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As a professional mechanic I'm surprised at how bad the quality control is in general in mtb. From bad alignment, poor parts spec, lack of proper covers on bearings to shit geo, etc. When clients ask what bikes I'd recommend I'm left scratching my head lol. It feels like the marketing guys decide most stuff, the product managers don't ever ride and/or the engineers are terrible. How is it that ebikes are still specced with EXO tyres, 35mm forks and 12 speed non ebike specific cassettes??? Why does DT Swiss still make straight pull spoke and aluminium nipple wheels??? I...

As an actual garage bike building hack I don't see any " garage-made welding vibe" here. I see pro level work, 3d printed bb/pivot housing, and spotless welds. The pro that welded this really shouldn't be lumped in with garage level work. You hide "garage-made welding vibe " under paint designed to distract from looking at the welding, you put pro work like this on display in pure raw form.

There was also another rider that snapped (or it broke or whatever) coming into a massive drop. It’s really not a stretch of the imagination that coming off a large drop with almost no control could result in some very serious injuries. All it takes is a little over the bars whoopsie and some spinal compression… even if you land two wheels first you can (and people have been this year in WC events) get unlucky and flip over on the rebound. That said i have no opinion on chains and there supposed durability or lack there of.

Ok you dingleberries. Rather than debating the merit of which way to mullet your rotors, why not just run 220 front and back?

For what it’s worth, it seemed that I went through rear wheels a lot more often on that TR11 design than I do a different suspension platform. It seemed that bike was really good at absorbing the first big hit but really struggled to handle the next few, and my rebound was set pretty fast. I’m not an expert, but that frame is highly leveraged off the top and it ramps up hard, which seems to leave the wheels to soak up the abuse, not the suspension. I put an Ochain on that bike and the ride was noticeably better...