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As a mostly analogue rider who also has an ebike, I was surprised at how rude, even nasty, a lot of guys on regular bikes are—even when you're as polite as possible trying to pass them on an ebike. Before I had an ebike, my buddies and I would kind of snicker at ebikers after they passed, but never to their face. I figured I'd see some of this once I got one, but I was surprised at how rude some "analogue" riders are for no reason, and how often it happens. It's pretty much an every-other-ride occurrence, which is...

The Pope reads Vitalmtb forums confirmed

Dibs on the "Be Hawk Tuah or Be Nothing" tee shirt.

https://www.vitalmtb.com/forums/hub/kinematics

Running less sag makes a bike track poorly on account of losing contact with the ground anytime there’s an indent the wheel has to go over. You see the same exact issue with people lifting vehicles to drive off road. They throw preload collars on and all of the sudden they feel the truck is harsher. The spring rate hasn’t gotten stiffer so why does it feel harsher? It’s losing contact with the ground and causing the chassis to pitch to allow a wheel to drop into a hole as soon as a hole is deeper than the amount of...

You have less to push against with a more linear bike. If you look at wheel force normalized for sag it all makes more sense than just looking at leverage curve. The wheel force is always identical at the sag point when normalized for sag. The more progressive layout will have a higher wheel force past sag and lower wheel force before sag in comparison.

I started a new thread to keep the conversation going around TPC’s without bogging down tech rumors. Discussions around metals are also welcome! Materials and Processes for Cyclists

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...

What thermoplastics allow us to melt away the matrix to be left with just the fibres. I guess you could either chop those to be a filler or recycle them (make new fibres), but you are for sure not picking up a cloth from the bunch of fibres and reusing it. As I see it (without being in the know) it's mostly component separation that's the benefit here vs. resin matrix materials than the "reuse" type recycling. Reusing old polymers is frowned upon anyway outside non ctiritcal applications as you don't know the state the polymer is in. These are...

Yes, somebody will figure it out. The MTB business is notoriously tough. B/c thermoplastic CF can be done with robotics it’s one of the few technologies that can work in developed countries with high labor costs. The recyclability is huge bonus, they are the best tire levers I have ever used. Benefits in vibration damping and impact resistance.

Then the tyre would hit the lower crown at full compression. Extending the lowers is the correct way to do it.

Yeah that’s understandable which is why we would like to tend on focusing more on the gear that is used once, twice or even never at all. Thanks for the feedback.

Props for the Sheldon Brown reference.

This, the weight balance at sag moves forward quite a bit.

sounds like 5 underutilized support resources to me

Re: IMBA (and other trail associations) besides them building almost exclusively flow trails, I find the biggest drawback is the mob mentality of people that take part. -Come in and gaslight local government into letting them be the judge jury and executioner regarding how the entire trail system will be built and managed moving forward. -Build exclusively flow. (Requires excavators) -Gaslight local government into requiring parking permits to support excavator trails people didn’t ask for. Parking used to free. -Extended and unnecessary trail closures whenever it even slightly rains. “It’ll ruin the flow berms bro, be a good trail steward...