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The lightning bolt means she's going to be Gasgas' other pickup in addition to Brook, right?

75k to get a spot on a factory team is nothing. Hundreds of families in the US every year put a second mortgage on their house for their kids to get 10th place at lorettas super mini class. Don't even get me started with ski racing. People send kids to "academy" that costs 100k a year. Then like have a 1% chance of being on a national team. Then make 20 dollars a year unless they are attractive enough for a Rolex or Visa sponsorship.

It was either on the Gravity CoOp podcast or Vital podcast but one of the coaches who runs a Devo team (gravity academy maybe?) threw out that some parents are completely down with dishing out 30k for their kids to get to do a World Cup season. So yeah. This is pretty common practice. Every XC devo team (including Bear which is probably the most successful in America) have club dues that are pretty high. I also suspect that a lot of the teams are set up (not to use a loaded example) like pyramid schemes. The younger, less talented...

The problem with jumping on an ebike with a new motor from a new (to MTB ) company is all the unknowns when it comes to support, regardless of where it was designed or built. Ebike motors and batteries are not like other bike components - if your bike comes with a sexy sounding new shock that turns out to be unreliable, you can replace it with another brand. You can't do that with batteries or motors (yet). This is a real concern since none of the existing motor/battery manufacturers have a perfect track record. Even if you get an...

Frameworks will likely be in the top 15 ranked teams. Depending on what rumors you believe, by my calculations (see spreadsheet a few posts up), they will be somewhere between 11 and 15. Even if they are in the 15-20 range, they would likely get a wildcard due to their public image. I don't know if Neko will want to pay the fees to become a world series team, but Angel, Asa, and Anna (if she is going to be on the team) can all race the world cups based on their personal rankings. Neko himself is not ranked high...

I think Frameworks is a great example of how it is still possible under the new structure...

Thanks for your replies everyone! I already have a bulk of the tools since I moonlight as an overflow bike mechanic/bike builder. A couple shaft clamps and a few bespoke tools isn't that bad for what seems to be a natural step in my bike maintenance experience. Couple more questions: Is it worth getting a low range torque wrench (1-3 nm). My current Weras are 2.5-25 nm, and 20-100nm respectively. Is it worth springing for a soft jaw vice vs just a regular vice? What type of nylon picks are people using (links to tools would be great). Also, when...

There's a good number of e-bike motor manufacturers out there trying to get into the market. There's a good reason why you predominantly see Shimano and Bosch on full-power, and the reasoning is exactly what you said.

I had wondered about a 2-stage braking system where the lever first engages a dynamo-style hub that harvests some energy and provides light braking without using the discs, then pulling further activates the regular brakes. Then the rider gets control over the front/rear split, or only use it on the rear wheel if thats better. Could be a way to control speed on descents which people would often drag their brakes without cooking the brake system. Should be easier to integrate with regular mid mount motors and drivetrains? With the dropper cabling conundrum - why aren't cables integrated in to...

A torque wrench. Or two! They don't even need to be particularly expensive - as long as the values you need are more in the middle of the range most torque wrenches out there are accurate enough. Especially if you are retuning things because an overtightened piston nut can crunch the shims and they flex upwards enough to create leakage, rendering your reshim completely useless. Also the delicate alloy threads will survive much longer being taken apart repeatedly when done to the correct torque. There is a fine line between a piston bolt which will rattle loose and one that...

Yea, in highschool my parents were thrilled when my old X-vert triple dumped 4+ year old damper fluid all over the living room carpet from the kitchen counter..... I love rebuilding Rockshox stuff, its very straight forward, just follow each step of the tech docs.

We used to normal bleed everything at rockshox in the shop. A wet bench/vice setup would be ideal. Somewhere you can spill a bunch of oil and not worry about it. This is what we had- Cookie pan under the vice and seal it up, get a drain fitting and hose and run that to a 5 gal bucket on the floor. You can then just build and dump oil out on the vice with no cleanup.

Unlikely that the final hit is what killed the wheel. The week in Whistler or some of the riding is Socal likely caused the issue and the hit in PC caused the final failure. BTW great review and thank you for showing the failure. Everything breaks (especially under Mikey) so real world experience is important.