All

Am I the only one here who has ever ridden toe clips? I feel old. I am old I guess. I used to ride my toe clip pedals in soccer cleats with rubber spikes for better foot retention. Nice and tight in the chunder on my fully rigid bike but soft enough to be able to rip them out when in need.

That damn Schroeder always using his Jedi mind tricks to get Dak to spill the beans!

new Levo probably incoming given timing of PB interview + new brose motor announcement

Something everyone has to realize about UBM and UDH is that SRAM is in the business of selling OEM to massive bike companies. Anything SRAM can do to make the process faster and cheaper/better for the OEMs is seen as a win. In the case of Transmission/wireless drivetrains, that is a WIN for OEMs. Say they can shave -5-10 minutes a bike not having to deal with cables, setting stops, tension, etc. They can install a Transmission drivetrain in <5mins, vs. say 10-12min for a cable-actuated version. Now, multiply that times 20,000 MTB builds and you have million(s) of dollars...

I remember being told when the Druid V2 came out that Forbidden is already using this standard and that looks to be accurate.

There are many current and recently ex-employees from Rocky, and almost all of them had no bearing on the current financial outcome of the company.

I think one thing you ignore is the "cool" factor. As a person that does not want to buy another chinese/asian frame, what are your options in the DH space? Atherton, Nicolai, Foes, else? There are some smaller builders, but they are IMO not on the level of engineering and production as the others mentioned. I bet Atherton looked/are looking at the "bespoke" road bike market and bet on that DH riders are now well-earning folks in their 40-50-ies and want something special, tailor-made, exclusive. For me the best example of losing your uniqueness as a brand is Intense. Previously...

The biggest issue I see with Atherton is that let's say they do get really popular and sell heaps. Great, start 3D printing lots of lugs and making lots of frames. The unit costs of the frames are the same if they make 20 or 2000. Sure some things may come down in price for them to bulk purchase, purchase more tubes at once, more adhesive, maybe more SRAM parts, but the actual frames don't get cheaper. They can pay off 3D printing machines faster as they'll have more revenue, but they don't generate the economies of scale of a...

Having inventory with all of the sizes, build options, etc. is so 2019. Build to order is the way forward.

I know that when I ordered my A.170 they wanted to have a conversation first because of the myriad of options that they have. I normally would be super annoyed by this because I know exactly what I want and am quite capable of figuring out my own sizing but I'll give them credit in saying it was a worthwhile discussion in that the various builds that they list have several choices you can make within them, e.g. 180mm vs 170mm Fox 38, colors, etc. Yes, I could have handled it myself if they built it out on the site...

We should probably do a few predictions posts, eh? I've got a number of thoughts going into the new year, and will synthesize them into one post, but I do think we're going to see more companies pull the plug this year. I'll go out on a limb and say Atherton Bikes may be one of those stragglers who calls it quits. I have literally no data on this, so please take this with a huge grain of salt, but when I was poking around their website I realized I can't just "buy it now" with respect to a frame...

Fox working on a new Float X2 👀 post from frameworks racing

Exactly this - not that complicated guys. You can all go back to chatting about bearings now.

As far as I’m concerned there’s only 3 major players in MTB suspension. Rockshox just updated their entire product line and it seems to be working for them so seems unlikely. Fox might be feeling that their GripX2 launch was a bit underwhelming and could go looking for gains elsewhere - plus they’ve tried it in the past. But my money would be on Ohlins. In MTB they’re the smallest of the three, especially in OEM, so it would be the least risky. They obviously have experience from moto and after their recent financial wobbles they should be looking for...

Back to rumours : a major suspension player is making USD fork

I think cartridge bearings get issues in a few ways, with the most prominent being insufficient lube from the factory followed by overzealous greasing by the mech/user. Had a convo with one of the guys at the moto shop I rent space at about bearing failures and we went down a shallow rabbit hole. Turns out excessive grease causes premature bearing failure in a few ways, but one of the interesting ones was due to 'churning', where the balls have to force the grease out of their way as they rotate. This drives more heat in the system, prematurely breaking...

Here is the "Tallest Boy" I built a few years back. TB4 with cascade link, 7.5 x 2.0 coil shock, and 150mm fork. Geo is basically the same as the current HT3 but with a more progressive leverage curve and less extreme reach/stack. Rear travel is around 147mm. It is a ripper, so good with the coil shock!

Wheelbased w/ some AXS dropper patent stuff; tl;dr new dropper(s) likely in April. Guessing we see it at Sea Otter: https://wheelbased.com/2024/12/31/fcc-dropper-and-new-battery-location-…

Looks like I'm late to the party since I've been on vacation. Brakes are definitely not easy. Between custom seals, custom tools, and some necessary knowledge that isn't widespread, good brakes take a lot. I would say they are either third or fourth most difficult thing on a bike behind the frame itself, the fork/shock, and, depending on specific design, the dropper. Some droppers are pretty simple, though. Frames are only on that list because doing a full blown production run requires tons of testing and the tooling is more complex. Brakes definitely are not something that anyone with a...

can’t spot any shifter cable. Could this finally be wireless shimano out in the wild?