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
For sure! That's the reason I brought it up and it's something I'm happy to have in the skillset.
Alloy rims?
Could be wanting the bike to feel a certain way...
Anyone know what colours will be on the my27 bronson? Root beer looked epic.
The
Plot
Thickens
Sram wants people buying their cranks or at least using cranks compatible with their rings.. Not sure if that's a good move, but it simplifies things on their end...
To be fair, the bicycle industry shares a TON of common parts. We are pretty spoiled with that. In a lot of other wheeled industries, there are not the compatibility opportunities that we have. In motorcycles, typically bars and tires are some of the only commonly compatible parts. To take forks from one dirt bike and put them on another often requires changing wheels or wheel spacers, crowns, brake calipers, and the stem. We just swap it over and are annoyed we have to remove a crown race.
We question a brand for using a less common standard or a new standard coming out, but it could be a whole lot worse. Yes, I fully understand we are talking a much smaller scale and the cross compatibility is definitely something to appreciate.
SRAM now owns O-Chain. They also do not really make any spidered cranks, so why spend the additional money to have their product be compatible with a competitor's products. Sure they would sell more if they made them compatible with other brands cranks. Enough to justify the investment to do so? Enough to prioritize that project over other development projects? Product and engineering teams, regardless of how big the company is have to pick their battles and can only manage so many projects.
I don't like the things Sram appear to have learned from the UDH launch and adoption. Again, they're trying to be Apple, just waiting for the EU to knock them down a peg haha.
I agree 100%.. When I was at Marzocchi, we started doing aftermarket front end kits for moto.. Even going from a 250 to a 450 from the same brand and model year was work. Definitely nowhere near the cross compatibility we are used to in the bike world..
I'm sure they have the sales data for what was sold previously.. They know if it's worth the effort.. And, like you said, is it worth supporting the competition's product? I'm guessing Rimpact and some hub manufacturers don't mind seeing this change..
I wouldn't quite compare them to Apple, but ultimately they want to be a one stop shop for their OEM customers.
Bruni has sleeves with a ribbed texture similar to aero road jerseys in his post
iirc these ribs are pretty body-dependant in how well they work (spacing of the ribs varies by cylinder diameter, cylinder in this application being arms/legs) so I wonder how much sense it makes on the dh jerseys. They are way tighter than the old days but still loose compared to road ones so I can’t imagine the structure holding up that well.
Would be interesting to see a breakdown of how much time the pros spend in the speed brackets like 10-20, 20-30, 30-35, 35-40, 40 and up km/h, because aerodynamics only start to really matter at a certain speed.
Sure, and I don't mind that, but it's also seems like they're trying to lock people into running only Sram products through limiting compatibility. Why make the new Ochain only 3 bolt or 8 bolt compatible? Why limit your aftermarket customer base? Why give those potential sales to Rimpact? Sure, there are a lot of other companies that use srams Chainring mount, but it just seems unnecessary.
Yep. A Lot.
I think one of the largest "We're not in Kansas anymore" moments I had when I began working for a component manufacturer after years in bikes shops was when I had the insignificance of aftermarket sales explained to me. Don't get me wrong, every brand worth their salt is going to support aftermarket product bc why leave money on the table, but OE sales are king in the bike industry and ultimately OE sales drives every design decision.
SRAM gets to push the convenience of full SRAM spec by limiting cross compatibility. For brands like Canyon, Specialized, etc., who are working on a ginormous scale and are trying to get the best component prices/terms possible, that convenience is worth tens of millions of dollars in revenue.
SRAM doesn't care about selling 1500 O-chains to distributors so they can be slapped onto the existing drivetrains of Vital and Pinkbike users when the alternative is selling 50000 O-chains with 50000 Transmission drive trains that will come 50000 sets of Mavens and 50000 Vivids and so on and so forth
TLDR: Economy of scale is too juicy to undermine with convenience for enthusiast users(us).
That right there..
😂 name checks out!
most of us probably have too much to unlearn to excel with ABS on mountain bikes right away…to be able to hammer the front brake on wet roots or whatever… surely ABS allows for some techniques that’ll be uncomfortable but way faster.
Dude you’re not kidding.
every garage in my neighborhood has a couple bikes in it and ZERO people give a shit about how I finally found a Doubledown Aggressor. I’ve even caught a couple of them look at me weird when I’m checking my wife’s e-scooter tires with a digital gauge. Retired Coast Guard neighbor looked me straight in the eyes and said he’d never heard of the Denim Destroyer. Come ON dude now you’re playing games
I agree with that analysis for almost every type of component but I would have thought O-Chain would be an outlier. I can't see that many OEMs putting O-Chain on bikes other than DH bikes, primarily because it's a large cost they can cut that a non-enthusiast consumer that walks into a shop will not notice if it's a regular chainring instead, but will notice the extra couple hundred dollars in cost. DH bikes are also so much less of the overall market share, and most of them are bought by hardcore enthusiasts that are likely to customize the components aftermarket anyway.
Pedal kickback devices, electronic suspension, mass dampers, oval chainrings, tire inserts, and titanium components all seem like the sort of components that would have much less focus on OEM sales and more focus on aftermarket enthusiast sales. Your average bike shop customer that gets a Stumpy with base level components will not want to spend the extra dough on a shock pump, never mind gadgets. That handlebar phone mount will sell like crazy though.
I would venture to guess that if the OEM numbers aren't there, we'll see some other aftermarket options become available...Or, they are thinking that the ebike options will go over well on the OE side..
Jackson Goldstone is running an 8 speed cassette with the prototype saint derailleur.
This is probably something that barely qualifies as tech rumor / innovation, but I found it interesting.
So what happened to the Tallboy 6? It felt imminent in March, but the rumors seem to have dried up in the past few weeks. Is Santa Cruz checking to see if they can cram 32" wheels in it or something?
It's definitely coming and as a crab, that's all I know though.
Should be May and some others specs trickling into June.
Not sure what, if any, event they are targeting for a launch. Maybe just relying on the horst link brouhaha doing enough for them.
There will be a push for OE spec. Much of the launch marketing was that DH proves the effectiveness of the product, but they have a place on enduro/trail bikes. SRAM buying OChain is so they can get OE sales on higher end spec. Probably reasonable cost at OE level with a complete Transmission drivetrain, and a selling feature for a SRAM spec'd bike that the likes of Shimano and RF cant offer.
O chains are definitely not for the common mtb consumer. To many issues, water, wear, adjustability etc
I think you underestimate the "I want the best of the best" market of people who buy nice things to leave in their garage.
So glad there aren’t a bunch of other parts on bikes with those issues!
Any guesses how long before Sram make the O-chain electronic? adjustable on the fly.
I imagine it'll integrate with Flight Attendant.
If so, you'll be able to define the different degrees of float based on what Flight Attendant is determining you're doing at the time. Climbing? 3º. Descending? 16º. Want something else? Tweak it in the app.
That's probably more difficult to pull off than I think...but I bet they're working on it!
To be honest changing the spline is not that much engineering work, especially since Ochain has already done the work... It could be one small interchangeable part even.
I understand and mostly agree with what you are saying, but in this specific case it is 100 % keeping the garden walled.
Post a reply to: 2026 MTB Tech Rumors and Innovation - Longer and Slacker