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Most of you probably won't like hearing this. I certainly didn't. Earlier this week I had a chat with a guy who works in a product management role for Ralf Bohle GmbH, which is the owner of the Schwalbe tire brand. Mainly I asked a bunch of XC racing related questions, about compounds, casings, radial ply, rolling resistance testing, wheter we'll ever see the speediest XC casing with a black sidewall and why they felt they needed to change their naming scheme for casings and compounds. The gist of it is that they are hard at work behind the scenes...

If only someone made a linkage that allowed a longer shock to to be run on the Levo and it yielded 170 mm of travel. That would be wild.

That makes a lot of sense, I appreciate that. I have been doing this so long I forget sometimes, honestly. I guerrilla marketed One Ghost Industries for the better part of 10 years and never got any flack for it. Different times now and I know I am a bit out of touch. I also don't have a lot of free time to spend in the forums, which sucks all the way around. Two jobs and a family with two younger kids each with an autoimmune disease (on top of my own health issues) makes it difficult. I also haven't...

I think it goes without saying that the torsional stiffness of a fork on a whole is a function of many things. The only point was that, assuming the same material, there isn’t a magic 15 mm axle that’s stiffer than a 20 mm axle. Yes the hub adds to the torsional rigidity of the axle. If you had the same exact hub layout, the 20 mm version would add more stiffness than the 15 mm version. The rigidity of the hub is limited by axle preload and coefficient of friction at the various hub interfaces. Proper axle torque would...

@sethimus @Evil96 @CascadeComponents I love, like love-love, that someone with an engineering background (and seemingly a degree) and a wealth of manufacturing experience provided factual mathematical evidence, and it has been refuted by "I believe the manufacturer of this shiny new thing I bought", like conformation bias doesnt exist or something.... There's a quote about facts and opinions that I'm trying to remember here...... it'll come to me....

Norco team for track walk this year

Somehow, the orange looks even worse on the Podium

Imagine two different people with the same size feet trying on the same pair of shoes. The first person tries on the shoes, and loves them. The second person puts the left shoe on their right foot, and the right shoe on their left foot, then goes and tells all their friends "these shoes are terrible." This is what it's like when people comment about brakes without doing some basic problem solving first. Do you have a good brake bleed? Were you using the correct kind of pads and rotor for your application? Were any of the braking surfaces contaminated...

Some brands do. I haven't had that experience yet. It's relevant to mention that most brands want their product's review published as soon as possible to coincide with the launch of the product, ideally on the same day. If it needs to be a long-term test, then the preference would be to have that long-term review published as early as possible, to maximize interest in the product during it's retail lifetime (aka before the next update, which will necessitate another round of reviews). So the review cycle of a product typically happens all at once, with most media companies doing...

I'm not saying that isn't a Manitou coil shock but the spring retention piece is very similar/same as a Vorsprung Telum: I'm fortunate enough to have a Telum and walked out to my garage to verify the shape as my first impression seeing the photo of that shock was 'that looks familiar'. You could say I was...bites knuckle...shocked. Not sure why Manitou hasn't made a coil shock in ages though so intrigued if it is a Manitou for sure.

Oh yeah, that thing is sweet. Didn't know it existed but now I need to have it.