Posts
115
Joined
11/7/2024
Location
Phoenix, AZ
US
Edited Date/Time
2/9/2026 8:55am
Curious where all the vital members line up in terms of the long vs short chainstay debate on their enduro bikes:
Poll
Yes.
XL 460-470 range but high stack and sub 500 reach
Poll misses the point of the long chainstay discussion. It's more that they don't grow proportionately with reach as frame sizes increase. I ride medium bikes, so a common 440mm CS for me is paired with a 450-460mm reach, and makes for a nicely balanced FC:RC ratio.
I'm 6' 7" and my homemade DH bike with 240mm of travel has 416mm chain stays. Best riding DH bike I've ver had.
I want to try 450ish mm reach / 450mm chainstay length, in my next long travel bike... But I just bought a 140/150 trailbike with short stays, and an equally short frontend. I found that I'm fine ridding a big spectrum of bike geometries, as long as they are somewhat balanced in weight distribution. I ride a medium
Thats essentially what the Frameworks Enduro bike is - Medium is 460 reach 450 chainstay
I'm on 474mm chainstays with 510mm reach and my next bike will have 510 or longer chainstays.
I want 465mm+ against a ~490-500mm reach.
I still feel we ought to have rear center adjustment in the form of swapable dropouts, but here I am like an old man yelling at the wind.
I included the “size large” originally to qualify 450+ as being in the long chain stay gang for large size bike riders because I think that’s commonly accepted.
What’s considered long chain stay for the medium size bike crowd?
I rode my gen 3 Levo overforked (170mm) with neutral headset cup and Cascade link. With "Hi" CS chip, that put it at 447m reach & 444mm CS. In "Lo" CS chip, it was 442mm reach & 450mm CS. Noticeably harder to manual / bunny hop. My current bikes are more like 455mm reach / 440mm CS, and handle a lot more balanced/predictably.
I’ve got a Rallon coming with 450/450. I’ll let you know if the hype is real.
Sweet bike; makes little sense to buy one from the other side of the pond (says the guy that keeps bashing its head against dumb brexit custom fees)
On a medium here and anything longer than 440mm.
Wait, does this mean you're supposed to pee at the clouds and yell into the wind?
I myself like a 490-500 reach and a 455ish chainstay on a mixed wheel bike, and 450ish on a 29r.
445 on the enduro fully, 425 on the trail hardtail, I like both
Currently on 460 stays, 470 reach and 63 ha. Going to dial back the reach to a 460 and steepen the HA to 64. Found my max wb on a enduro bike and want to shorten it up a touch.
Wonder what it is at sag?
RAAW would be a good option as well.
Oh boy, You mean long rear center, not "chainstay" Otherwise the chainstay on my bike is 490mm but only 445 BB to Rear axle.
And are we talking growing lengths or vertical or what? makes a hell of a difference.
even so, I ride Properly and can weight the front/lean angles and standing tall when needed - Tried riding long REAR CENTERS!! but They are just lazy and the WB sucks.
How to trigger All the "i cant ride for sh1t, must be the bike" gang.
P.s There is a thread for this already..............
Thanks for option #4 -- I'm very chainstay-length-agnostic, appreciate long/short alike, and mostly glad that the industry is finally keying into front center-rear center balance as a key dimension of how a bike is going to perform. Almost all of the bikes I've owned in the past decade now have been 485-515mm reach, but I've had RC dimensions everywhere from sub-420 (Honzo) to 460+ at sag (Druid v2). It's very terrain-dependent for me (I still love the old-school NE slow-tech trails that were trials-move-mandatory on a 26er) and has everything to do with front end setup, hardtail vs. 120mm XCish bike vs. 150+mm big rig, seat tube angle/cockpit, and even weird nuances like cleat position and bar roll.
If I could only (gasp) have one bike and I wanted to commit to more gravity riding, shuttling, and doing lots of winch-and-plummet fire road pedals to access the steeper stuff around NH/VT, then I'd opt for a longish RC (say, 455+) paired with a "normal long" reach for an XL, 515ish maybe? But as an unrepentant XC nerd, woods rider, and singlespeeder I love having a short-chainstay hardtail to go sprint around the local, uppy-downy, not-so-bike-specific trails.
Just to set the record straight. I'm old and have never in my life measured a reach or a rise. I tend to measure bikes by the down tube length and the rear center. I measured some wheelbases once for a DirtMag article.
According to their site about -2
Apparently I'm in the minority 😅 no single geometry number will make a break a bike if its a tiny bit off what its "supposed" to be.......I don't mind long chainstays as long as the BB isn't too low as well
Yeah that’s a good point. Here’s how I’ve been measuring it but I could be wrong:
https://youtu.be/81bt0ZJLMas?si=DSc-biOwQsz2BsGg
Current bike has 505 reach, 462 chainstay and 650 stack, In my opinion the CS is about 10mm too long for me.
There is that much front end grip it can actually be too much weight transfer on super steep corners.
423mm chainstay here. Most fun bike I've ridden, haters gonna hate though.
I had the gt fury all last year. Size medium in long chainstay was 450/450. That bike had insane grip. Worked well.
Post a reply to: Chainstay Gang - Mount up