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I love a linkage fork, it's a clear violation of KISS but tickles the engineer frenulum. I'm in he camp if they'll never be dominate or mainstream, but will always be periodically popping up in concepts, homebrews, student bikes, etc. they're fun.
As a fan of the concept, one of the biggest signs they're just not worth it is watching BMW slowly move away from them. K bikes are related to 1600cc inline 6 monsters, so the duolever is dead on anything except huge sport tourers. The telelever was on almost every boxer for decades, and they ran leading links before that, but now it's relegated, again, to the largest bikes in the line up. Smaller boxers use regular telescopic front ends. BMWs real performance models, starting with the S1000, have always been telescopic.
You know something's really overcomplicated when even the Germans are trying to quietly forget about it
I counter you with morning tiredness, what about a Lefty linkage fork?
I seem to recall seeing something like that before...🤔
Vital article from a while back at the Chinese bike show this year. Chatted with my local shop in regards to WR1 and they aren’t doing frame replacements unless catastrophic failure. Frames are being sent to a company in Vancouver for carbon repair. Molds apparently are being sold to Sava Cycles and they will be flying the bikes under them and not WR1. Below pictured is the proto dh WR1 but now Sava will be bringing it to production in the distant future.
Is it still complicated if you only need half of the parts?
Maybe only half less responsive?
That was the interesting part of the pink bike podcast talking about the trust fork.. As much a Levy liked it, they both commented on the lack of ability to perform the main function of a suspension fork..
It would be interesting to get a comparison of the Sava and the WR1 frames..
Yeah I've had similar chats with several people, and history has shown if you want to introduce new technology it doesn't really matter what it does well, the most important thing is it doesn't do anything worse. The Trust forks could have improved, and Weagle did acknowledge some of the mistakes, there was just no way for it to really get the chance especially with the pandemic. I thought it would have had potential for different linkage lengths or damper/spring mounting positions to tune the feel of them, which might mean changing to aluminium instead of carbon but at least you get some choice over the amount of anti-dive and compliance in the chassis
I'm guessing it's someone like Roberts composites in Vancouver. I've used them and was impressed including colour matching. Totally saved me from an expensive right off...
Yeah, Roberts composites in North Vancouver is legit good at what they do. Had a stumpjumper Evo with the notorious downtube crack, which was not covered by specialized. I also paid a bit extra for expedited repairs. They colour matched my matte black bike pretty well and they offer warranty on their work. The bike didn’t break in that spot again just other spots…
Just going off name and location, did you have a Boone that was fixed by them? I remember someone in the area having a Boone that had the inner chain stays completed eaten away during a muddy gravel race and Roberts made it look like it never happened. I was amazed by the work they do.
Yep. It's still going strong.
So… just info I’ve heard on the Yeti special project DH. Only one size has been developed so far. All racers on one are on same frame. Still undecided if it will ever see production but it’s still a possibility. Whole project was built around Rude(which I think most know)
It’ll be interesting to see what is to come.
Nice finally seeing that the demo is nearer to production ready! Always hope Yeti will release. Norco too.
Was having a look on their website and back end of this bike looks suspiciously similar to the arrival. That's funny
A potential benefit of the no-dive brake arm on the Intend fork over the USE, Trust, AMP, Girvin, etc solutions might be that it's only countering brake dive. The suspension travel itself is a telescopic action so will be entirely familiar until you pull the brake.
Improvements over the familiar telescopic action may some day be possible, but I wonder whether making travel more rearward won't always reduce sensitivity to vertical bumps - that vertical travel is what's fundamental to dealing with vertical obstacles*. Perhaps poor bump sensitivity was somewhat by design on the Girvin fork because it's elastomers were essentially undamped, so the fork could feel somewhat locked-out until you applied the front brake.
* yes, horizontal travel can modify the frequency of an impact, but having brake activated wheelbase adjustments doesn't seem desirable to me in all situations.
Am I thinking correctly that under braking any antidive fork will also feel stiffer? I mean yeah, a telescopic fork will dive and be stiffer by the nature of where it sits in the travel, but it is not really affected by the brake from that point on. With an anti dive geometry, when you're on the brakes and ride over a bump, the mechanism will (by nature) rotate the caliper backwards effectively increasing the speed of the rotor relative to the caliper and it seems to me that could cause some jerking when on the brakes...
I think there is a similar Idea out there but the guy literally built this with a sodastream bottle
https://youtu.be/0VSFb4Dejwo?si=aD-gbel-ksmkDJGm
Maybe I missed it and someone posted it already but found this honda ebike :
In the same way that on rear suspension anti-squat is stiffer when pedaling. I don’t really think of it as ‘stiffness’, but I’ve met many people who describe it this way.
If the squat and anti-squat, or rise and anti-rise, or dive and anti-dive forces cancel out, it will reduce chassis pitching (arguably keeping some pitching is good for proprioception), and it should keep forks riding higher where the spring is softer. Also it might be possible to tune for less LSC if it’s purpose had been to provide anti-dive).
Yeah, I get that part, but I guess people might have an issue with inconsistency being on and off whatever is causing pitch - on or off pedals (antisquat) or brakes (rise/dive).
The reason I pointed out that there could be some jerking in the braking force in the antidive setup is that if that is actually happening (not sure about it), it could cause problems with threshold braking on slippery surfaces. I guess it might be a thing in the rear already, but I think it'd be much more pronounced jn the front due to the effect of losing traction of the front wheel vs. rear.
All tried. All crap. All gone.
I've always thought most of the stiffer feelings under braking were caused by binding as the fork deflects rearward.. Maybe not as bad with the bigger forks of today, buts still noticeable..
Not a rumor and not innovation per se, but yeah - Öhlins just unveiled their new visual identity. Y'all probably still don't know how to pronounce it though... :-)
https://www.vitalmtb.com/news/press-release/ohlins-unveils-new-visual-identity.
Ohhh, come on, "soul of heritage" is kinda boring, they should have gone with "MTB Tech Rumors and Innovation" instead 🤣
Ö >>>> that belly button new flanged nonsense. It Iooks IA generated.
don’t we have an extra thread for ai marketing?
Ol’ ins?
Given the marketing of some companies, Ai stuff might be an improvement..
So forgettable. They didn't even include the umlaut...
Applying the front brake on our current bikes results in around a 100% pro dive situation, meaning that what we all currently experience is inconsistency/pitching. The goal of this brake arm is to reduce that - it's just a front suspension version of the floating brake arm DHers sometimes pair with high pivot rear swingarms to reduce brake induced packing.
The relevant pages about this from the Motorcycle Chassis Design book are public on Tony Foale's website: https://motochassis.com/Articles/Dive/DIVE.htm IRC he's written elsewhere that completely eliminating dive results in a disconnected feeling, but perhaps as with antisquat the most desirable solution lies somewhere between -100% and 0%.