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The Bomber, no question. Better damper, better chassis. They put Judys on pathway bikes. 🤮 I don't know what to say about the shock. If she's light enough it might not matter. I'd also look at better tires if she's still on the stock ones. More control = more confidence = happy rider.

Exactly. E-bikes give e-motos a "justification" to fokk around on trail. Both kinds of toys will always end up getting access for ALL wheels shut down. But reading the comments, I see the pattern that every person commenting here has that one special exception to do wrong by all because of their circumstance. Every post I read is a "I/We need/want..." and then they break laws, tresspass & find their own little grey area. History says if it has 2 wheels and causes problems...remove 2 wheels from the area. Here's my take on e-bikes & e-motos. They should be separate...

But that's exactly what we don't want and what was originally the intention to limit pedelecs to a speed limit to keep the status of a bicycle that is unregulated in that regard. Its insanely stupid to risk that status because some people want to ride electric motorcycles everywhere or going 10 mph faster on a paved road: 'The risks and issues are real: in the worst case, e-bikes could lose their legal status as bicycles, leading to mandatory helmets, type approval, registration, insurance, denial of trail access, and riding bans in certain areas. Currently, some players are playing with...

I don’t see the hate for responsible use but that’s not what happens a lot. Having some dude run up on you at 20mph on a climb trying to push past you because they are a holes deserves all the hate. Look at skypark they had to add signs all over place because there were problems and even added a climb for e-bikes but most refuse to use it because it’s harder and eats up battery. There are plenty of reasons to hate even the class 1 but it’s not the bike it’s the people who ride them.

I spent months of frustration and probably lost years off my life, trying to sort out my tubeless setup. I taped and re-taped my rims, tried all sorts of different settings on my air compressor, and swapped out the cheap cone-shaped tubeless valves several times. Could not get the tire to inflate. As it turned out, all I needed was better valves with the flat rubber block on the backside, instead of the cone. Instant fix and I'll never go back to the cheapos. It's a dumb problem to have over $12.

here's troy's 3rd place run

Super Deluxe and Vivid all have quite similar characteristics over the years, when just looking at dyno plots - they don't have wildly different tunes year to year like Fox does. The latest ones are a little lighter in low speed compression so will feel more responsive, which is a pretty common theme from most brands in the last couple of years. The C2 tunes allow you to add more LSC without being as harsh on small bumps as the C1 or earlier shocks did. eg the "hotdog" generation shocks have very low high speed damping and increasing LSC made...

Shoutout to that one bike shop in your region that's determined to fix anything and get your bike rolling again, no matter what. Most bike shops either don't have the skill, tools, or willpower to fix the really weird and obscure problems, but there's always one bike shop in any region that has all the right tools and staffs one or two legendary mechanics that will find a way to fix it. When I lived in Portland, OR Fat Tire Farm was famous for always having the right tool. The owner's policy was that, when any obscure repair came along...

There is not much space for sustainability/environmentalism in a high consumption sport like mountain biking. As far as equipment goes, the most sustainable thing you can do is buy a bike that will last you more than a season or two, and avoid driving a lifted Tacoma to the trailhead.

Titanium has been shown to have a high carbon footprint. According to Reynolds it's 3x the footprint of steel, placing it up around carbon.

I'll kick this off with a mention to Patagonia for their mountain bike clothing. Being as big of a brand as they are, I think it's admirable that so much of their focus goes into producing gear with recycled materials, produced in fair trade factories, and their commitment to repairing/recycling clothing. I have a few pieces of their mountain bike specific clothing and they've all performed great and have held up.

I'd like to nominate all the brands that make steel or Ti frames.