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Hope v4's are the best of all the brakes I've tried, which is pretty much all them now. They'd be a 10/10 if you didn't have to fluff around with the resi lid when bleeding. Worth a shot!

On Hope vs Intend, I've had both and they feel very different. Personally, I like the Hope lever mounting a lot better than Intend and they don't have issues with the lever blade being too short for wider grips. The power is similar but the lever feel is really different, the Hopes are closer to Trickstuff in the sense you don't get a ton of feedback at the lever when the pads engage, but the power comes on faster and the adjustments are more meaningful. The Intends have a really light, nice feeling lever - but it feels more like...

Watched a guy at the Monster Pro DH in Cat 1 snap his top tube ripping through a 90 degree berm. Irony being he didn’t realize it. I heard it clear as day & was telling people around me “I just heard his bike snap”. He hits the 3 flat hucks Neko built to “break test frames” & on the 3rd one the down tube made a crunch sound & that was it. Said he’s had it for 2 weeks. JRA !

Wow I've never considered an Ari until that new Timp Peak. Nice to see an ebike being sold as a frame, even if it is expensive, but transferrable lifetime warranty?! (this is a first for a DTC brand to do lifetime warranty at all right?) Also, 600wh or 800wh battery that can be swapped or range extended, so all of us should be happy in some configuration. Vertical mount crab link without trunion. It would be really hard to buy a Vala or a Regulator over this if you can come to grips with owning an Ari.

Did you get those launch coordinates from a group chat you were recently added to?

Excellent points. Up until maybe 10 years ago, you could find RST products in local bike brands of third world countries (I'm speaking from experience here, I'm Argentinian). Then, SunTour started to gain market share. These days most entry/supermarket bikes have unbranded or same-brand-as-the-bike forks, mostly AliExpress basic stuff. Still, RST seems to be big in the APAC area, and in some way, in Brazil. You have to understand there's no way for a guy with a basic income of less than 250 USD to get the kind of money necessary to buy a brand new Fox 40 or Rockshox...

Hey all – thanks for the great discussion and thoughtful feedback, it’s been great to follow. Just to jump in with some info from our side: The Chain Damper was originally developed for aggressive DH and winch-and-plummet style Enduro riding—especially the kind we do here in the UK with steep climbs and even steeper descents. The standard spring setup is tuned to perform best when descending hard, where the damper really shines and this is why you'll see the unit on a number of WC bikes this season. That said, we totally get that not everyone rides the same terrain...

Can confirm, previous to the new tariffs, bikes coming into Canada that were produced and packed in other countries than the US were not subject to tariffs, as they were just warehoused in the us. But as soon as they were painted or packed such as Project 1 Trek, they're subject to tariffs. Trek actually offered to offset the extra costs for Canadian dealers for this bikes, but now with the tariff being charged as it comes into the US i think everything's getting hit, sometimes more than once.

Unfortunately, they have already been dealing with this.. Chinese companies were setting up shop in Mexico and assembling products made with Chinese parts to try and side step the tariffs on Chinese goods by saying "Made in Mexico ". Didn't take long for customs to figure out that game...

There is a difference between trade restriction like European countries not selling fish to Russia and import duties (tariffs, custom taxes whatever you wanna call it). With trade restrictions, yes second market are used to avoid such restrictions. In the case you mentioned, Belarus could buy the fish from Europe and then resell it to Russia since Belarus doesn't have the trade restrictions with Russia. This is also how Iran purchase most of their restricted goods through second market. China is doing the same currently with NVIDIA AI GPU. With import duties, trades of good is not restricted just costlier...

Unfortunately tariffs apply to the country of manufacture and not where they were imported through. So a Chinese good coming through MX will be roughly the same as through Long Beach. There may be the potential to setup assembly in another country like MX but you would need to have “substantial transformation” “which occurs when the product gains a new name, character, or use” according to a very quick google of US customs rules. *This would likely apply to a bicycle that goes through the frame up assembly process including paint. But then you would have to weigh the added...

As a lifelong bike industry head I have been apprehensive about contributing to this forum topic, despite the conversation quite often being interesting, informed and high level, as it felt morbid to discuss the potential job loss of friends, colleagues and acquaintances. While I don't think I am going to reduce the angst of the thread as I sit here reading industry news early on a Saturday morning after another anxious nights sleep, I will take the opportunity to bring things back around to the bike business. I think this article brings home some of the potential immediate effects of...

Apologies for being derivative with the Retailer link, I was knee deep contemplating new layers and missed your post.

Feel like I'm always posting EscapeCollective links here, but to be fair, they are one of the few places paying journalists to research/report on the bike industry in more than a superficial way. They have a piece up on the tariffs: https://escapecollective.com/new-us-tariffs-are-going-to-wreak-havoc-on… It includes quotes from a few small brands, including Esker & Borealis. Bicycle Retailer is also publishing some good,detailed stories: https://bicycleretailer.com/industry-news/2025/04/04/bike-maker-hopes-a… This thread began in October 2023. Unfortunately, I think that even ~18 months later, the answer to "Will more companies be shutting down in the next 12-24 months?" is still 'Yes.' We started off talking about a...

If I were a betting man, it's because they thought that dropping something like that just before a race would leverage WBD/UCI into giving in. If you air a grievance too early they could have used it against the teams in selection of wildcard teams. If they waited until after those teams were announced but did it any earlier than now they'd have basically given the WBD/UCI folks enough time to just not make a statement and make the athletes sweat about what the response would be. At least at this point the athletes can posture like "without us there's...

Why would you trade a 200 OneUp for a 175 mm Reverb? It makes no sense to me that losing 2.5 cm of drop, having a battery I can hit my knees on, and spending $$$ is worth getting rid of a cable.

I am very surprised it’s still a 210x55