2026 MTB Tech Rumors and Innovation - Longer and Slacker

They sell smaller ones for moto too.

any info on geo?.... 1285 wheelbase for size large nomad?

I imagine the majority of department stores still have a tire patch kit in their bike section.  And that if you are going to take the wheel and tire off there is probably very little to be gained over it.  Including a homemade patch with an old tube and some quality glue.  

There is obvious advantages to being able to quickly patch a tire without removing it.  And if you can engineer it to be something that lasts the life of a tire and is easy to use well the it’s going to be worth the effort/cost of innovation.  Especially if you are already producing adjacent premium bike products whether is components or chemicals.

I spend way too much money on Stan’s darts cause bacon strips always eventually fall out and I don’t want to put the effort into removing and reinstalling a dh tire with a heavy insert to patch it the old school way.  For me a long lasting trail side solution is worth what seems stupidly expensive on paper.  I’ve had a few of them in a single tire that I rode the treads off and they held up.  But I’m not gonna spend decent money on a Stan’s tire patch kit versus whatever I can get off a hardware store or Amazon for literal cents.

This seems like a big step up from crankbrothers run of the mill bacon strip refills.  I’d be curious to try them I still have a crankbrothers tire plug tool from a vital gear box (bring it back haha).
 

May, if I recall correctly. 

What's wrong with good ole tube patches? They work just as well on tires, good for fixing pinch flats near the bead, too. I never had one fail on me (Rema Tip Top).

Gorilla tape in 2 or 3 layers works shockingly well

Not sure that would make the chainstay much longer 

I'm sorry this is pedantic but every VPP and DW link suspension design is already a four bar linkage

plz elaborate thx

oh the entire rear triangle is one of the bars…got it 

Upvoted for accuracy 

I hope you're being downvoted for apologising for the pedantry, rather than for the pedantry itself.  If not I'm extremely disappointed with this place.

Mountain bikers HATE that four bar doesn't mean what they think it means.

horst? 4 bar.
DW? 4 bar.
VPP? 4 bar.
Maestro? 4 bar.
linkage driven single pivot? 4 bar.
Delta? 4 bar.
First gen Yeti Switch? 4 bar.

It goes on. It's a pointlessly generic term to use and if you use it then nobody is really sure exactly what you mean. It's like calling your tire a wheel. "but mountain bikers use the term differently!"... Differently than what it means? Cool...

Fair, but I think most mountain bikers probably use it to refer to horst link bikes, as in the new Tallboy. 

Not everyone is so obsessed with crustaceans to come up with new ways to define or mock it. 

Linkage driven single pivot is not a four bar. You're looking at the suspension characteristics not the number of links, so it's a single pivot. Same for Delta. 

And this is why we can't have nice things.

"Four bar" is a generic term for a linkage system with... four bars. Axle location has nothing to do with it. Suspension has nothing to do with it. Bikes have nothing to do with it. If you want to call a tire a wheel, go right ahead, it's just not clear what you mean when you say it. Mountain bikers hate that four bar doesn't mean what they think it means after all. Mountain bikers use the term differently. Apart from some. And some others think it's just horst... and some others think it's all four bar designs where the axle path isn't defined by a single pivot. It'd be easier to just not use the term for things that it doesn't actually mean wouldn't it?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four-bar_linkage

Adding some bars to an Evil and pretending it's an eight-bar linkage.  Be right back.

I know full well what a four bar linkage is. Or a 6-bar. By your logic, we could have 15-bar linkages, think of the marketing!! By your logic Canyon's DH bike is a 6-bar. It's actually a single pivot.

The thing in question is how many links you NEED to have the wheel mounted to the bike. With a linkage driven single pivot, you need one. The swingarm. It's that ONE link that defines everything - axle path, antisquat and antidive performance. One single link. No matter how many additional links drive the shock. Therefore Delta and linkage driven single pivot are that exactly, single pivots with aditional links driving the shock. QED, outgoing Demo and Enduro and Knolly's 4x4 "6-bar" links actually being honest to god, horst link 4bars. And Canyon's DH bike being singlepivot.

The only caveat to all of this is split pivot - single pivot for antisqaut and axle path, 4bar for antirise.

Sorry for seemingly being stubborn, it's just that's how you analyse what the suspension is doing. You can't apply 6-bar principles to Canyon's DH bike if it acts and is a single pivot. I don't make the rules, physics does. That's also why @drakefan705 is correct, VPP and DW are both dual short link 4-bars and are analysed as such.

As for inner tube patches on tyres, they're too stretchy. You need a stiffer one. Sewing up the tyre then patching it with an inner tube patch might work though.

My point isn't that we should call basically everything a 4 bar. My point is that some people think only horst is a 4 bar, other people think that anything with four bars and a virtual pivot is a 4 bar, and other people just think it's a stupid term to use because it means different things for different people and that if you try to define it, it's defined anyway and isn't any of the meanings that anyone else thinks it is.

Just use a different term. It's a meaningless term for bikes. It doesn't describe a single thing without further clarifying what you mean.

Bigger counter is that we do have nice things, and many of them have different names that people use. 

And colloquially 4-bar and horst link are used pretty interchangeably (see most suspension design breakdowns online like Pro's Closet, Bike Mag. Bike Radar, etc). The post that prompted this was referring to the tallboy that will be horst link, so you know what they meant. Or, if you didn't, you could ask if they meant that. 

How about lets 4-bar our way back to Rumors and Innovation

More bars here: https://www.vitalmtb.com/forums/hub/it-4-bar

Vital Forum Law - given sufficient time all threads will descend into pointless tech talk. Regardless of the initial point of the thread 

wow this is some classic vital content right here. Sspomer you can lock our threads but you’ll never make us not idiots 

When do we think the new Saint will actually be released? With SRAM's DH Transmission being ~ 5 days away now, surely Shimano are going to have to go and release it some time this year? Most of the new XTR testing seemed to happen under wraps but more and more of the top level Shimano riders seem to be running those new brake calipers, compared to pretty much just Jackson towards the start of last season.

Hoping the brake really delivers, would be nice to get massive power with Shimano's lever feel without having to do some sort of frankenbrake ala Shigura / Shaven etc.

I think they’re going to be called Hope techfour evo V6 and given the V i’d assume these will be the ones fitting the Vented rotors 

Do we have to go down the 'I think you'll find its a 4-bar/6-bar/8-bar/linkage driven single pivot, axle-pivot-crab-12-link' again?! 60% of the last tech thread was this endless circle - Start a new thread!

a 32-inch bike you can actually buy and ride? Yep!

https://www.vitalmtb.com/news/press-release/32-bit-more-real-now-starling-launches-big-bird.

I'm still wondering why industry went straight for 32, rather than trying a less extreme increment of 1.5'' to a 30.5. It will be interesting and annoying to see 5yrs from now what the ideal wheel size combo will look like for different applications... 30.5/29 for eebs? 32/30.5 for xcountry? 32/27.5 for DH? 

To be honest, I'd have thought radial tires were an opportunity for companies to play with section height, adding more rubber instead of more rim resulting in something like 29+ tires

Curious about that "new" Levo 4 R 

Wonder if they spent the money do to a full new mould for a new frame? Or if its the same Levo 4 frame, but the complete bikes comes with 600wh battery, fox 36, regular genie and some Roval SL wheels, thinner casing etc? 

I remember them showing a "lighter" build of the Levo 4 when they launched it sporting the parts above, coming in at sub 20kg. Could it simply be a "new" bike but its a Levo 4 with a spec change? And possibly sporting the "old" software to keep power draw down a bit with the smaller battery?

Found the pic:

I thought we went through this with 27.5+, where higher sidewall can be beneficial in some specific instances of root mat or sandy XC trails, but in most cases they just feel too vague and imprecise. Adding radial casing to that, which makes the sidewall flex even more, would not be better.