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One tuning tip:
😂
does not excuse crappy forks. the only 2 decent ones, Zeb, were tuned and had bushing done. do not care about you all opinion, still feels like shit when stock.
Saw this in a NSMB article from a few days ago and wondered what it might be about. New Revolver maybe? The current one's been out for nearly five years.
Greg Minnaar riding what looks like one of the new Range VLT's
I wonder if it's going to be less than the $19k CA +tax Cannondale are wanting for there new ebike?
I'm gonna take a guess and say that the "diaper" may be to cover up the motor, testing a different motor on the current design. The current Sight and Range run Shimano motors. If you look at Minaar's story, his new ride has a Bosch remote and controller. So if that's the new Range, there's a switch in motors. Maybe the Sight will be getting an update to a Bosch motor soon.
And riding RS suspension? Are they buying Fox?
In the US a utility patent is 20 years from date of filing (submission), design patents are 15 years from date of issue.
The bike Greg is riding is 100% the new VLT Range.
The Range and Sight are both getting Bosch motors. They will be mullet only.
more likely the sight, historically the range VLT comes with Coil shock only. But that does look like a BIG travel Zeb upfront, who knows.
I'm curious if they do the same front and rear triangle thing across all 3 models (fluid/sight/range) and just change the rocker/yoke between the models like the old one. That was a clever way to minimize cost. But at the same time, could you imagine riding a size small with a 462mm rear chainstay?
Have a look at the Nicolai gboxx, they essentially did the two cassettes opposed to each other with a magnetic pawl system to select the gear. The main difference was they used a chain linking each stage on all stages and 7 gears only. There were some design flaws in the pawl system that affected durability but it functioned pretty well for dh applications.
The Pinion gearbox system is way more refined in every aspect though
90% of them use identical internals so if someone wanted to make something new here that would be great!
Otherwise the biggest difference is the type of fitting/chuck/hose that they each use
Range gets an air shock now. Not sure why.
The Sight and Range could definitely have the same front triangle, but not the Fluid. (Sight and Range are HP.)
The Fluid is already on the Norco website and is entirely its own bike.
Here's a cool look at the prototype Pivot DH bike.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQTrJQmpuhk
I work with a digital shock pump on a daily basis, and I am very frequently frustrated by the lack of an Abbey-level equivalent to the garbage that seems to come from the same factory, with different suspension manufacturer’s names poorly printed on the head. At the same time, I am constantly reminded of the question Spomer asked Jordi on his episode of The Inside Line: “Have you ever attached a FitBit to your shock pump?”. It seems ludicrous to me (and to Jordi also, it appears) that I should have to inflate a CAD$1300 fork with a $60 steam-punk style tool that wastes my time and energy, when the tool I smash with a hammer to remove a foot nut costs the same amount. Someone please make a higher quality alternative, because I will buy it and so will others. Rant over; thanks for listening; back to tech rumors.
If it’s that important that you’d be willing to spend money in the realms of what abbey charges for other stuff why don’t you rig something up yourself? Measuring air pressure outside of the bicycle world does happen and I’m sure at times it is done at very precise levels.
Let’s say we really wanted to ball out and be able to do lots of shocks as quick as possible and with crazy accuracy…
400 psi compressor
+/-0.05% digital pressure gage
T the high accuracy gage into a QD to schrader line and you’d be able to get pressures accurate to less than half a psi in no time. Lots of money and I can’t see anyone needing +/-0.05%, but sure would be nice.
Is that an argument that shock pumps are too cheap or the foot nut removal tool is too expensive?
Both, but admittedly the foot nut smasher has probably done 500+ Fox forks in 3 years, and still works as well as day one. So I think it was worth the money, and I also think there needs to be a mountain bike suspension specific pro-level shock pump. I’d buy one.
edit: if we have access to brake burnishing setups with motor driven rollers sitting on the floor of the shop, we should have a pro shock pump.
New 2024 Specialized Epic?
https://www.instagram.com/p/C3vaf5joDTT/?igsh=ZWI2YzEzYmMxYg==
Shock pumps are simultaneously too expensive for what they are but I would also pay more if they were a lot better! Things improved when I found Cane Creek sold hoses as replacement instead of buying an entire pump so I stocked up on them. Yes you could buy analogue pumps to steal the hose but they are still pretty spendy for what you get. I'm still amazed there isn't something better here yet....My Lezyne floor shock pump is pretty decent but not perfect or what I would call "pro" grade
You mean buying Fox Suspension for the Norco DH team? No way.
Greg is getting money from Fox to run their stuff.
I heard through back channels that money played an important (but not 100%) role in him using Fox suspension. Fox knew they had to throw good money at him (and therefore the team) as if the Goat changed to Rockshox, Fox was going to look really bad.
It would be sweet, yeah. And that’s what I’m getting at, if ya gotta wait for abbey to make one, you’re gonna be 1) waiting for a while 2) paying out of your ass. It would be cooler to do it yourself with something like that, I do think you’d need the gage to be as close to the wheel valve as you could with a check valve as close to the gage on the upstream side of the gage as you could also, and run as small of a diameter air line as possible, because if we are talking measuring values this precisely, you’re going to get a big difference from the pressure reading vs the actual pressure being used after disconnecting the pressurized line.
This is all make believe pretend land stuff and I don’t care because I check my pressures like once every couple months because I suck and a psi +/- is not the reason I’m slow. But it is entertaining to think about.
Oh I bet that's the "unreleased flex-stay 120mm/120mm XC bike" mentioned in the NSMB article I brought up earlier (I assume it's a new Epic Evo).
From a completely inquisitive POV.. would a company be able to design a 2 position rear triangle, one HP w/ idler pulley, and then have a second hardware mounting position for a traditional, let's say 4 bar or VPP setup?
I am sure an engineer could simply reply to this saying "that's not possible" and I would be happy with the answer but it's a question that's been bouncing in my noggin for a bit.
You 100% could. Hard to say what it would do the kinematics without doing some real numbers. With VPP could likely correct it with at least one or two links if it did something funny. Could look something like this… blue is hp black is lp.
That's what I meant yeah. Worded it badly.
It's not a good look for the goat to ride RS suspension then... It's an off the shelf bike probably, but still
Sometimes I yearn for the Specialized floor shock pump... Would make inflating shocks from zero much easier.
Compared to how Rock Shox does their forks and what's needed to service them, the foot nut tool price is absurd. Tooling is THE reason for me to not consider Fox products at all.