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I will probably get flamed for this, and will offer the caveat that I have only been skimming this page, but I feel like these bikes are great propositions and are in my eyes cool bikes because they’re made to be cheap and practical workhorses for younger demographics that don’t have as much disposable income and want a playful park bike that they can maintain themselves. Maybe I’m just haven’t been following the thread well enough, but I don’t see why the ebike bit is necessary to explain the appeal. Not everyone can afford bougie boutique racing machines, or ebikes...

I have to admit, I do not love the side profile of some of the 32" bikes that are coming out. They end up looking like XS bikes with cramped triangles and kinked bottom/top tubes. Hopefully more progressive geo will enable these things to look like something other than a 2010-2012 era niner.

I think there's a business case to be made for lower-cost park bikes now that many peoples' primary bikes are eMTBs. Back in the day, my cohort of friends had a trail bike and a DH bike. Later, I feel like it became an enduro bike and a lighter trail bike (aka downcountry). Now, I imagine a lot of mountain bikers' pairings will either be a park bike and an eMTB, or a XC bike and an eMTB.

I've always maintained that if you had to pay for your Gopro, I don't want to see your shit.

counterpoint - $600 is easily the cost of an ER visit for many people 🤷‍♂️

surely this is the undisputed post of the year

I think the purpose of that little tab is to be a mini chain guide for the upper pulley in big chain slap moments. Pull the cage forward by hand and imagine the chain slapping and flopping around. Seems like it'd be easy for the chain to jump off the upper pulley if that tab wasn't there. I just checked a couple of X01 derailleurs in the old parts bin because the clutches started to wear out, and you can clearly see that the chain has hit that tab.

Dumb problem #2: I didn't consider that

Why is there so much drag and what is that awful noise? Oh. What is the purpose of this feature on Shimano Mx100 derailleurs? It isn't structural and it forces you to break the chain again if you accidentally route it the wrong side.

External cable routing! heck yeah

They're starting a company and building a factory to get to 30 million electric motors per year by 2030? Per year? 30 million? Is this a joke? Should that be billion? I work for a moderately small automotive supplier in freaking Slovenia and we probably make more than a million electric motors from our designs, by components, in a year. I'm not taking into account all the small DC motors from the likes of Johnson which are a commodity. I'm talking about stepper motors and BLDC drives that are similar to what's in ebike drives. Is the state of manufacturing...

Maybe I just haven’t noticed before on the other 32” bike pictures, but damn those tires look so close together.

Maybe same age as Benoit when he got his 1st??? Luca is 29, Benoit is 31

Maybe 2027 race talk?

I think it says alot about the bike. 1. “It absolutely shreds” 2. Horst park bike 3. Dual crown 4. Air or coil 5. Made for park and sideways landings 6. Mx wheels 7. Aluminum That’s definitely a sweet spot for many riders who buy bikes. Brage destroying a trail burger doesn’t hurt.

This isn't impossible as, in French, we WB choose Florian Letondeur as co-commentator on side of Eurosport one. Flo is the guy behind Fast As French YouTube and Instagram channels. Flo is doing an amazing job bringing is knowledge and insights of the sport to a sport generalist TV broadcaster. It take some time, as before that the commentary was like two random commentators knowing absolutely nothing about our sport (apart of their incomplete stats sheets) trying to adapt MotoGP/Formula 1 commentary on something they absolutely didn't understand ( Do you think this dude is on wet or intermediate tires...

" each new product launch is 1.25% better than the last generation that was also pretty damn good" FTFY. Sucks, but most stuff is good now, so we get small revisions.

Man… this forum is screwed. Everything is turning crab, each new product launch is 1.25% better than the shitty unusable last generation, and now we are discussing solar capabilities on an ai bike that will more than likely be a kickstarter scam. The future looks great! 😃

Love the photo dump format. The pictures are also nicely crisp and detailed. Thanks Vital team. (Please bring back the background music haha).