WAKIdesigns

Bliss - tgat was more or less what I meant. Willie - yup! Marketing will erase DirtTV Bike Tech vid from Punta Ala from the memory of many of those who have seen it, and most of potential clients will never see it. Fabien might indicate that CTD and 15mm is not good for hardcore AM bikes, but after few press releases only few will remember. Off course unless Fox crtitque on board and brings back 160mm 36RC2 and offers it for both 26 and 650B. Im sure guys at RS who watched it, are going, shit we could give 20mm axle to the PIKE - 20g, who the f would notice...

My bike on 405 does not wheelie steep gradients, but I might have some technique fundamentals dialed and some sunday warrior might get upset if I sell it to him :D I actualy wheelie often on purpose on technical climbs as it is an effective way of dealing with rock slab steps or larger roots. I also compromised by doing longer TT. But to me nothing screws up climbing more than sub 68 HA coped with high cockpit. If I switch my fork to 150mm giving me 66.5 HA, climbing even the easy rock gardens is nearly impossible. My next bike will have 399cs.

I'm not a supporter of slack&low as my trails are quite slow and very rocky. To me, the head angle is something you design for speed the bike will be used at for most of its service. BB heights can go crazy mad low for a new school touch, if the bike is to be used for riding on machine dug trails with 165 cranks. People go a bit too crazy about slack&low for all sorts of bikes, as if someone found a fountain of youth, or a way for communist economy to work. One thing is true though that there are bikes that are hideous, long TT with steep head angle and high cockpit = fail as fk!

Willie - good stuff. i may add this: weight distribution is a very blurry subject because rider should be in neutral position, that is 99% of weight on pedals. Long TT eases up weight shifting as it allows you to do that more dynamicaly. Short chainstays do not compromise climbing as much as slack head angle which makes the front wheel wandering a lot. Slack is fine on fireroad climbs, but you won't get away with it on rocky path when negotiating between stones and roots. Problems with weighing front wheel on steepest gradients are non existent on my 405mm bike. You can also try to cover up the short cs with steeper seat angle but, that will compromise standing pedalling. Unless you run a stem that is 40mm or shorter, wide bars cover up for lack of stability of a steeper HA, what is often overlooked. In my honest opinion short cs gives you more by easing up pop the bike into the air and manualing that it takes from uphilling. Due to construction reasons and 2x10 chainsets using huge middle cogs requiring lots of clearance we don't see it almost at all.

He did start in some British Enduro and did the top 3 if not won the thing. I don't remember. He is a freak.

Yes, off course sometimes they ride what manufacturers want them to ride. I don't think though that Brian did a team order. He's too big and Ibis is too cool. It was either being polite or he really felt fastest on the 29er. It's not a relation rider-manufacturer like for instance Santa Cruz and Josh B. Fabien really stuck his head out, even though he didn't have to. That's why I appreciated it so much.

Hah! I like it! We are so interesting, having feelings and thoughts related to some activity, each of us experiences the world differently, notices different things, then each of us interprets them differently and builds different things even if we were given the same percieved material for processing. Then everyone has a different way of dealing with those feelings and experiences, and each single one of us feels urges of different magnitude to express them. Ultimately we have different means of expression. You wrote a poem about an injury sustained on a bike. No one else could do it at least in this way. Who the fuck cares? many would say - well you do! And this is what matters. Uniqueness is awesome!

Willie, if there was "real science" behind it, don't you think that all those companies would find the perfect geometry for each kind of bike, long time ago? Even high-end 26" XC racing bikes were using slightly different geometries between different designers, before 29" armada came three years ago. Spec is known for dialed bikes and even them released geometrical nightmare that P.AM was, at the time when they released the SX Trail wonder that finaly debeiged AM bikes. Everything is about compromises and priorities: and some are fucked like chain stay length on 99% of bikes being a result of keeping production price low. It costs double or even tripple to make a short CS and keeping it stiff and light. If you just draw a tube all the way to BB/pivot you can't achieve anything short. Im tired of people making a big deal out of bicycle design when so many good examples are available for comparison.

@Slimboyjim - It was Nico who said it. @taletotell - straight talk is rare indeed. Fabien Barel did more straight talk in the bike tech vid for DirtTV than many pros did in their entire career, probably all together. I cannot thank him and Steve Jones enough. If there's so few people with such spine and balls like Fabien, the industry will feed people with threir usual BS and they will forget it, and tinker "geeky facts" vs "troll assumptions". I wish more people would talk like Fabien. Bike world would be a better place.

pushingbroom - "Haven't we had decent "enduro bikes since at least 2010 ?" I thought so not so long ago but closer the World Enduro Series came and more I thought about, then I saw vids from Punta Ala. AM bikes are dialed but Enduro will redefine it, because it will add racing experience to them. BIkes are surely being developed with that angle in mind as we speak but it will take two years or so until that research takes form. Geometry and even wheelsizes will be put to the test in the most professional way it has ever happend to mid-travel bikes. For now no one can say which wheel size will be the best one in 5 years. Now we have the pressure for 650B, but racing will determine if it really is the one to go. ENduro will also be the prooving ground for electronic suspension, and unless it gets banned, this is where we will see that steepest development curve. And who knows what will happen because of electronics - will it increase the travel or decrease it and thus alter the geometry? Will it improve the pedaling efficiency so people will be able to have more travel, or will it decrease is because suspension will deal with bumps better?