Is It 4 Bar?

Personally I don't bother with 4 bars. I just find one good one with cheap jugs and stay there until it's time to go home.

If they serve crab then it's definitely a bonus. Gotta get messy when you're getting messy.

My.hardtail has 4 long bars of metal making the rear end, so I'd say it is a 4 bar

Well, for starters, crab link Is a Horst link.

Just to clarify what four-bar linkage means (and to encourage a little additional brain function):

 

I guess I’ll weigh in here since it was my comment that prompted the thread. 

The issue here is that mountain bikers have been using this term “four bar” incorrectly for years. More recently we’ve seen the horst link design become more widespread and with it the incorrect use of the aforementioned term. 

Say the only fruit an island community has access to are bananas so they just call bananas “fruit”. As time goes on they figure out how to grow apples and oranges and call them such but keep calling bananas “fruit”. Sure anyone locally would know what they’re talking about but it’s still incorrect and confusing to anyone else. 

It’s so silly and pedantic but we’re all here because we have the same kind of autism so I think it’s par for the course. 

Since we're asking the existential question. 

Is it 4 bar:

That would indeed be considered a four bar.

Bonus points for Smigonaut

Correct. Same as Yeti Sixfinity. And Yeti's 303 DH dual rail bikes are also 4-bars.

You mean Switch Infinity, yes?

Yes, obviously, sorry... No idea what I was thinking.

Sixfinity would be a pretty perfect name for their 6bar linkage though.  

It is the name for their 6 bar linkage...

https://yeticycles.com/en-us/technology/sixfinity?srsltid=AfmBOoraVaid881pX7BSjN8XhdVAlM23i1FUfX0f27XANDP35Auf7aWe

We definitely shouldn’t be using our own definitions. If they’re all four-bars what is it that makes them different? What would a Horst link be called in the textbooks? What are the characteristics it has that differ from our VPP (also a four bar)? Let’s go with those. 

drakefan705: you’ve volunteered for this, by the way. Fix it!

 

I mean, a linkage driven single pivot is a four bar mechanism, it just depends on what you look at. The thing is that us mountainbikers mostly don't care how the rear wheel connects to the frame as long as it works. And it's how it works that is important, in that regard it matters where the wheel is connected and what kind of performance you get from the suspension. 

As for how VPP works, I haven't looked into it closely, but I would guess a VPP is closer in performance/behaviour to a counter rotating Horst link (Rocky Mountain) than to a DW link or maestro which in turn should be closer to a co-rotating Horst link (Norco, Specialized). It's where the IC is moving thought the suspension travel that plays a role. 

This nomenclature came about over 30 years ago to contrast Faux-Bar and Four-Bar.

I say be glad we have these shorthand names. I once recorded a video where I carefully said “short link four bar suspension”, “chainstay pivot four bar linkage”, “linkage driven single pivot”, etc… it was frustrating to deliver and incredibly boring to listen to.

You’re more likely to correct people from saying star-fangled nut than to correct this.