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Well, when Specialized bought the UK shop(s) I used to work at Scott; Giant; Cannondale; GT; SantaCruz all cancelled orders.
Any customers that had a backorder were offered something else at a better deal. Very few turned that option down.
Several years ago I ordered a Yeti SB66 from Stif and the UK supplier sold the frame to another dealer, so Stif let me have a carbon Nomad for the same price. Winner. Never considered a Yeti again after that but shopped with Stif again.
I’ve noticed more than any other brand people love to hate Specialized, regardless of actually ever owning one of their bikes… I used to.
They do have the best staff purchase policy I have ever had access to (discounts often below cost; buy now pay within the year etc).
Very good warranty backup.
They are a massive company (for the bike world) so are not perfect.
But then you are stuck with a transition lol.
Haha that’s some quality marketing.
I say sealant weeping out of sidewalls you say state of the art precision dampening.
You’re getting downvoted but as an owner of the exact Patrol you describe I wholeheartedly agree. I use my dropper pedaling back to the truck and take a sip of water every other lap. The paint on that Marin is stellar though and the price is even more stellar! I’d own it if I was a casual who isn’t comfortable tinkering with over shocking/forking, Cascade Links, and anglesets. (needed on Patrol/Spire with dual crown imo)
Did anybody notice that the quake has a 75 mm stroke shock and only 180 mm travel? I feel like I haven’t seen any bikes that achieve that. For example, patrol with Cascade Link and 65 mm flavor gets 180 as well.
You could get 100mm too if you wanted to. Typically a lower leverage rate, (more stroke less travel) is seen as desirable. If you adjust the damping properly a wide range of leverage ratios are viable.
Doesn't the capra use a 250 mm shock?
The current model's a 230
The overall length doesn’t really matter nearly as much as how much the shock actually moves which in case is 65 mm for the Capra. So the same for every other Enduro bike in the travel category like I was saying, I understand but this is the only bike I’ve ever seen. That’s a downhill bike speck shock (75 mm)with only 180 mm of rear wheel travel. I know it’s not really a tech thing, but I was hoping someone else could give me some insight as to why Maren chose to go with such a long stroke shock for such a little wheel travel
Well it’s better for damping performance, right?
Another bike with a 75mm stroke getting just 180mm of travel is the Devinci Chainsaw - haven’t heard a single bad word about its suspension performance. But given it’s a high-pivot, this might not be so strange. Yet again, it depends mostly on what the engineers try (and manage) to achieve!
Less stress on the shock & better for heavier riders are primary reasons. Also packaging. They seem to have plenty of room for any normal stroke shock out there.
A lot of times when you see long travel from a shorter stroke shock it’s because there wasn’t any room for something longer (water bottle, complex linkage, dropper clearance etc)
One thing we found when doing a 180 link for the Crestline DH bike is that it required a softer compression tune than a standard off the shelf shock has. Compared to a 65mm stroke shock driving the same amount of travel, on average the 75mm stroke shock generates 33% more damping force at the wheel for a given wheel speed input if the same shock tune is used on both. Pretty big difference. It’s great for heavier riders that are typically pushing the upper bounds for shock tune. Off the shelf tunes work much better for them in this case. For an average sized rider, there isn’t as much of an upside if any at all.
What’s old is new again. I’m going to use some freedom units here, so bear with me:
Close to 20 years ago there was a trend of using longer stroke shocks on downhill bikes. 3.5 inch stroke to be specific. Most downhill bikes back in the day had a 3 inch stroke. (Close to 75mm these days.) Intense M6 is one of them off the top of my head, and I’m pretty sure the first generation Wilson also ran a 10.5 x 9.5 shock. These bikes were never over 9” of travel. Consequently spring rates were very low.
The reasoning was to have a lower leverage ratio. 2.75-2.5 to 1 in most cases. Easier on the seals and shim stack/valving. It was a trend that didn’t really catch on. Marin probably just wants a lower leverage ratio on this bike for whatever reason.
Remember the old wildcat trail? 200mm off of 2.25" stroke shock. They blew up if they fell over. They have learned.
LOL. Same size shock my RM7 had. I cased a jump with the compression too high and that Vanilla RC tossed its cookies. 😆
Foes 2-1 with Curnutt shocks.
Supernought full build is listed and it is eyewatering
https://forbiddenbike.com/bikes/supernought/
Does a change in leverage rate have effects on damper behaviour outside of the tune, or is it possible to set up functionally identically performing tunes regardless?
Possibly related question: Are the valve stacks used in dampers all made of the same material, or are there different grades of steel (or even other alloys) to accommodate the requirements of these different tunes?
That is a really good question. In theory you can get identical reactions at the wheel, however it’s one of the scenarios where theory and reality don’t really meet. To get truly identical performance you also have to tune the shaft speed at which the shock transitions from LSC to HSC. Without doing that, the bike with the longer shock (assuming equal progression and all) will be out of LSC sooner. With the adjusters you’ve got on a typical shock there isn’t really control over that transition specifically. Whether being out of LSC sooner or later is preferable is debatable.
As for material, generally speaking all steels share the same modulus of elasticity. Give or take a little of course. That and dimensions are what control stiffness of an individual shim. There are spring steels with a much higher yield. That just buys you deflection. Shims are so thin that deflection is easy to get.
To be honest these days, save for a particular air shock and frames that side load a lot, I don’t really see many shocks blowing up. Things have come a long ways. I haven’t converted a shock to a pogo in maybe a six years. Once upon a time a day of whistler was about all it took.
Since we were talking about Specialized and now about custom tunes, I've heard that new stumpjumper sales/orders are abysmal...
If the price was right, I'd demo one and very much consider buying one, there's a lot to lIke (had a quick spin on the Ohlins one, very nice irl).
The price is not right. Maybe (next) winter will bring reasonable prices.
Saw one of those in Paganella yesterday. Absolutely wild, thought they put a moto shock on a DH bike at first. Fork was massive as well.
One of my friends had his first ride on his new Stumpy Ohlins yesterday. He loves it. I had a spin and it is very nice. Is it value for money - that depends - but he’s very happy with it. He had a V1 RipMo and seemed to gel with the Stumpy very well.
Is that info from all shops across all regions or just your mate at your lbs?
Even Spesh themselves won’t have full good access to all of that sales data.
I imagine they'd notice if follow-up orders have dropped off
Also, just to throw in an opinion, how could they not have dropped off with those prices?
And at the price they want, you can have a Levo SL for the same price. Doesn't weigh much more and gives a fair bit of assistance to the top.
I have the previous version stumpy with the flex stays, looked at picking up a frame only. £4k for a frame is mental.
Yeh... likely because they haven't released the alloy version yet.
More likely it’s not a big enough change from the Evo and people don’t see the value in selling their current bike for an abysmal sum and then paying Spesh rrp prices.
Regular bikes have been subsidizing the insertion of ebikes for a long time now. This is just another step to make Joeys say "you kidding me? I can get a free motor and a battery for the same money?" and choose the ebike.