All

The primary source of friction in chain drives (cross chaining aside) is the links rotating as they enter each chain ring. The larger the degree that the rotate, the more friction there is. Larger chain rings equate to less friction because the chain links don't have to rotate as much. The amount of chain actually in contact with the chain ring does not matter because it's static relative to the chain ring. For example, on a 36T chain ring each link has to rotate 10 degrees relative to the adjacent link as it enters the chain ring. Meanwhile, on a...

I too dream about gluing my head to the table.

Can we stop with the pipe dreaming, people would be more likely to glue their head to the table than properly use industrial adhesives in a frame jig. Most people struggle with IKEA,

Manitou owners don’t seem to have any issues with the front of their seals being exposed.

what about applying it drunk the night before a ride, spilling half the lube on the floor then wiping the excess off the chain with a rag which is my current go to method?

TLDR: More volts = more betterer for design, and battery requirements, but not a huge impact to the end user if the design is done right. Complicated question and answer. There isn't a massive reason to favor a 48v system over a 36v system. The biggest advantage to a higher voltage system is within the formula/equation for current/watts/amps. Said another way... Amps = Watts / Volts. Here is an example... Assuming 750w power request/output by the motor. 750 watts / 48 volts = 15.6 amps 750 watts / 36 volts = 20.8 amps Batteries are generally more efficient the less...

This is a fact. A bolted joint is essentially springs in parallel so you sum the stiffness of the aluminum portion of the joint and the stiffness of the bolt portion of the joint. Like anything, it can be done well or poorly. Fun fact, I know someone who was going car brakes and thought it would be fun to swap the steel bolts for titanium bolts. The titanium bolts were not as stiff and they started having issues with leaking due to the caliper halves separating under high pressure.

Who else thinks this needs to be a thing???!!! 😂 Apparently you can make them from discarded 34 stanchions. Get on it machinists, I need some!

A gearbox AND a derailleur. Bit of mis directions or MOAR GEARS!!!!!!

I’ve heard some of the older frames weren’t perfect, but mine is #465(A200) and I was blown away with how spot on the fitments and tolerances are. On the S200 I don’t believe the rear is 1 piece like mentioned above. I think they ment each side is once piece CNC machined. Looks like the half’s are bolted together.

The rear triangle is actually 2 triangles then connected with a bridge its not 1. But you argument is bizarre, what happens when you bend/crack any VPP style rear triangle? Its not unique to Atherton. Also talking to some of the Dyfi guys, good luck breaking these bikes. The one thing I will say is their as indestructible as they come. Some of the trail crew got given the prototypes and they just said go destroy them, not a single one (to my knowledge) has failed.

I can totally envision OneUp's April 1st advert for their new wireless dropper. 'Tired of losing all of that stack height with the other guys' wireless droppers? We at OneUp have the ideal solution... commercial pans to a rider inserting a battery in his anus and looking very uncomfortable, then giving a thumbs up. Then they show a wire going down to the dropper from his riding pants. We have packaged the battery in a simple and environmentally green manner that improves stack height, and also prevents theft! And for the ladies you can now bring a spare battery, 2...

I've got a customer who ordered an A-series bike that I'll hopefully be helping build soon. One thing I didn't know was the customer is contacted and brought along through the whole build of every frame. He gets check in's from Atherton bikes every step of the way. To me, it seems to be taking a bit longer than I expected but it sounds like they're quiet busy. Interesting to see the customer side of what they're doing and it's pretty impressive to what I've seen from other custom builders.

I would imagine the S200 will be marketed as a park/DH bike while the carbon will be the full on race bike. The gear box bike, if it sees production, would probably be offered as a second option or completely replace the carbon bike currently. Their manufacturing method sounds pretty lean which lets them be flexible. They don’t have molds for carbon frames that they are hoping to get X number of frames out of.

Seems like the only reason for this to exist is to save on labour costs in installing the post in the factory. Another innovation I can live without.

Enough with the chainstay and transmission discussion - We have something else to scold Sram for. Some really clear pics from ESMTB of the electric dropper we discussed about a few pages back. I see why they did it, but it still looks terrible. But having the battery be a part of the collar, probably greatly decreases the stack height of the whole dropper, which is positive at least. https://esmtb.com/asi-es-la-canyon-lux-world-cup-cfr-de-jenny-rissveds-…

I believe Transmission's effectiveness is partially dictated by having the exact right # of links in the chain. They have an app where you put in your make/model/year/frame size/chainring size and it spits out how many links you need. I'd wager to guess that Sram probably discouraged frame manufacturers from adjustable chainstays when they were selling them on UDH because it could potentially cause less-than-desirable shifting performance if the user didn't have the correct number of links because of chainstay length adjustment. Which would then make the user think that their Transmission sucks. Just a hunch.

This is crazy, but hear me out. What if the housing came out the bottom of the seat tube and ran along the outside of the downtube and then to the lever? I get what you're saying, and we're never going back to mass adoption of external routing. But it's insanity that electronic droppers are being offered as a solution to a problem the industry created and could so easily solve. It's like a horror movie when the person being held in a room realizes the door's been unlocked for quite some time and they could have just walked out.