2026 MTB Tech Rumors and Innovation - Longer and Slacker

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Big Dos
Posts
74
Joined
11/7/2016
Location
AU
3 hours ago

Suntour 'factory' riders have been riding DVO product on and off for about a decade FWIW. Very close ties between those two companies 

@Trocko do you know if the tyres are going to be under the Scorpion Race banner, Cast X Pirelli or something else? Any info on if they're going to move away from doing single compound rubber? Wonder if they are a replacement for the S, M and T line of tyres. I do like how simple their names are compared to other brands, sad if they are moving away from that. 

Ride886
Posts
21
Joined
4/21/2026
Location
Bellingham, WA, USA
3 hours ago

If you're doing the sharpie thing to use a shock that isn't your sponsors, why would you choose that one?

DVO does their manufacturing and assembly in their own division within the Suntour factory.  Suntour is also a massive supplier (not just to DVO) of forged components like crowns, lowers, shock bridge/reservoir mounts, as well as various tubes. 

Speaking to Bryson earlier this year he mentioned DVO has been helping Suntour with some R&D. He didn't elaborate, but it wouldn't be surprising if there's some collaboration going on with their increased presence on the race circuit.

 

2
3 hours ago
I think transition simply believes there is a certain quality in quantity in bike frames.  A lot of riders will never notice their slightly misaligned rear...

I think transition simply believes there is a certain quality in quantity in bike frames.  A lot of riders will never notice their slightly misaligned rear end or put the forces on the bike to really cause an issue.  

On the other hand they sell a lot of crash replacement frames and honor a lot of warranties.  They need to store/ship those extra frames.  And a slightly cheaper frame makes that affordable to them and the consumer.  I don’t think your average transition rider is looking for the best frame.  They are looking to invest in riding culture and to know if they throw their bike off a drop they can get a replacement for a price they can afford.  And I imagine if you bust out the calipers and hit up the warranty department they will probably work with ya to make ya happy if you just spent 2.5-3.5k on a bike frame.


I also think many of the brands that do claim to have the best frames and the in house engineers have had plenty of misses they ran with or made compromises based on the desires of marketing and management.  Or have had serious design and manufacturing flaws that ended up in hands of consumers and they ultimately disregarded said consumers complaints.  Where as transition has been pretty quick to respond to both changing technology (literally kind of led the charge on modern geo in production frames) and customer preferences (nixing head set cable routing on repeater or updating the recent tr11 and releasing bottlerocket to solve issues with the last one).

Ultimately they make customers happy and the profits are largely invested in awesome bike riders and trails.  I’m much more interested in paying for that than a bike that performs 10 percent better.  But I’d only put my transitions maybe a few percent behind the best of the competition.  Funnily enough for the years transition actually was a catalog brand enough people had the same mindset for them to become what they are today.

 

Also outing a specific person without saying their name is still name dropping.  If I say the guy who played iron man used to have a drug problem it doesn’t exactly take a genius to figure out I’m talking about Robert Downie jr.  
 

 


 

Quick example and I appreciate everybody’s insight on this as well, but my friend bought a used Norco optic frame a few years ago and somebody...

Quick example and I appreciate everybody’s insight on this as well, but my friend bought a used Norco optic frame a few years ago and somebody had the audacity to red Loctite one of the frame bolts when I did his bearings and I was still able to get it out without breaking the hardware versus I bought a spire frame and when I needed to do the bearings on it I rounded out or broke multiple hardware. Same thing with the Santa Cruz I’ve never broken any hardware taking off anything on a Santa Cruz but I’ve broken a bunch on multiple transitions that I’ve owned.  I’m wondering, does it really cost that much more money to put slightly nicer hardware in your Bike? 

 also I’m pretty sure that the warranty from your bike manufacturer is actually warranty through the carpet manufacturer like VIP composites or whoever makes your frames  again I could be totally wrong about this, but I remember hearing that from a few guys.  The bike manufacturers just paying for some warehouse space

Doesn’t neko use spire’s hardware/bearing set on the frameworks bikes or has he moved onto a new product?  I’d argue that’s probably the most performance based frame currently on the market.  And aren’t the bearings and hardware fairly industry standard (I forget the brands)


Again I think for them it’s a let’s pick what we know we can get a lot of, isn’t going anywhere, and is affordable.  The end consumer can decide how prepared they need to be and transition is quick to get you or your bike shop a part whether to restock ya or get ya going again.  And again what’s the percentage of their bikes actually seeing hardware changes?

Didn’t NorCo just issue a recall on frames?  I’m not pointing fingers.  In fact that’s the right thing to do.  But just cause you have some really talented engineers on and off the bike doesn’t mean you can’t have forced or unforced errors.

1
his dudeness
Posts
30
Joined
12/30/2010
Location
San Jose, CA, USA
1 hour ago

Nah yeti actually makes good stuff that isn’t built and designed in Tiwian 

Bangsy wrote:

You might want to double check the built part.

amanitas wrote:
Recently learned how hands-off Transition is for manufacturing. They basically do the industrial design and pivot layout then the factory does the rest. No in-house composite...

Recently learned how hands-off Transition is for manufacturing. They basically do the industrial design and pivot layout then the factory does the rest. No in-house composite engineer or stress analysts at least double checking what the factory is doing. I know they’re not unique in this, but they’re charging a lot for what is basically a Transition shaped catalog frame. 

They give a lot back to the riding community here, so as a local it’s a little easier to stomach, but if I were outside Washington it would be a much harder sell.

I will say that qc checks among most big brands are pretty massive. In addition to in house r&d, frame test labs, and field testing, they usually stash some of their employees in those overseas factories as quality engineers to check everything. I know there’s plenty of testing getting done over there for just about everyone, but it’s also nice to have another layer at home too. Costs more but you get better results faster.

hookem34
Posts
46
Joined
2/18/2018
Location
Texas Y'all, TX, USA
Fantasy
1 hour ago
I think transition simply believes there is a certain quality in quantity in bike frames.  A lot of riders will never notice their slightly misaligned rear...

I think transition simply believes there is a certain quality in quantity in bike frames.  A lot of riders will never notice their slightly misaligned rear end or put the forces on the bike to really cause an issue.  

On the other hand they sell a lot of crash replacement frames and honor a lot of warranties.  They need to store/ship those extra frames.  And a slightly cheaper frame makes that affordable to them and the consumer.  I don’t think your average transition rider is looking for the best frame.  They are looking to invest in riding culture and to know if they throw their bike off a drop they can get a replacement for a price they can afford.  And I imagine if you bust out the calipers and hit up the warranty department they will probably work with ya to make ya happy if you just spent 2.5-3.5k on a bike frame.


I also think many of the brands that do claim to have the best frames and the in house engineers have had plenty of misses they ran with or made compromises based on the desires of marketing and management.  Or have had serious design and manufacturing flaws that ended up in hands of consumers and they ultimately disregarded said consumers complaints.  Where as transition has been pretty quick to respond to both changing technology (literally kind of led the charge on modern geo in production frames) and customer preferences (nixing head set cable routing on repeater or updating the recent tr11 and releasing bottlerocket to solve issues with the last one).

Ultimately they make customers happy and the profits are largely invested in awesome bike riders and trails.  I’m much more interested in paying for that than a bike that performs 10 percent better.  But I’d only put my transitions maybe a few percent behind the best of the competition.  Funnily enough for the years transition actually was a catalog brand enough people had the same mindset for them to become what they are today.

 

Also outing a specific person without saying their name is still name dropping.  If I say the guy who played iron man used to have a drug problem it doesn’t exactly take a genius to figure out I’m talking about Robert Downie jr.  
 

 


 

Quick example and I appreciate everybody’s insight on this as well, but my friend bought a used Norco optic frame a few years ago and somebody...

Quick example and I appreciate everybody’s insight on this as well, but my friend bought a used Norco optic frame a few years ago and somebody had the audacity to red Loctite one of the frame bolts when I did his bearings and I was still able to get it out without breaking the hardware versus I bought a spire frame and when I needed to do the bearings on it I rounded out or broke multiple hardware. Same thing with the Santa Cruz I’ve never broken any hardware taking off anything on a Santa Cruz but I’ve broken a bunch on multiple transitions that I’ve owned.  I’m wondering, does it really cost that much more money to put slightly nicer hardware in your Bike? 

 also I’m pretty sure that the warranty from your bike manufacturer is actually warranty through the carpet manufacturer like VIP composites or whoever makes your frames  again I could be totally wrong about this, but I remember hearing that from a few guys.  The bike manufacturers just paying for some warehouse space

Doesn’t neko use spire’s hardware/bearing set on the frameworks bikes or has he moved onto a new product?  I’d argue that’s probably the most performance based...

Doesn’t neko use spire’s hardware/bearing set on the frameworks bikes or has he moved onto a new product?  I’d argue that’s probably the most performance based frame currently on the market.  And aren’t the bearings and hardware fairly industry standard (I forget the brands)


Again I think for them it’s a let’s pick what we know we can get a lot of, isn’t going anywhere, and is affordable.  The end consumer can decide how prepared they need to be and transition is quick to get you or your bike shop a part whether to restock ya or get ya going again.  And again what’s the percentage of their bikes actually seeing hardware changes?

Didn’t NorCo just issue a recall on frames?  I’m not pointing fingers.  In fact that’s the right thing to do.  But just cause you have some really talented engineers on and off the bike doesn’t mean you can’t have forced or unforced errors.

The Spire was one of my favorite bikes that I have had the pleasure of owning. Really wish I hadn’t sold it. I’m excited for the updated bike to get the chips and salsa treatment 😎

1 hour ago
Doesn’t neko use spire’s hardware/bearing set on the frameworks bikes or has he moved onto a new product?  I’d argue that’s probably the most performance based...

Doesn’t neko use spire’s hardware/bearing set on the frameworks bikes or has he moved onto a new product?  I’d argue that’s probably the most performance based frame currently on the market.  And aren’t the bearings and hardware fairly industry standard (I forget the brands)


Again I think for them it’s a let’s pick what we know we can get a lot of, isn’t going anywhere, and is affordable.  The end consumer can decide how prepared they need to be and transition is quick to get you or your bike shop a part whether to restock ya or get ya going again.  And again what’s the percentage of their bikes actually seeing hardware changes?

Didn’t NorCo just issue a recall on frames?  I’m not pointing fingers.  In fact that’s the right thing to do.  But just cause you have some really talented engineers on and off the bike doesn’t mean you can’t have forced or unforced errors.

In the early days at least, yes they used the Spire hardware. That was actually something we had recommended since at lower volume it’s easier to just buy existing pivot hardware. It’s one of those things you that is super efficient to run in volume but not so much in low quantities. Of all the Horst link bikes I’ve messed with, that pivot hardware kit has been one of the easiest to live with. You aren’t gaining any performance from it, though. I’d imagine at this point they are using their own hardware though. 

3
Itsme
Posts
305
Joined
6/25/2010
Location
Villars, CH
39 minutes ago

Trek announcing something new tomorrow. But it looks like to be just a new road bike lol.

Ride886
Posts
21
Joined
4/21/2026
Location
Bellingham, WA, USA
5 minutes ago

It’s Taichung Bike Week.

And speaking of DVO:

IMG 6316

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