There's clearly a load of ifs and buts here, but a larger and fully integrated dropper seat post represents our best chance at improving this now essential component. The Eightpins dropper is hopefully just the first look at a design that will eventually become accepted as the norm. - Mike Levy |
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www.liteville.com/en
But for most people, knowing that they have a 5 year warranty, and a 10 year crash replacement that is TRANSFERRABLE to a new owner if you decided to sell it, is good enough to get people oogling. On top of that, Liteville gives you their blessing and provides instructions on how to properly drill out their seat tube on earlier generation frames so you could run an internal dropper. Any other company would tell you to get ****** and to kiss your warranty good bye.
Also I have no hate for Santa Cruz, but you would be surprised how many of their frames have seized linkage bolts out of the box (atleast for the 2015/16 season), this does not really effect the end consumer if the dealer catches it, but I always thought this was fairly questionable.
The ball bearings for life is pretty sick, Santa Cruz does this to be pro-active about having to replace frames. If the bearings seize in the carbon frame, the forces that the suspension members experience changes quite a bit, so they can end up cracking due to the different loads. Pretty cool how much engineering goes into the laying of the fibres.
The lifetime warranty is nice, and a few other companies offer this, (such as Kona, but not for their carbon frames), but I think a crash replacement is very valuable. Warranty does not cover failure from exceeding the number of stress cycles a product has, but a crash replacement would.
Lastly, Liteviles are made in Taiwan, but that has little to do with the quality of Aluminum. The most experienced craftsman are all in Asia.
Zee Germans at Syntace already failed with procore. You are overthinking it guys.
"And don't forget that it won't work on designs that feature an interrupted or bent seat tube."
Like most modern mountain bikes.
@mikekazimer - by no means I am criticizing the choice of Pinkbike with this award. But super long travel seat posts are like gearing range recently - it's like megapixels in cameras. We're back at how many gears does your bike have. You of all should see through that The only use for 200mm dropper a man could have would be trying to ride a dirt jumping/ 4X bike in the woods... some EWS pros put travel limiters on their posts and vast majority of skilled DHillers, even at the local level, run their posts just below the grip height. Please note here that cockpit height on DH bike is an inch taller than on Enduro bike... latest first world problems of MTBers: dropper travel, rear cog sizes and too much rear end travel
You for one, obviously.
I now own a dropper post and yes I love it but I do feel like comparing them to running your post high 24/7 is unrealistic.There are other options.
So thats almost every full-sus bike made today...
1) Create industry standard for bottom brackets
2) Create industry standard for tire sizes
3) Create industry standard for seat tube size
4) Try to live long enough to see any of the above
Not that there has really been a big year in innovation with a load of bs "standards" and incremental improvement if this is the best we can come up with it is a pretty sad state in the mtb world.
On the other Hand, i´ve been asking myself the same question like someone above:
How to adjust your individual saddle height?
Not quite, but is this still close enough for a cigar?
www.pinkbike.com/news/all-about-unno-2016.html
Besides, unless your riding a first gen reverb, you've probably had little to no issues with your dropper post. I've ridden 4 years with zero rebuilds on my fox doss. This includes mounted on my fat bike all winter long.
Second, more proprietary components and new "standards" are the last thing this industry and sport needs. Getting the industry to agree on anything is like herding cats, and it wouldn't last more than a season.
Third, droppers are not essential for speed, safety or style, as Levy insists. They contribute to all 3 but are not paramount.
Finally, those who choose not to go this route aren't just salty hold-outs. They're Hite-Rite devotees.
One of the great things about bikes is how modular they are. Being able to choose all of the components is part of the joy of building a bike.
More integration is like the proliferation of "standards", tying end users into fewer companies products.
I come for the bikes, I stay for the writing.
Dropper posts are completely overrated. In over 90% of MTB videos we see the guys stand on the top of the hill, tune on their GoPros and high-five each other. It wouldn't take them long to also drop their seat post and put it back up at the bottom.
Dropper posts are convenient I agree, but I have been on MTBs for 25 years and believe me, you don't want to go back to cantilever brakes on a rainy day in the Alps.
Many of my rides have climbs interrupted by short but fast descents that are far more fun with a dropper, followed by climbs with a ledge drop into a short descent, followed by climbs with a longer fast slalom run. And throw in a couple puff rock gardens both up and down with singe good ledges. And that's just the first four miles. Having to stop and manually adjust the seat or have the seat at a poor climbing height or more in the way than it needs to be would suck on those trails.
Allot of the usefulness depends on the terrain.
I also couldnt find anything saying pinkbike was strictly MTB only, so I dont think I am on the wrong website.
On the other hand, if you're being serious then my original comment still stands.
"There was a video on the front page only a few weeks ago of a bmxer riding a one shot line through a city."
and my comments still stand too ;P