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All the bike nerds here pay no attention to the girl in the background, they go straight to the linkage

I was just saying to myself that headsets needed more pieces.

It's usually because there is some merit to the idea to begin with, and the development happens outside the publics view. Take headset routing, the real merit to it is that it allows for stronger lighter frames with internal routing, and less complicated carbon moulds, the downside is only on the consumer end having to work on it. Superboost wheels are objectively stronger and make a lot of sense, but it's competing with a standard that was more widely adopted and made it hard to swap wheels between frames. Wireless only is for the same reason as headset routing while...

I have been running a 32" front wheel on my epic all year. Started out with my normal 35mm stem and riser bars and I had a hard time keeping the front end under control. Tried out a drop stem and it brought my weight back forward and the front end was much better. Bike is very fun still and very fast. I personally think it still handles very well even in the tight stuff. Despite the wild looking stem it's comfortable and feels normal. The bigger wheel just raised the front end so much that the bars are in...

DAMPING

Finally had a chance to try out some radial tires on a Norco Sight TQ (schwalbe MM ultra soft trail/TC soft gravity). Borrowed it from a buddy that runs the shop in my hometown. I have been running MM/TC, MM/MM, ECF/TC combos for the past couple of years. No idea what the tire pressure was. First thing I noticed was how tall the radial TC knobs were compared to a diagonal version. Climbing traction was pretty wild up a service fire road that was heavily eroded and mostly made up of blast rock, you could feel the tire doing its...

not this year. "The 2027 lineup brings big updates: A trail-ready ASR Lunch Ride built for the backcountry, the new ‘Lavender Pearl’ colorway on the SB120, spec upgrades to the MTe, and new pricing on SB160, SB140, SB120, and ARC." https://www.instagram.com/p/DdEiN1DERbp/?utm_source=ig_web_button_share…

The Mountain States Cup season finale at Purgatory celebrated what the MSC came to do! This series revival brought high level racing back to the Rockies! Thanks to MSC, Shawn, Julia, and Bill for the vision, patience, and ability to bring this home. Excited to see what they bring next year! This is the series to watch and attend! The videos are on their website and on You Tube. https://mountainstatescup.com/

Worth noting- broadcast pricing is planned to start at ~$10 USD (depending on exchange rate at the time). This won’t be a normal race broadcast as you know it- we are building out a full show, and when racing goes live we’ll have 40+ cameras on course.

That's quite a hard working rocker link...

Must we, every 3 months, have this same tired drivetrain discussion. You like what you like, I like what I like. No one cares. Start a new topic if you guys want to duke it out about how terrible the wireless world is. Back to the rumors: 30T ochains on more builds in the future from a few brands.

Product managers aren’t looking for shiny new things, they are looking to create sales w max profit margins. Shiny and new is one way to do that, but it ain’t the only one.

If an STFU is the price for that it’s pretty good though, right? I still remember when SRAM went from the 2.0 clutch to 2.1 without telling people and suddenly they couldn’t be adjusted or serviced - it would shred itself, race mechanics all over found out the hard way. That kind of fuckery sums it up. My current cabled Shimano can be rebuilt pretty quick, it’s adjustable, you can even turn the clutch off, and it works great. I know that’s not Di2, but the thinking is the same. When sram went public they released a portfolio showing their...

It’s weird - sram can release an ecosystem of groups with proprietary cassettes, derailleurs, chains, rings, that have stratospheric prices and persistent issues (speed, shift calibration limitations, QC issues, cassettes that need to be installed multiple times to settle, battery pins corroding etc etc), plus compromises they try and correct release to release. Maybe that’s ok, it’s up to the rider. At the same time, Shimano releases a new di2 ecosystem that uses their existing(and awesome) cassettes, chains, rings, has the industry leading shifter for ergonomics. A sealed battery compartment, but its perceived to be noisy on some bikes, but...

¿Por qué no los dos ?

Yeah, I am not sure of the exact details and other possible differences, but my understanding is that prototype molds are made from aluminum and thus are much faster and easier to machine, whereas full production run molds are steel and are much more difficult, time consuming, and therefore costly to produce.