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Some neat stuff in here. I know Vital doesn't have the budget to send someone to China for an extended period of time, but would be interesting to have a series covering the China scene (riders, small builders, trails etc).

Not going to lie, I got Lewis brakes and ran them all last season and they've been amazing. More consistent and better modulation than my Shimano brakes and more than enough power to stop my 270lb self on Squamish slabs and dh tracks throughout Alberta and BC. No leaks. No sticky pistons. Easy to bleed. I didn't go out of my way to order them. My LBS brought a set in to check them out and I got a great deal on them to be the guinea pig and report back. You may not like them for ethical reasons, but...

Not that I am for people outright cloning other companies' products, I have experienced this professionally myself and it is infuriating, but there is zero IP theft happening with Lewis copying Trickstuff's brakes. Design patents are a type of IP that protects the aesthetics of a product, keeping me too products from existing, but they are super rare and very difficult to get granted. Utility patents which are the IP that one would file for to protect a function or feature, like leverage adjustment or bite point adjustment cover nothing related to how something looks. Lewis copying Trickstuff's brakes does...

Reminds me of the guys in very geometrically square plaid shirts on day 1 of SEMA taking pictures next to the hot new wheels. By day 7 some of the small Asian vendors in the back had new wheels that looked very "inspired". Bottom line, I don't think any of that Lewis stuff is actually IP theft, sure it looks like other brands but I doubt anyone has a design patent on the looks. Design patents are so narrow, just an extra hole of fillet can void them.

“NO DISCUSSIONS IN THE TECH RUMOR THREAD.” Cmon man

I'll just be over here hugging my Saint cranks if anyone needs me.

Oh for sure. Closed section has its issues when you're actually designing a real product, but unlike something like the 5dev or its many knock offs, it isn't just all downsides with zero advantages. Hence why a GX crankset is lighter, stronger, stiffer, and cheaper than that 5dev bullshit.

Fuck those cranks. There's SUCH a good structural reason why holes in cranks are a bad idea, with the exception of the sram cranks. The reason that all those 5dev cranks break despite not being very lightweight is 100 level shit, and I hate that the mtb industry is stupid enough to entertain it. A 2 dimensional truss structure is fucking terrible in torsion, and most of the crank arm sees a LOT of torsion. Then you've got all the stress concentrations with all the internal corners, and that multiplies your max stresses by a lot again. The reason why...

Maybe it's a translation thing? It is an odd statement. I haven't seen it mentioned but the Sender prototypes had threaded inserts for all the bolts and pivots to improve repairability. But it appears they ditched it on the production frame.

What's amazing with this design is that Canyon have decided a single pivot is good enough to control the axle path, braking behaviour and pedalling behaviour but the leaverage rate requires a 6 bar linkage and all the additional complexity and hardware associated with that.

This bike actually sounds really cool. It runs a 250 mm shock, which is something I think might get slept on.

For all those mourning the death of the WeAreOne freeride bike, well, we now have this!

It looks like they're using the seat stays from a sommet or vt-01 I'm also guessing it's basically the same as the gamux 4+2 bar proto spotted earlier this year, but low pivot flavoured. 4 Bars to have baked in anti-rise, anti-squat, and axle path, then 2 bars for leverage rate. They're getting very popular these days.

Interesting how transmission is lighter despite looking massive XX SL w/ Battery = 441 Pod Ultimate w/ Discrete clamp = 47 488g vs 510g for this XTR Di2 On the topic of tech innovations, I guess we have gone "too far" when it comes to drivetrains. After 7 years of only using AXS, I recently installed the new SRAM mechanical transmission and really enjoying it. Much faster and just as smooth as the Transmission AXS stuff I have been using since launch. You can replace the cheaper components of the 90 groupset like cassette, pulleys and cranks with the higher...

Yeah, so dual crowns I guess. Turning diameter on eebs is probably stopping that progress. Oh well, I'm getting old and can afford replacing forks on the regular. Still feels wasteful and CSUs are in need of an elegant (aka robust and affordable) solution.

Fort Bill being a bit of an outlier there. Maybe compare Loudenvielle 24 to Losing 2018 😂. And on your second point. Just look at the race times on these two links. https://www.rootsandrain.com/series1831/2024-whoop-uci-world-cup-dh/sch… https://www.rootsandrain.com/series899/2018-mercedes-benz-uci-world-cup… Similar or shorter duration tracks in 2018. It's clear that WB are trying to get the longer tracks like MSA or Fort Bill to be well under 5 mins for the men. But there's also clearly no conspiracy to have short, straight/easy, all sub 3 min tracks like so many tin foil hat wearers want us to believe

Don’t start this tangent again please 😅

Rear center looks short

Shrinkflation, just like the box of cookies. Pay the same get less.

my brother in christ what are they doing needs this but gently caressing your ballsack from the front