weight.
I am not a small individual, if you put me on a progressive system kinematically, I either HAVE to run a coil shock, or will never get full travel out of a bike.
My current Forbidden Dreadnought is a perfect example. Stock with a float X2 and all spacers out of the shock and pretty much impossible for me to get full travel. The air gets so progressive on top of the progressive nature of the suspension that I will never use full travel. So, coil it is. Luckily that works well for me so far... though still not exactly what I want.
A more linear suspension curve i can tune with an air shock and its progressivity, or some of the better coil shocks with differnt bottom out bumpers etc.
At the end of the day comes down to so many variables that it makes it incredibly difficult as a frame designer... but i think a balance is key where you can use both shock choices in combination with the frame kinematics for 90% of all riders.
the key for me is a reasonably progressive rate (approx 25%) but that line is a straight one. They are the easiest to set up a shock for an you get a consistent tuning scope. You can run a coil shock, have small bump, midstroke and enough ramp up to get away with dumb shit.
What about running a lighter compression tune on the air spring?
We did, Foes used to do it and I have it on one of my retro rides the Taillefer Maxxis Team used and the year after this version they used it on the production version.
Theres nothing new in the MTB world everything is just being rehashed from the 90's or they realised back then and made designs that worked before the companies milked consumers like in todays world with a new fad every couple of months.
can run compression fully open... doesnt matter. the progressivity of air start getting really high.... add a progressive linkage, and damn near impossible even at a deeper sag
Heres the thing, and I'm not trying to be a smartass here.
People, are different, and, like different things. Thats really the end of.
Maybe a "helper" or "progressive" or fanfriggindangled" spring is a great idea for some people, on some bikes, on some terrain, with their own style.
Also "Dude" is a pretty confrontational way to start a comment, on a thread about rumours and innovation. Its all cool man, maybe someone takes that idea, uses current tech/manufacturing/packaging and makes the next greatest thing. We dont want to miss out on that do we?
I don't think that running the compression setting fully open is the same as no compression damping. There is a limit to the range of adjustment available.
What's this shock? I'm not familiar with it.
Quite possibly an intentional leak for the likes of us.
Bet it’s a new one from Push judging by the fork. I’m more than just a pretty face.
Exactly, funny thing is most people seem to think that progressive kinematics means hitting wall of progression towards last third of the travel while not building any support at the start of it or in the middle. That is progressive kinematics done wrong (like 1st gen Capra or cube dh bike).
Heard this too. Then saw a spec sheet.
Mechanical T-type is coming too.
Gx or lesser level?
“😳”
- Push’s DM response, when I asked ‘What shock is that?!’
With builds of the normal Slash at 40lbs-ish it's kind of pointless to have an underpowered bike nearly as heavy (46-47lbs with motor and battery?) as full-power models. After doing a few demos and riding my dad's levo I think the goldilocks zone would be 39-42lbs (dh bike weight) with 170-180mm travel and mid-assistance.
Interesting aspect of the schematics for the new spec enduro/demo is that (unless I'm missing something) the suspension layout would be exclusively limited to pedal-power, something I hadn't considered when the drawings were first released.
Maybe they’re doing a budget shock. Doesn’t have the same shock body as the 11/6. Looks like LSC only on the top of the reservoir there. What they need is externally adjustable HBO. The new RS SD coil for a 1/3 of the price is significantly better than any of the 11/6 I owned on several different bikes over the years.
Not to long ago someone posted a Sram Patent that showed a sram derailleur upper body piece that looked exactly like the new AXS upper piece that mounts to the UDH area but it had a cable port. Id imagine it will be GX to start and then Possibly a trickle down in the coming years when budget friendly bikes from manufacturers are equipped with UDH hanger systems.
I was told by a reliable source that sram was not going to be putting any new effort into mechanical drivetrains and the only innovations moving forward would only be found on the Beep Boop models.... So hearing theres a mechanical T-Type coming makes me wonder if bike manufacturers kinda forced Sram's hand in making a mechanical T-Type. Rather than Sram wanting to do it, maybe product managers were struggling to hit price point targets for higher level sram builds that were equal in cost to a Fox and Shimano build and so there was enough demand that its worth it for sram... Who knows!
NX and SX fill the low spec OEM option for product managers building sram builds for their bikes so I cant see them bringing it to the NX and SX line just yet. Once we see entry level hardtails from the big companies coming with UDH we will then see the NX and SX make the move is my guess.
Nice one! That's a Push Hypercoil spring so new shock from them...?
I haven't seen the patent so this may be way off but I wonder if it is what we see on the Powertrain. That has a cable port because it connects directly to the battery of the bike.
The parent I saw was most certainly designed to hold a shifter cable.
I can't say which bike but the the bike I saw with AXS that was being powered by the bike battery used a little block that clipped in place of the battery and a small wire ran from it into the shifter cable hole in the chainstay with a little rubber grommet.
This? More pics here: https://nsmb.com/articles/lost-in-transmission/
Second pic shows the patent drawing w/ cable guide "11"
just out of curiosity, i poked around trek's website, all their hardtails under $1500 are spec'd with shimano. maybe sram will stop focusing on budget/low end oem business?
yeah thats the same system I saw. Sorry I wasn't trying to be secretive but at the time I saw that Fuel with the system we were still in "no talk mode" and I wasn't sure if it had been shown on NSMB yet.