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I know I'm late to this party, but the difference between a 650b front wheel and a 29" front wheel is enormous in terms of stack height. The same head tube length will be 40 mm lower on a 650b front wheel and 650b specific fork. Especially in a world where manufacturers are already running teeny tiny head tubes (90mm!!) on some size small bikes to get that stack down for small riders, a 650b front wheel makes a big difference in getting small bike geometry and extra large bike geometry into the same ballpark of body position and handling.

Should this be renamed to "Tech Rumors and Innovation, until a brand asks for posts to be deleted"?

Bushing require tight tolerances and proper maintenance. The cycling industry is crappy at tight tolerances. Most cyclist are crappy at maintenance. It's a win win resulting in the horrible reputation that bushings have. Like press fit bearings, they are the correct engineering solution. But that would require the bike industry to stop being crappy.

troy brosnan won MSA on that bike fwiw.

Was gonna post about my Turner bushings. Was not a good choice in the muddy northeast. Worked fine when fresh and clean, but I was taking apart the pivots for a clean and grease every month. Sick bikes anyway. That 5 spot was 15 years ahead of its time.

Dave Turner had bushing on his Turner Bikes and they worked great in Austin (mainly dry riding and plenty of creek crossings). I had an O2 and 5Spot which were some of my favorite frames.

My guess

Buddy of mine works for an mtb brand that did headset routing and they saw a noticeable dip in sales on these models. They’ve pivoted back on a newer model. Not sure if they’ve seen better success with that model but it will be interesting to see. My wife has a repeater and the headset routing has been a nightmare.

What's old is new.

I guess with DNIS brakes you skip steps 2 & 3 and go straight to neglect?

re: link checker - loris embargo was for today. b/c someone leaked the unlisted video 4 days ago, the news was blown and they made it private. the video being public today isn't "old news" really, it's just official.

Vergier to Commencal officially official.