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Am I too late to complain about chainstays (why would you want long ones on a short travel bike?) My apologies, I spent time with my family over rhe holiday weekend instead of being chronically online

I thought the Spot interview was interesting. What he said made sense--it's a choice. It doesn't cost more to manufacture. It does change how the bike rides, which is something to consider. Some builders, Spot and Pivot for example, still believe in designs that incorporate a short CS.

It's interesting to hear the differences in peoples' experiences. I would love to take a spin on a long CS, moderate reach, high stack setup to feel the differences in handling. I tackle almost every climb standing up. I'd rather mash a higher gear than spin a lower one seated. Honestly, I just stand almost all of the time when I'm riding my bike; it just feels better to me. Plus, I'm a low-proficiency, high-power guy. I started mountain biking three years ago in my forties, but I'm quite strong, so I just hammer through terrain with power rather than...

I think the issue is not being able to establish what the problem is because your riding isn’t consistent enough and therefore you don’t actually know what you are trying to fix. No one wants to try to problem solve a problem that they can’t even read. You shooting in the dark, unsure about the validity of potential solutions, and potentially don’t understand the complicated relationship between all the systems so you might actually end up fucking something up terribly. It’s not surprise many people don’t want to tinker.

Are you prying at the seal on the inner or outer ring contact point? When it comes to mine (and my wife's) bike, I am trying to protect the main bearings like this:

Forbidden also messing around with the e-bike without a motor to test out some DH stuff with Laurie. 'The bike Laurie rode during the week was an early proof-of-concept acoustic DH build using a Dreadnought E front triangle and a number of custom parts. It was built to get the gravity project moving in the real world, giving the team something to ride, change, measure, and question while putting early ideas underneath a rider who can give accurate feedback at speed.' https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yLJAPe6Hl3s

The only point I'd love to argue is that the lower and central weight placement makes the bike more maneuverable.. But, really that interview shows why you need to look at everything as a whole package, not just one or 2 numbers.

I've done similar procedures to brakes since forever - sram guide, shimano saint, most formulas. People have always moaned about different brakes but its just a case of knowing all the methods of making them work well. I guess people learn a certain way of working on brakes, which has worked fine up until they encounter something different like the maven and all of a sudden they struggle. I see similar things with wheel building, hubs, suspension and drive trains where they only learned one generic way to work on a part, instead of understanding how they actually function

That will be a very different experience! I had one for a short time and adored it, honestly still wish I had one now. Keen to hear what you think once you have some time on it. Pic of mine because sharing is caring. I've also come off the Optic and snagged a very flash current gen ASR locally.

A bunch of comparisons mainly looking at wheel force because that's what you really feel not the leverage curve. 160 mm bikes with different progression amounts normalized for identical sag at the wheel. Including -4%. The wheel force plot is purely looking at wheel force due to the spring. As you can see, there is a very significant difference at bottom of travel. If you were to zoom in on the sag point, you can easily see that a more progressive bike has a lower force at all points before the sag point and a higher force at all points...

I’ve been mountain biking since I was a teenager in the 90s and the marketing material has never been as sober as it is right now and the products have literally never been higher quality. Thirty years ago you’d drop a huge stack of cash on 1.9” tires made out of QC-rejected pencil erasers and hay, they’d be hard as coffin nails and look leprous after three rides (several flats per ride), and the marketing material would be all like “God himself couldn’t make rubber stickier; this rubber is so sticky it’s gray; you can ride on the damn wall”...

I don't buy Ford because of the Michigan Supreme Court's decision in the 1919 case Dodge v. Ford Motor Company.