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I saw these forks on a newly released Honda Electric trials motorcycle. Showa 39mm stanchions, 190mm travel. Could we see them available for downhill bikes one day?

I assume you'll have to change spring rate and chain length too.

Chris king

On the note of disengaging hubs and pedal kick, so long as whatever drive mechanism you have can automatically engage when you pedal forwards, it's impossible to prevent it from causing pedal kick. The drive mechanism, whether it be hub or BB based, can't differentiate between the chain getting pulled on due to you pedaling and the chain getting pulled on from the suspension compressing. Riding backwards is a little different in that you can use the fact that the hub is rotating backwards relative to the axle to disengage the hub.

It took reading four pages of mountain bike discussion, but I just remembered they have giant TMDs inside of skyscrapers to resist wind and earthquakes.

Well said!

The downside for me personally has to do with spending that much time away from my family. My comment wasn’t meant to suggest anything negative about Taiwan itself. I place a high value on getting to be at home with my family every night. I have spent the majority of my career in manufacturing and it’s a lesson I learned early on from fellow welders and other manufacturing/construction trades that spent time “getting the bag” on jobs that included a lot of time away. The vast majority of them regretted it and took large pay reductions (30-50%) to get away...

My guess was Evil. They haven't seemed to do much of anything new in a while...unless I just missed it. Them shutting down would be a bummer. If I'm opening up my considerations for a future short travel trail bike to include the Superboost malarkey then I could potentially be talked into The Following LS. It seems like a really awesome bike. ...but then again when was the last time anyone saw someone riding a Niner?

Yes, I make significantly more money doing software engineering, but man its hard to get passionate about getting up every day and writing software that processes credit cards.

Traveling is one of the biggest perks for me. I personally love being in Taiwan and it’s a good jumping off point for exploring more of that side of the world. The actual flying part sucks but being there is awesome.

Not really, unless you are like a very specific marketing or engineer or tech support. Anything else from HR to purchasing, sales, demand planning, production planning, warehouse management, accounting, IT and anything else really require a similar skill set to any other sector of business. I went from demand planning at a Bike Parts & Accessories distributor to demand planing for an hardware store company and the job is pretty much the same. But salary and benefits are way better outside of the bike industry.

The more I thought about this I feel the right framing (pun intended) is even more simple. The consolidation has (mostly) already happened. One fun way I tried to showcase this semi-objectively was by using Google Trends and seeing frequency of keyword searches of bikes we all consider "household names". As you can see, the Specialized Stumpjumper and Trek Fuel see an order of magnitude more traffic than anything from the smaller guys. Santa Cruz Nomad was a little bit of a a shocker here. This, combined with how "horizontal" the big boys already are (shoes, tires, helmets, tire sealant...

One person says we don't need 5-10mm longer C's 20mm longer reach and 64.5 ha mid travel bikes and another says it's exactly what we need. The great thing about having soo many choices is that you should be able to find exactly what you want so long as you aren't locked into a specific brand. Don't get upset because the brand you want doesn't make your ideal geo, very high chances are someone else does make it. Give me long chainstays, long wheelbase, linear travel, and slack. One in mid travel and one in burly long travel.

As a current St Evo owner as well as a Madonna V3 owner, the Madonna pedals 2-3x better than the Stumpy and tracks the ground like Velcro. I have a hard time wanting to ride the Stumpy that weights almost 11 pounds lighter than the Madonna because it doesn’t pedal or track as well as the Madonna. Some of the new suspension gizmos are pretty rad but it seems that they are trying to make up for poor kinematic design that comes from trying to maintain a certain design aesthetic and not from trying to push the design envelope. Trek...

Competitive Pokemon was not on my Vital bingo card for today lol

What I find confusing about the new Stumpjumpers is they offer it in a coil version with a 27.5 wheel and they've corrected geo for the smaller wheel using the upper link just like with the previous Stumpjumper, which significantly reduces progression. So the most linear bike in the entire lineup comes with a coil.

“[O]bliterate every trade-off in the trail game.” If this kind of ad copy resonates with you, talk with your doctor and find out if Stumpjumper is right for you; “no compromises” is the only 100% accurate FDA approved screening for muppet.

New Hightower release seems like further evidence that we are in a period of only marginal changes for geometry/suspension design. And the trend of "category creep" seems to continue--the Hightower has gone from a 135mm travel bike in Gen 1 to a 150mm travel bike in its new iteration, much like how the Trek Fuel EX or Specialized Stumpjumper have become longer-travel bikes over the years.

Okay, so I'm shooting for racing Breck Epic in 2025, so if anyone is wondering why I'm posting about XC bikes lately. Lauf will be releasing a 120/130 XC bike on the 25th, and my guess is that it will have a carbon leaf spring version of Spot's Living Link https://spotbikes.com/pages/technology I have one of their (rigid) gravel bikes, and it's really nice for the money. It'll be interesting to see what they do in the MTB space.