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Ouch @jeff.brines

Awesome, glad to hear you're digging it! This was the tire I mentioned a few pages back when we were discussing fast-rolling trail treads. I've been using it as a front tire on my 130/140 Stumpjumper for several months now, but for the launch at Whistler I mounted it front and rear on the Stumpy Evo. I was really impressed with it across the board. Between Whistler and a trip to Colorado right after, I put 180 miles, 25,000 feet of climbing and 40,000 feet of descending on them. Using the MaxxGrip/DD casing. The rear is about smoked, but I'm...

I recently got the new Dissector v2 (MaxTerra EXO 2.4WT) aka baby Assegai and it is exactly something I always dreamt of for a short travel trail bike (140/130). I use my small bike for XC type riding in the rockies. Conditions are usually very dry, loose dirt and loose rock on top of hardpack. The side knobs are wide yet not too tall. This makes them very stable and gives you that DHF level locked in feeling during hard cornering. Lack of side knob stability was my main complaint with Forekaster v2 and this solves that. The center tread...

The new 38 is ditching the current 38 air spring to go to a normal one where the piston runs directly on the inner stanchion instead of the current tube inside the stanchion setup. It will also be a glide core air spring. Should see some decent weight savings from that change alone.

I’d rather cut my face open than be a vegetable

I wonder if US-owned companies utilizing Giant as a manufacturer will somehow get a pass. Seeing the shoot first, ask questions never approach of the admin, I doubt it, but it will be interesting to see what happens here. One of the great things about the Vital forum it it attracts discussion from people involved in all sorts of industries across the world, not just the bike industry. Anybody out there have any comments on whether there's been significant enforcement of anti-forced labour import laws in other industries or from other countries?

Ibis has always been a boutique brand. Their frames are made in the same Vietnamese production facility as Yeti; they are very direct competitors. Almost as direct as you can be.

This has been my experience as well. Just stay on top of chain wear and you're golden. The drivetrain on this bike https://www.vitalmtb.com/community/ARonBurgundy,30923/setup,41567 is still in operation today and it was lightly used when I built the bike in 2020. I did retire the cranks out of caution as I wore through a few layers of carbon on the arms.

X01 Eagle is the bees knees. I ran the same chainring (gx aluminium), cassette (the old 10-50t),shifter and derailleur for 4 and a half seasons on my old bike with only a new X01 chain about every year. The derailleur is still being used on one of the bikes by a friend who bought it off of me. I ran the last chain for 2 seasons (and I started waxing the chain in the same time frame) and just recently gave it to another friend to use it some more as I only measured 0,35 % wear rate on it...

You’re starting to see why there is a very vocal group pushing for more balanced bike geo…

I’m in the market for both an enduro and DH frame and now I have an excuse for why my buddies who ride mediums are faster than me.

They're like virtual, draw a vertical line that intersects your BB, and then draw a horizontal line from your axle to the BB line. They would be your centre measurements.

(front center) / (rear center)

Also gets you an approxiate estimate: (Wheelbase - CS length) / CS Length If you have a high pivot bike, take into consideration how much the CS/Rear center grows throughout its travel to adjust your WB length and calculation accordingly.

I've used it and "real" telemetry options on the same bike to compare. The benefit of Shockwiz is that it's simple to use. You attach it, set it up, then it gives you easy to read instructions (eg not raw data) on what to do. That's what it does on the surface, anyway. The problems often start with the calibration process. It's very sensitive and being off means your results will be way off. I usually ended up calibrating 4-5 times and taking the average of the result, eliminating the outliers, before I came to a ratio that I thought...

I find it awkward when shockwiz comes up - I think the hardware is really cool, super well thought out and nicely packaged but the software frustrated me - too much of a black box that hides everything its working out, but then is giving quite advanced suggestions and fine tuning. I would regularly see people struggling with things (normally calibration) but theres no easy way to troubleshoot or diagnose things, ie if you could access the raw data. Even some kind of ai-style feedback loop where you could at least tell it what was going wrong would be useful...