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I'm a refugee from a UK based site where the site performance became unworkable so I am very sympathetic to how tough it must be to keep the lights on in the current climate. Without diving to much into the business of vital it could be that multiple threads and the associated clicks are advantageous from a revenue perspective. So whilst I'd prefer one big thread I can appreciate the complications.

Quick question @sspomer not that I want to delve into vitalmtb's business here... but is thread qty important to vitals business/website and a contributing factor to this? I think all of us would agree that this website/community is important to us... so if there are things that need to change or things we're doing that are impacting the site's success, we would want to play by a rule set that facilitates that. Otherwise, if there is a way to have annual, or monthly tech rumors threads and that cuts down on resource consumption, and still achieves the business goals/metrics for...

brace yourself... at the end of the year, we're going to lock this thread. while it's been amazing (thank you all!) and fun that we hit 1000 pages and over 7.5m views, this thread is a logistical and technical resource hog. it's also not easy to access older information. while there are a lot of upsides to the ease and convenience of posting to this thread, the downsides are outweighing the ups with it being so massive. please start a NEW thread to the hub for anything that has potential for legitimate discussion. good posts will be homepaged and the...

At the same time it will make alot of stuff easier to find as well but this thread will be missed. As long as you dont end entire forum like the surfer forum just did it isnt too bad of a change.

He likes BCoulanges. Obviously, as everyone does, since Coulanges is fantastic, but still: sounds 100% not lame to me!

I'd absolutely CHUCKLE if Dak ends up staying with Mondraker and it was all a low-level psy-op to get people speculating about Mondraker and Dak and the bike he'd be riding right before they release a finished Summum DH bike.

With a PhD in mechanical engineering Frida's going to be absolutely fine financially!

We’ve all seen Dak ride some bullshit products over the years. I don’t think the Scott would slow him down but I can already feel the cringe imagining him having to talk about how he “honestly” loves integrated shocks and stems and shimano brakes. That being said the boy deserves a fatty paycheck. Do what you need to do Dak!

He probably read it here first.

Dak seems to understand that the time to make money as a professional bike racer is limited at best. Yeah, FW would have been a "'Merica, Hell yeah!" type of deal, but if Scott gets him paid and let's him keep racing on the WC level, then he's got to jump on it.

It’s not supposed it’s in the rule book. Teams have to be registered by Nov 15th including who is on the team. No set date for when the teams get announced by the UCI. In the past it’s been a month after the deadline but I would guess it wouldn’t be until Jan 1 when current contracts expire.

The linkages are like crabs in a bucket, climbing all over each to actuate the shock.

It kinda looks like it could be a generic bike out of Asia also. I have seen quite a few open mold companies selling direct and coming out side some actually nice looking designs. It could also explain the parts mix that is on it. If it was a photo for a larger company, it wouldn't have lower/mid-tier products on it. That said, what's going on with the chain stay? It looks beat to hell and I'm hoping that black piece is just a shadow, it looks like it's a leaf spring or just flat out broken.

Figured it out

So... It's a Specialized?

What throws me off is the double shear interface between the SS-Rocker, usually the bearings get put in the Rocker and the SS has the overlap, but this frame has it the other way around. No brand I know does it this way, I think if we find who does this with their rockers, we find the brand behind the proto.

doesn't look too far off

If I may interrupt the bickering... This page says 998, but the Hub says 999. Either way, we're close to a thousand pages in this thread! Who's buying the keg and where will it be?

We can only hope that a new crab link bike is dropped today so it takes its rightful place as the centrepiece of page 1000