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I'll be honest, 15% is pretty low. Not V1 Sentinel low but getting there. Definitely down in the "huh" range. The only way I'd ever expect to get that to not bottom out in the parking lot with a coil is run practically no sag or run an unreasonable amount of damping. I had a V2 Hightower as a personal bike for a bit. It was significantly more progressive with a little more travel and a little more shock stroke to work with. I put a DHX2 on it once for the sake of experimenting. At 30% sag it would slap bottom in the parking lot if I pushed into it. It was comically easy to bottom to be honest. So yeah, shock with a bunch of volume spacers makes sense on this bike.
Has anyone looked at the similarities of the T6 and the late GT frames, yet?
https://gtbicycles.com/collections/trail-mountain-bikes/products/sensor-st-carbon-pro?variant=45862882705705#tab-geo
Brian Cahal looks to be riding some kind of raised upper idler pulley on a non mid/high pivot. What would be the point of this?
Probably a thing from Rulezman in Italy, https://www.rulezman.com/zerobackv2/
It would lower anti-squat and pedal kickback, right?
One of my buddies who rides for Banshee says there are a bunch of new frames coming out this year. Didn't have any details around what's being updated/changed or what's new, but they're coming.
About time!
The old frames were on sale for quiet a while.
Let’s see what changes they bring to the table
best product description ever
"---TECH SPEC:
full 7075-T6 construction
12T special pulley hard anodised 50microns
Japan bearing (no china crap)
thick as F… construction
15 microns anodised body
ISCG-05 - max 32T front
chain length: 1 link longer than your actual setup
138 grams"
That's good. I have said it before, but the phantom was a bike so good i bought it twice (with v1 spur in between). And now the frames still available were cheaper than EPing them. They better fix seatpost insertion. Otherwise, any other tweaks would just be icing on the cake.
Favorite thing is he’s always claiming no hype, but then everything he does is hyping up his own products without anything backing that they’re better. I’ve ridden a banshee with his link in shock and then one that was stuck, and there was not a massive difference and I thought the one with what I like.
"No China Crap" says the guy making an exclusive product for what is now a Taiwanese bike brand haha
Taiwanese bike brand?
Saw unreleased Scott Spark DC
Still hidden shock, sleeker downtube and shock area, options for both cable tourism and the sane variant, Pike in the front
sorry that wasn't an endorsement, more so an appreciation of the contrast from normal marketing bs we see.
Seems like a bunch of the big brands put out short to medium travel bikes in the high teen progression range. Do you think it is the targeted demographic of rider? Progression and coils maybe niche, off the standard distribution curve. Adding progression adjustment on Horst link is fairly easy which is the confusing part, definitely gives you business.
25% has been the middle ground for a while I feel like. The Tallboy and recent Specialized stuff are the big ones that come to mind that are this low. I was actually thinking it would be amusing to make a Genie retrofit kit for the Tallboy. But yeah I think some of it is targeted demographic. The downfall of more progression kind of depends on what you normalize for in the comparison. If you normalize for sag, full travel is harder to access. That may be a benefit for some, but if a rider is on the cusp of accessing full travel already then that's a downside. If you normalize for bottom out resistance, a more progressive bike runs more sag so you get all the affects you'd expect from more sag. I'd guess that the average user is not pushing the bike hard enough to need more ramp than that. But not including any adjustment for it definitely alienates a portion of the market.
Probably refers to the fact that Jay, the owner, now lives in Taiwan and does the QC on site. Keith, the designer/engineer is from Scotland and rest of the crew is in the USA. If that makes it a Taiwanese company so be it... The fact that whole brand is basically run by 4 people is just amazing, is FW still run by just Neko and his brother or are there others (not counting the team)?
The Murmur has a rising rate (anti-progressive) and riders much better than any of us ride it with this coil shock, which to my knowlege has no HBO nor a progressive coil.
The Yeti Switch Infiinty bikes all had/have progression less than 20% and they ride amazing.
I know Mr. Cascade thinks anything with less than WC level progression is unridable, but I actually like less progression on a short travel bike. Keep it firm so you have something to push against and preserve geometry.
Steel has different fatigue properties so frequent bottom out may not carry the consequences associated with a carbon or aluminum frame
You have less to push against with a more linear bike. If you look at wheel force normalized for sag it all makes more sense than just looking at leverage curve. The wheel force is always identical at the sag point when normalized for sag. The more progressive layout will have a higher wheel force past sag and lower wheel force before sag in comparison.
It is -4% so I would consider more linear effectively. I know Craig is controversial but even he is saying not compatible with coil, with a very Craig comment in there. If you run low enough sag you can make a linear bike work with coil. www.avalanchedownhillracing.com/Bike%20set%20ups/2023%20Murmur%20Enduro…
Cascade has put a decent amount of time collecting data with their Stumpy project, so at least they are coming from a point of heavy research, even if the incentives are in their favor.
I recently read an article by the enduro mag.
They made a survey and found out that 70% of their readers that took part in the survey never changed their rebound from what the bike came with. The amount of people riding bikes that dont have a clue about basic setup is very high. For them, something like the progression rate is not relevant. We are all so far off the average user that we are not who brands have to engineer their bikes for.
https://enduro-mtb.com/performance-gap-das-dilemma-moderner-bikes/
What's "WC level progression"? The previous gen Supreme was 15%.
Wow that article did a great job of saying exactly what I've thought for a long time!
I was literally just being a pedantic Santa Cruz hater (for a moment- I’ve loved vpp in the past) does it take a coil is a silly thing to ask - I thought ….
And look what it all made happen - derailed.
Nobody wants a coil on a tallboy cuz tallboy needs to be light!!!
Tigon rules (on a spire it’s a two bikes in one scenario) and it’s rad cane creek makes it in short travel shapes now.
Now maybe I’ll run a coil on my tallboy
I completely disagree. My Murmur is horrendous with a coil shock. Even with a 23% sag setup and a can creek progressive rate spring I can bottom it out in a parking lot without ever leaving the ground . Riding it on trail , it feels great on small chatter . But bottoms out ever 15 seconds on even mild rock sections , let alone jumps. Rode it twice with the coil and immediately put the air shock back on with most of the volume spacers . But dang I love the bike.
I see these bikes a lot with ohlins coils, not sure if there’s something special going on with them that makes this recipe work better. But my DHX 2 was no match for my murmur
They look similar, but so does everything these days?
Hold on a sec... you guys change the rebound?
I bought a tuned Ohlins coil when I bought my Starling. It was fantastic. I must have bottomed it at some point because of some reckless drops/jumps, but I couldn't tell. Might be worth contacting them. I'm always on the verge of buying another.
This is why I’ve been thinking for a long time that electronic suspension integrations will be a game changer for a lot of riders. I think it’s most likely to happen on e-bikes because the slight weight gain won't matter, and I think going forward most new riders will pick e-bikes, so they will benefit a lot from that assistance. Additionally I think it’s quite likely that a company like DJI/Avinox/AmFlow does it. It might be one of those new Chinese suspension brands who comes to market first with a solution.
I bet a big part of the reason Pivot has a good reputation is their little plastic sag guide. There’s a reason they do that. Specialized also tried an automatic sag system IIRC. The difference electronic suspension can make though is demonstrated currently in cars and motorcycles. It can go beyond just helping with initial setup, and help continuously, with less required of the user leading to a better experience for most users.
Stablead is working on electronic suspension. I don’t think I saw that in the coverage, but it was on display at sea otter, the guy showed me the charge ports.
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