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I tried the Bullit, I liked it, well balanced bike

I'm sure they will be just fine as they seemingly have had plenty of people ride and enjoy their non-vpp ebikes. They also still are using vpp on their long travel non-ebikes.

It's 185x50. I'm not a fan of trunnion in general, but historically SC tolerances are pretty good and the design seems to be executed well, so I wouldn't expect any issues there.

I'm sure many have gotten the email, but new Tallboy with CC frame in all builds, 300g lighter than previous version. Despite my disappointment on the travel and 4bar, looks pretty sharp.

I’d take a well designed and built frame with a lower spec damper over a misaligned, poorly thought out frame with a fancy one any day. You can upgrade a damper, it’s much harder to upgrade out of bad engineering and manufacturing. As has been said above, even then, some shock spec or kinematic choices will mean different things to different riders.

Whichever bike has the best damper tune specced probably wins at that point. I'm pretty sure that's a big deciding factor between bikes with different linkage designs also though. You would need control wheels, and tires at a minimum, and probably drivetrain also to get any useful data about which frame works better.

If we compare the new horst link tallboy with the Allied Fitz, Forbidden Reya and Transition Smuggler, there a few difference: Tallboy is the only bike using a trunion shock most likely a 185x50, Smuggler and Fitz use a normal 210x50 shock and Reya use a 190x45 shock. So Reya most likely have a higher starting leverage ratio that could limit heavier rider that are getting close to the shock max pressure. Reya, Smuggler and most likely Tallboy use double bearing setup at the chainstay. Santa Cruz does the same for the Bullit and Vala. Allied Fitz has no exploded...

I’d love to see a shoot out of trail bikes using the same linkage designs. It would really interesting to start to dig a bit deeper as to what sets them apart - quality control, kinematics, maintenance, etc etc.

visual summary

New Tallboy all through this: https://youtu.be/06aPj2jKe4U?si=n0VbMiFXlzlGwgF2

Remember the good old days when we talked about bikes on here?

Madrone with a DH set up is rad!

evil DH bike?

some would say bikes shouldn’t have motors either but here we are.

RR is the most successful enduro rider ever plus the sb160 the most successful enduro bike, why shouldn‘t they celebrate that with some special editions… especially when the successor bike is on the horizon

They must have a bit too many sb160s in stock they need to get rid off 👀

Double upvote.

One thing missing here is the fact that with the proliferation of composite know how, there are more people around able to safely repair a wider range of issues. Rather than pretending we are recycling carbon bikes I’d love to see more frames designed in ways that facilitate repair. Repair is verifiable in a way that recycling is not, it is cost effective for everyone concerned, and it is as close as you’ll get to good for the environment. It probably flows on to other design decisions to ensure repair is viable (like bearing placement, etc etc), but designing bikes...