All

The USAC XC “singlespeed” national championships were all just won on axs-with-the-batteries-removed last week. I announce a bunch of xc races on the east coast…it’s been a few years that the top single speed racer has been on anything except a full-suspension bike with an unplugged battery. An interesting note about most of the blinglespeed slope-bike tensioners… they don’t work with a large enough cog for most people to pedal uphill…

As someone who owns multiple Singlespeeds, I wouldn’t even pay that much. I’m currently running a SRAM DH derailleur as a tensioner on my SS epic evo.

Is that the rule? Are there rules? Because catalog snaps have happened heaps of times in the OG thread. Obviously don’t lose your job - but these are just brands owned by banks / syndicates / second generation founders nepo kids - and we are the 0.01% who care to see this stuff. newschoolers.com has an epic next year gear thread where everyone is sharing catalog snaps and tradeshow samples. I think this audience is hyper niche and most of the stuff on this thread never makes it past this group of weirdos. I’m sure bike brand product managers lurk...

WONT SOMEONE THINK OF THE BRAAAAAAANDS! THE POOR BRANDS!

The new fluid looks like a great bike, just like the last one, but man 35#’s for a 130mm bike is chonky. I know from personally owning aluminum norcos they are not lightweights, but that new lyrik is pretty heavy too. Do we really need a lyrik on a 140mm forked bike? Pike chassis seems totally suitable for this situation.

don't want anyone to puke by seeing them 🤮

That 5010 frame doesn't last 20 years because of one rock flipped up off your front tire into the DT. It's a plastic bike, designed to be light and disposable. And, if a point impact scenario doesn't (likely) kill it, it will be unable to be updated because of "standards" or SC will no longer have a front or rear triangle to match and you will have to start over. Ask me how I know. I wish SC continued with their metal version bikes.

Probably with an element of "why would I buy this Horst link PON bike when that Horst link PON bike is much cheaper?"

you can see why GT had to go, there would be no real point having two brands making near identical designs.

That’s why you don’t buy transitions and buy Santa Cruz lol

Well, I guess I’d love to ride the new Tallboy and then decide, how the move to a new system tastes. The best feature imho of the VPP with a solid rear triangle was that all bearings were located in the rocker. Changing them was a breeze and there was no risk of damaging the carbon frame in the process. I tend to ride my bikes as long as possible, since they became so great. (swapped annually when I used to work in a bike shop, industry deals etc, and geometry was still shitty and new bikes sometimes brought revelatory...

Where are we at with the GT frames conspiracy for some of the SC bikes? I like that one. Tallboy providing some more material for the believers.

Whichever bike has the best damper tune specced probably wins at that point. I'm pretty sure that's a big deciding factor between bikes with different linkage designs also though. You would need control wheels, and tires at a minimum, and probably drivetrain also to get any useful data about which frame works better.

Loooks like a prooooocess eh

I’d love to see a shoot out of trail bikes using the same linkage designs. It would really interesting to start to dig a bit deeper as to what sets them apart - quality control, kinematics, maintenance, etc etc.

Remember the good old days when we talked about bikes on here?

Who's going to run Frog Wake brakes on their Guard Dog 2? C'mon, you know you want to! https://www.vitalmtb.com/features/shanghai-bike-show-2026.

Where can I buy these frames? Many of them look fantastic.

Wouldnt that weigh an obscene amount and make the wheel weird on any speeds? My moneys on lightweight stem protection I mean, it just looks like it's a cushcore or similar foamy stuff just wedged between the spokes to protect the valve stem: