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
I'm pretty sure both Trek and Specialized have said they're aiming to reduce the number of SKUs they sell. It already looks like the Kenevo and Kenevo SL, for example, won't be getting updated. And the Stumpjumper 15 has taken the place of both the regular Stumpy and the Evo, I think we will see more of this consolidation as we go on.
I think this could lead to a market where small, boutique brands continue to make limited runs of high-end bikes, while the mid-range options become more scarce as the economics get difficult for the bigger companies.
It reminds me of something I read once: the engineering challenge of a VW Golf is much bigger than a Bugatti Veyron. Making something that is both good and affordable to manufacture is far more difficult than throwing the kitchen sink at a small run of incredibly expensive cars that will only ever be bought by a select few. It’s easy to make something awesome without a price target; the real challenge is making something great that’s also affordable. Probably similar to how there are still plenty of sports cars in the high end but a very limited range of mid to low end sports cars as it just isn't an easy market to compete in.
Are we a good example for anything lol? Is it really that different in other european countries? Could be, would be good for the non-motorised MTB.
Bring back Alex and Sanjay!!!!!!
The Germany ebike vs normal bike sales numbers have come up before.
The question I have not seen an answer to is how many of those ebike/ pedal bikes are being used for actual off road mountain biking? The fact that Ebikes are leading the paved commuter bike sales in Germany really has no relevance to off road use of a mtb like we discuss here.
Looks like Yoshimura's under his foot
Regarding longer travel links, Bird at least has been doing it for almost 10 years now - since sometime between 2015 and 2019 for the Aeris 145 (bumped up to 160 mm with a different link) and since 2023ish for the Aether 9 which can be bumped up from 160 to 180 mm with a different link.
Quick rant, does anyone else think Treks new e-bike naming convention sucks.
EX-e was fine, easy to search, minimal, clearly differentiated it from the non-ebike versions.
Their new naming convention seems to just be putting + after everything. Fuel+, Rail+, Slash+ etc. It doesn't work at all from an SEO perspective, the + ends up getting lost in google and you end up with a bunch of results for outgoing bikes or non-ebike versions when you search it. And Slash-e is way more fun to say than Slash+.
I spent a few hundred hours riding the VST prototypes. Still, to this day, I have yet to ride a bike that goes so damn fast in a straight line.
There was so much drama in that era of Sinister, it’s too bad development stopped on that project, two or three more prototypes and I think we would have ended up with a production-ready bike.
I'd bet the delta between what we can go buy and what the top guys are running is a lot tighter than most think. Jackson's V10 is closer to stock than not, and we all know how his season is going. Maybe there are a few special parts hung from his bike, but the difference is likely pretty small between what he is running and what we can buy (IE, Grip-X vs Grip-2). Put differently, if you were to hang totally off the shelf parts from his bike and have him race a weekend, I still wouldn't bet against him winning.
The one area the top guys/gals have resources that we mostly ignore is in the "bike fit" category. Fancy suspension, TMDs, suspension layouts etc are all fun but I'm always surprised how changing small things around how the bike fits me translates to a big difference on track/trail.
Its not so much access to special parts as it is making those parts work really well for the person riding them.
Based on my lack of riding this year and everything this brings with it, a lot of what you say, so bike fit, I think comes down to having enough time to try things out and test them back to back and also knowing what to look for improvement wise.
Weird! Check out Wyn's on track. He is absolutely on a silver pair of Mallets.
While that's surely true and I completely agree with you on that. 3% of total non-e-bike sales is still very low. So low even that I could absolutely understand that any bikebrand would want to reduce "SKUs" or models.
Even though germany's bikemarket is probably not comparable to the world, I'd assume that almost nobody buys a MTB in germany to use as 90%+ commuter like it is with the EMTBs...
Sorry for kinda off-topic again just wanted to try and clear that up.
That was Greg Williamson.
Oof. Going to the optometrist this morning haha. My bad!
It's clearly the tires making the difference for Jackson
I get that theres nothing new under the sun (to quote scripture), and that no matter how cool of an idea you come up with, someone will point to some mad scientist dong it in 2002 already, but more recently I think it was Guerrilla Gravity pioneering the resuable, modular frame design across travel brackets and models. They took it to an extreme with dramatic reach adjustments via modular, oval headset spacers. They could cover 4 sizes (I think?) and 3-4 modesl with just two molds.
My worry is you are forced to forgo tuned stiffness. A short travel bike needs to be a lot less stiff than an enduro bike since you have less travel to help you and the fork itself is shorter, so its a shorter lever on the frame.
To further differentiate it from the Canyon Shapeshifter, the little link gave it about 1cm of rear axle movement as well, independent of the vertical suspension travel. Imagine if every square edged hit had 1cm of elastomer foam on the front of it. Or your tires were 1cm taller, like a 650B+ tire, but only in a rearward direction. For its time it rode so well.
I wonder if its worth resurrecting the idea, or if modern suspension and geo being so good that its not really adding anything.
Regarding those new Trek fuel ex’s, I think Trek did themselves good by departing from these “busy”-looking frames. I actually really like the look of the new frame. But the beauty is in the eye of the beholder…
And big yes to adaptability on suspension travel, geometry and wheel sizes.
I think the YT could h e done that easily with their Capras and Jeffsys. The Jeffsy has 8mm difference on the flip chip. Not quite enough to offset a 27.5 rear wheel but closer than other bikes where it’s a 3mm difference or so.
Long story short, I like where the adaptability is going (if it’s well executed and doesn’t cause a bunch of creaking, etc.)
ha..ha.. very funny.
you have my attention now, any questions while I'm here?
I have one, when are they coming out?
🥲🥲🥲🤑🤔🤐
Wild looking 32" BMC spotted making laps on the Andorra XC track for testing. Note the crazy add-on dropouts to make a 29er fork work and the custom mega-drop stem that mounts above and below the head tube, similar to drawings we've seen in this tech forum. The bike is being test ridden by BMC rider Titouan Carod, who won't be racing it this weekend, but is helping BMC test it on an actual World Cup XC track at World Cup pace (photos and factoids courtesy of the other sight).
I'm posting this photo to say "I told you so" because, even with the predictably insane looking drop stem. the bars are still basically level with the saddle. Carod is 178 cm or 5' 10", which would put him on the absolute low end of the height spectrum that you would expect to be able to ride one of these things.
For comparison, note the difference in bar drop on Titouan Carod's personal 29er race bike from the 2023 Brazil round. The 32" bike he's testing represents an ENORMOUS change in bike fit (70mm maybe?) for racers who obsess over 3mm of stack height. I'll be curious to see if these big wheels work out in practice, but the bike fit thing would be a huge concern for me if I was a racer or team manager.
Another thought is BB drop. In the article on the other site, the BMC rep who was interviewed said they were trying to maintain the same BB drop as the current race bike, which would be a weird move. I would want to maintain a similar BB height off the ground, not a similar BB drop from the axles. With the same BB drop as the current Fourstroke ONE 01, it seems like the BB and saddle height would both be in the sky. I think it'd feel like riding a bike from the top of a flag pole.
I suspect that quote or statement on the other site is wrong, because the in the quote the BMC rep says "the R&D team aimed to give this bike a similar bottom bracket drop as the Fourstroke ONE 01 - that's around 53 mm" which sounds like A TON of BB drop, and the current 29" race bike is listed on the BMC website as having a BB drop of 38mm on all sizes, which is a way more normal number. 53mm would be insanely low for a 29er, even a short travel one.
/endnerdrant
Every single frame can have a different layup and thus a custom stiffness tune coming out of either of those molds. The molds are expensive so having two to cover 12 SKUs is very good thinking and in no way does it pigeonhole you into something you don't want stiffness wise.
@TEAMROBOT thanks for sharing, those dropouts are amazing. Did anyone do something like that to make 29er forks back in the day?
Nothing obvious when you enhance the new EXT fork
It’s especially stupid when you call your most sold bike, an e-bike only, rail for years and suddenly it became Rail +, plus what? There’s no “normal” rail, so why add the + when all the other + bikes are the e-bike version of something?
We’ll never know
Production volumes end up that there is little to no sharing of molds when producing the various models based on travel. You might save on the XS and XL molds if the volumes are low enough. Using one mold would also wear it out more quickly, thus requiring another mold to be made, once it's no longer repairable
I'm in agreement. They look pretty tidy all things considered. The adjustability/morphing factor is kinda the same reason that drove me to nab my first carbon rig, a V3 Ripmo. Swap a link n shock and kerpow, Ripley. Slap in a 27.5 for more jump filled days. Really, it's thinning the herd as one bike is replacing two, which will make road tripping with it a lot easier.
I have no strong feelings about 32inch bikes or this bike except it has the most hideous attempt at bonding carbon to lugs I've ever seen!
It looks like someone didn't even attempt to clean it up. I know it's a prototype but it's like 20mins work to get the right!
20 minutes was too much, the proto was finished 10 minutes before being ridden.