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Why not just install the appropriate coil to hit your target sag for 150 mm travel, which you would normally have to do anyway, and be done with it? I can't think of many situations in which hitting a bottom-out bumper would be preferable to having a little extra travel in reserve.

Having ridden bikes from several major brands, my SC Megatower has easily been the best I’ve owned when it comes to product support, parts availability, and clear, reliable customer service. I used to make fun of people who had an SC, but after dealing with repeated warranty issues on other bikes, I get it now. The Mega is a sick bike, the VPP suspension rides great, but honestly, it’s the overall ownership experience that really sets Santa Cruz apart. I'm in the market for a shorter travel ripper, and SC is at the top of the list, even if it's...

Buying a Santa Cruz usually costs a bit more, but there are some legitimate reasons other than VPP to buy one. Kinematics / ride dynamics are well engineered regardless of linkage used SC geo is usually solid, nothing weird Build quality Ability to purchase replacement parts for many years (try buying parts for a 5 year old frame from any other bike company) Lifetime warranty (one that you can actually count on).

Intradrive Gearbox Powertrain Tucked away in a tiny little booth on a side row was Intradrive. Turns out they're a small Scottish company that's been developing an 8-speed gearbox-equipped motor for eMTB brands dubbed the GD8. Shifting is wireless electronic, there's a 480% range, and the motor can output up to 700w. The founder said that the motors are built and wound in Scotland and that vast majority of the parts and materials are sourced from Europe if not made in-house. There's an emphasis on serviceability, and the unit fits a Shimano EP8 mount pattern. The one on display used...

We did a spring backed IFP on the DH-R brake adjuster. It works fine so long as you keep the spring preload within reason. The main idea behind the whole brake adjuster was actually to have a base brake line pressure be about 15 psi so that the system would be less sensitive to bubbles. Not much impact on pad retract at that pressure with that brake, but much past it and you'd start to notice decreased pad retract/lever throw. But yeah relying on fluid to pull something as opposed to push something is a trickier thing.

Thank you. This was my thought, too. If you drive a car without a crumple zone into a brick wall at high speed, even though the same total force is being applied to the wall and to your body, your body and the wall will notice a difference compared to hitting the same wall at the same speed in a car with a crumple zone. In this analogy, the dual crown fork is the car w/o a crumple zone, transmitting all the force immediately to the headtube area, and the single crown fork is the car w/ a crumple zone...

There are three guarantees in life: death, taxes, and the internet being absolutely certain that every new e-bike motor release is going to end in disaster. I like to think my view of the world is pretty empirical and observational. So with that in mind, can anyone point me to actual examples of trail closures caused by e-MTBs? We’ve obviously seen issues with SurRons, but my brief Google search and AI-assisted digging turned up basically nothing beyond trails being opened to e-bikes. I cannot find evidence of trail networks being closed to mountain bikes because e-MTB use has meaningfully increased...

I think I disagree with most of what you said. What is the little screw for then if not for bite point adjustment? Maybe you have a bad bleed. It works like a charm on my brakes and makes the bite point either very close to the bar or further away.

There are lots of ways to shorten the dead stroke, especially during the bleed process. I've found the grub screw adjustment to be the easiest way to match each lever, but you can make the dead stroke virtually nothing if you really want.

Found it..... "The reason facts don't change most people's opinions is because most people don't use facts to form their opinions. They use their opinions to form their 'facts'." — Wayne Gretzky probably

This is spot on. I have probably 5000 miles on Megatower V1 and 2000 miles on V2. The SC lower link VPP bike have a "simple" but effective kinematic that can highlight differences in shock characteristics and performance. Shorter travel bikes seem to typically be optimized around a single shock and base tune, when you deviate from that it's uncharted waters. You might end up with something really good or something bad. From a philosophical standpoint I think more MTB journalism outlets need to dial in on this. Testing different shocks on different frames with different riders is a huge...

One challenge with low volume apparel is amortizing the development cost. Soft goods sometimes cost more to develop than hard goods as it's a ton of labor making patterns, sewing up samples, testing, reworking the protos, repeat this several times, then have the factory make a few pre-production samples to make sure they interpreted your tech pack correctly. You also need to validate for durability (all brands do this, right? RIGHT?). It's as much voodoo as it is hard science, which means lots of back and forth. Yes, we give them CAD files for patterns, but it's still all hand...

MX rotors for your XC bike from Magura: --------------------------------------------------------- Bad Urach, April 1, 2026 – Reliable braking power for the new wheel sizes in the cycling industry: With the new MDR-S rotor in a 260 mm diameter, MAGURA responds to the clear trend toward ever larger wheel sizes such as 32 inches, which offer improved rollover behavior and increased traction on the trail. The scene agrees: 32 inches are coming, and in some segments, this trend is unstoppable—even for MAGURA. As a brake specialist, MAGURA has repeatedly set milestones in the cycling industry over the past decades—from the introduction of...

There's a good amount of perspective/distortion in play. If you take the center of the tire instead of the axle, you'd get a 40mm difference. Not saying the rear center is 420mm, but I'm not sure it's actually a longer backend and not just a stronger rear triangle.

Thanks for running these numbers so we could nerd out. It's super interesting. Respectfully, I don't think the differences in anti-squat or anti-rise represented in the graphs could be felt by anyone on the trail. Maaaaaybe a dedicated in-house suspension tester at one of the brands could tell a difference between 138% AS and 134% AS at full-travel, or between 85% AR and 78% AR at sag, but those are really small differences in practice. Anti-squat and Anti-rise are already hard parameters to isolate and feel out on the trail, and it takes pretty big differences in those numbers to...

Coming from the PNW and never seeing running water on a long ride in SoCal has been a real adjustment, and it means I have to carry way more water on my person, or spend a lot of time looking at maps to figure out where all the stores and water fountains are, or both. I miss creeks. And shade. And overcast days. Don't ever leave. Stay there as long as you can, Cam. AS LONG AS YOU CAN.

The V+R Racing rider lineup for 2026... TL;DR It's Raina Logar, Zanna Logar and Aletha Ostgaard! Most folks on this forum are familiar with V+R, but briefly for those who aren't, Virginia and Ryan (V+R) are two DH superfans living in the Pacific Northwest. 2026 marks our seventh season sponsoring and supporting downhill racers and our fourth season at the World Cup level. Crazy! For '26 we've re-signed Aletha Ostgaard for her fourth season with V+R Racing! Ally races for Canyon Collective. Zanna Logar has also re-signed for a second season with V+R. Zanna races for Frameworks. So cool! Maybe...

I wonder how fast the Santa Cruz V10 would be with Aspen STs

Fixed