Here at Pinkbike, we get inundated with all kinds of questions, ranging from the basic "Can I have stickers" to more in-depth, soul-searching types of queries like if you should pop the question or what to name your first child. Ask Pinkbike is an occasional column where we'll be hand-picking and answering questions that have been keeping readers up at night, although we'll likely steer clear of those last two and keep it more tech oriented.
Strong brakes for a big rider? Question: @goulding asks in the
All Mountain Enduro & Cross Country forum:
I need help deciding on what brakes to upgrade to. I currently have a 2019 Scott Ransom 920 and the stock Shimano brakes are horrendous. I have just over 300 kms on the bike and the rear has gotten to the point that I can no longer trust it at speed. I must decide between two brakes: the SRAM Code R’s and the Magura MT5. I like modulation in my brakes and not a solid on/off feel and I like to ride technical enduro style trails. Which brake would be a better fit for me and why? I should also mention I am 6’2 and 240 lbs, so I will need a brake strong enough to hold my weight. | Two excellent choices. I am a fan of both the Magura MT5 and SRAM Code brakes for all the reasons you have listed. If I was going to pick a winner for you, it would be the Codes for a number of reasons. First, your Ransom has an Eagle 12-speed drivetrain, so you'll appreciate the accurate positioning of SRAM's Matchmaker direct mount shift lever perches. Second, is that SRAM's brake lever blades may be a little wonky for small hands, but they fit larger hands quite well. Last, but not least, Code brakes are "good" for downhill racing, but they absolutely rock for high amplitude trail riding. All the power you'll need, with sensitive modulation to keep your wheels rolling over sketchy terrain that would send most riders sliding. |
Longer-Stroke Fork for My Hardtail? Question: Matt7082 asks in the
All Mountain Enduro & Cross Country forum:
I entered the sport with a hardtail. My bike currently has a RockShox Judy 110mm travel. The bike has been great and I’m having a blast. But, more and more frequently, I bottom the fork out. I’ve put more air in, messed with the rebound settings a bit, and I just can’t help my curiosity in a bigger fork, but I feel like I may begin to lose some handling and general characteristics of my hardtail. Considering something in the range of 140mm-160mm like a Fox Float. Too much travel? Save up and buy a full suspension bike? Thoughts? | Your intuition is correct. Long-travel hardtails are becoming quite popular these days and you would benefit from a longer, 140mm-stroke fork. I assume that any bike with a 110mm Judy fork also has old-school geometry, so you'd get more confident handling from a slacker head angle in addition to the extra cushion. There are negatives to that conversion, however: The seat tube angle will also slacken and your bottom bracket height will rise slightly. You should be able to ignore the BB issue, and you could compensate for the seat tube angle by moving your saddle forward a half inch.
But, before you start shopping for that 140mm fork, understand that your bike's head tube area was probably not designed to handle the additional forces that a longer fork will impose on the frame. A broken frame can put you in the hospital, or worse.
Your issue may be simpler. Your skills have probably improved to the point where your present bike is incapable of taking you to the next level. I'd suggest you start shopping for a new ride that has proper geometry and suspension. You're going to need it anyway, and it will unlock a world of possibilities as you continue to progress. |
Can You Teach an Old Dog New Tricks? Question: @elcaminero asks in the
All Mountain Enduro & Cross Country forum:
So, I've been riding mountain bikes in the west since I was little. Always rode hardtails, currently ride a steel Kona Honzo with a 150 Revelation up front. Single speed, geared low. XC, Trail, Enduro. Live in central Idaho. Every time I try a buddy's full suspension bike, it feels sloppy and sluggish, even my son's 2015 Yeti SB5 feels that way to me. Actually bikes with gears feel that way to me too. I'd rather hike-a-bike a few super steep sections than deal with the rattle and slap of a derailleur. The whole idea of sitting on my prostate and tractoring up hills doesn't appeal to me. I'd rather be standing up and cranking on my 800mm handlebars.
That said, two weeks ago I rode lift access at Targhee for the first time, and also for the first time, started wondering how different the mountain would feel on a full suspension bike. Plus everyone looked at me like I was a sad old man, not the single speed hardtail baller that I see in the mirror. Do you ever get over the sagginess of the rear shock? Can you still ride out of the saddle 80% of the time? Help me visualize. | Sadly, dual suspension offers no hope for you and your kind. We have never met, but I can visualize the sun baked leather skin, flecks of gray in the unshaven face, the furrowed brow, the distant gaze, the zero body fat physique with skinny legs and arms that can pound out 12-hour rides without a drop of water or a gram of sustenance. I can feel the half smile you crack as you motor by enduro bros down sketchy descents. You, and all of your million-feet-of-climbing retired firemen friends have the skills, lungs and legs to humble dual-suspension contemporaries at will, but your septuagenarian muscle memories are evolutionary cul de sacs, stranded decades ago when the land bridge to rear suspension collapsed into the sea.
There is a glimmer of hope, however. You can rent a high-end DH or enduro bike at almost any bike park in the world, and for a fleeting weekend enjoy the sensation of floating above the terrain at one with and in complete control of a mechanically superior machine. Welcome home, pilgrim. |
Can Wide Tires Corner Well? Question: @nematon785 asks in the
All Mountain, Enduro & Cross-Country Forum:
My current setup is an enduro wheel build: 27.5, Maxxis Minion HR2 2.35" front and rear. I very much prefer strong and precise handling, and give lower tire pressure a back seat. This is also what drives my smaller wheel choice, as I am on a budget and can't afford high-end 29-inch wheels to match strength and rigidity. That's okay. I want cornering to be confident, not mushy.
So, my questions for the guys who have gone 29" wheels and 2.5" tires: Is there clearly much more contact patch and does traction increase? Do you think if I stick with narrower tires, higher pressures, and smaller wheels, I can avoid heavy tire casings, Cushcores, wider rims, or switching to 29" - and still maintain a laterally rigid feel in hard turns? My OEM Maxxis EXO tires feel pretty sloppy when pushed hard on the sidewalls unless I go to pressures over 25 /28 psi. Will wider tires, bigger wheels (or both) increase that sloppiness? | Proper rim width is the key to tire stability, so I presume by your descriptions that your bike has 25-millimeter inner-width rims, which play well with 2.35-inch tires. Higher tire pressures stiffen the tire casings at the expense of straight-line grip and suspension performance. Wider rims better support the tire's sidewalls at lower pressures and maintain the shape of the tread as the tire flexes laterally. For those reasons, you'd want to use rims in the neighborhood of 30 millimeters inner width to get the firm cornering feel you seek. This is true for both 27.5 and 29 inch wheels.
The go-to for riders who are aggressive in the turns and want the traction benefits of lower tire pressures are stiff, dual-ply DH casing tires, but they weigh a ton and their tacky rubber can be insufferable while climbing. Cushcore inserts also support the tire's sidewalls and stabilize the tread, so many riders who demand razor-sharp cornering will opt for lighter, faster rolling tires (like your Minions with EXO casings) and take the weight penalty in the form of inserts which, like DH casings, corner well at lower pressures. Barring the purchase of wider rims, this is probably your best option.
Finally, there are performance advantages to larger, 29-inch wheels, but none so great that you should abandon your 27.5 whip before it's time and buy a new ride. The specific benefits that 29-inch wheels have in the turns are related to their longer contact patch, which stabilizes the tire's edging blocks and dramatically reduces front end push. Rubber is the heaviest component of a wheel, however, so the downside to 29ers is that same-sized tires weigh significantly more to achieve slightly better grip. |
Wider rims stabilize the tire's sidewalls and contact patch. It's important to match your tires and rims in order to maximize cornering performance at optimum air pressure settings. Syntace graphic
Have some unresolved tech questions? Jump in the
Pinkbike Forum and we'll look to answer it for next time.
In the last 15 yrs i've had a load of full sus bikes but always seem to go back to a ss hardtail. If you need more comfort buy a 2nd rear wheel with bigger volume tyre and Cushcore for those rougher days. That's what i've done.
I'm with Waki on this one, aggro hardtails are sweet but that thing is ridiculous. No amount of fork travel is going to eliminate the feeling of the rigid rear end ricocheting off obstacles. I see no point going beyond 130ish, and plenty of hardtails in the 120-140 range absolutely shred (Honzo, Meta HT, etc).
Brilliant.
I don’t know why I’m getting downvoted for saying you can’t buy decent straight steerer 26 inch forks anymore. Send links don’t downvote. I’ve been looking everywhere for a decent set.
I think you got neg propped because nobody was talking about 26 or straight steerers? I don't think anyone disagrees that that shit is impossible to find anymore. The time to make moves on that was like 5 years ago when 26" stuff was selling for peanuts.
As for the other hardtail question. Of course that Chromag picture was recipe to get the comment section burning again. It was proven to work. The story about that bike simply is that it was designed and built for one guy who likes his bike just like that. Chromag made it available for others. If you like it, you can buy it. If you don't, then don't. Pissing on your cellphone touchscreen is optional. I looked at the geometry numbers of that Chromag once. With both forks sagged, the geometry of that Chromag is quite similar to that of my bike. It isn't all that extreme. Of course his forks go a bit deeper so he may end up a little steeper but that deep down into the travel of such a long fork is pretty much your catch net and you'll need to adapt your posture on your bike accordingly.
"I see full suspension riders on XC trails bobbing around on their suspension like rubber ducks. Spending 95% of the ride in their saddle. Call me a snob, but it just looks kinda lame."
Does this sound like a guy who would be happier on full suspension? It's literally the stereotype of the crotchety singlespeeder who's going to stand and mash the pedals til his knees explode... I've seen the exact person RC described at every XC race I've ever been to. If he was a geared hardtail rider at least he'd be familiar with the idea/feeling of sitting and spinning up a climb, but if my SS friends are any indication, he'll probably never be happy adopting a seated/suspended style. The only hope is to demo a FS at a bike park, where the benefit of the downs will be obvious and the uphill all happens on a lift.
Butt chugging is simply the superior way to consume vodka.
One of my lifelong best friends rides a Redline Monocog with 130mm fork, hydraulic disc front and Avid mechanical disc rear. He will never be talked out of his setup - many have tried. He even built up an enduro bike last year and it's basically his loaner bike now because he never rides it. He actually shreds though.
His road/cx bike is a "tringle speed" - triple front crank, with 3 cogs in the back, no shifter. The front/rear cog pairs are sized for equal chain length... when it's time to upshift/downshift (which is rare) he gets off and finger-shifts it over.
As said, I was looking for an answer to the same question actually. Climbing on a full susser is easy as the rear suspension gets you much more traction than you can get out of a hardtail. Straightlining a full susser down rough rubble is easy too, just point and go. Cornering takes some more practice to get your timing and setup right. It is not the compression stroke of the rear suspension that makes things difficult, it is the rebound stroke that messes things up for me. When you land a drop on a hardtail, you absorb the impact and you're good. When you land a drop on a fully, you need to absorb the rebound and really get your timing right or you'll get bucked otb. Slow down the rebound and it will pack down or just make the ride boring. Same with weight shifts. I'm fine with the fork compressing when I shift my weight forwards and/or decelerate. I just hate it when the rear rises right when the fork compresses when riding steep switchbacks down the hill. Simple stuff on a hardtail, a bitch on the full susser. And I definitely put in a good amount of time to practice and try to make it work. Same probably goes for the OP. I doubt he hasn't at least put a decent amount of time on other full sussers before bothering with the PB forum. Obviously others have different experiences so I'm not saying full suspension bikes are harder to ride for everyone. But for someone who has similar experience, are there ways to set up a full susser in a way that you still get to enjoy some the advantages rear suspension can give you yet in a way that you can ride it without too much adaptation from your hardtail technique? Still trying to find out. My girlfriend likes the way my fully rides (a 2007 Cannondale Prophet) so I'm not getting rid of it yet, but I gave it another shot lately and the rear end still just flies away when hitting corners hard when I can hit them so much harder on the hardtail. I bought a headset that should bring the head angle back from 67.5 to 65.5deg. That may move the front wheel out a little and may help to balance the thing. But yeah, always in for some good advice. One thing I was looking into is the DMR Bolt Long. It seems to accept nearly all components from the Cannondale (wheelsize, seatpost, fork etc) and is said to ride like a hardtail except with a bit more give when you need it. Sounds good. Interested in the Cotic Flare too. When sagged, geometry seems comparable to my hardtail. Much bigger investment though as everything is new standard on that one.
RC's answer was hilarious and I think most of us are glad it was on the front page. Don't get all butthurt about it.
"Don't get all butthurt about it"
Not sure about my settings. I do think I was running more sag in the rear than in the front but sag is a vague term. I watched instructions from that Fox tech recently (the one Loris Vergier was chatting with, forgot his name) and he basically said "it doesn't matter whether you stand or sit as long as you always measure sag the same way. The deal is, if I set sag when standing (which is how I ride most of the time) then with those settings when seated, the rear suspension is nearly bottomed out. If I set it for the seated position then that is most definitely recipe for disaster when hitting drops, steep corners etc. I've got three shocks for this bike. The stock RockShox Pearl with adjustable rebound damping. Felt pretty horrible, bottoms out way too easily. I've got a 2007 Magura Hugin with HLR damping adjustments so a lot to play with. I liked to run a lot of high speed compression damping and little low speed. The struggle was with the rebound. As said, running little rebound feels good through most of the stroke (maybe my impression of "good" is a bit colored because of my experience with hardtails) but it is like when I bottom out it bounces back extra hard which initially I wasn't prepared for. This is how I rode it in bike parks, Megavalanche etc. I now mostly ride it with with a Magura MX shock (air shock, air damping) which fair enough isn't intended for a single pivot bike like this. Good thing is that it doesn't require service, has no static friction and behaves quite well. But whichever shock I'm running, if there is no weight on the rear, it extends. That's how things are supposed to be yet I just haven't found a way to deal with that. I stand most of the time and when pumping, cornering etc it just messes with the geometry making me end up where I don't want to be. As said, for straightlining rough stuff, sure it baffles me with what I can get away with. I wouldn't dare to ride like that on the hardtail. But for cornering and working with the terrain, I never managed to get to the level that I can ride that nearly as well as on the hardtail. I recently tried a Canyon Strive. Previous model but still quite modern I think. I wanted to test a series of corners we just built. Sure it wasn't set up for my weight and style and I didn't ride it much, but I just couldn't get along with it.
What people write about rear suspension does sound appealing so I'm still having that new headset installed (Superstar Slackerizer, should bring the head tube angle back from 67.5deg down to 65.5deg). This should move the front wheel out a little hence hopefully put more weight over the rear wheel to keep it in check. Put more load on it, so more pressure, so more rebound damping to compensate which may be more effective when going deep in the travel. Obviously there are more thorough upgrades (new shock, new frame even). But I expect the headset should help a good bit. If it doesn't then yeah, shift everything over to a DMR Bolt Long and pump up the rear shock until it stays at the very top unless you land hard enough that it gives way.
@WAKIdesigns : I may have experienced history different than how you did. Sure there may have been the days of Billy "Trailstar" Thackray (Dirt magazine) living on a shoestring and riding his DMR Trailstar to death. That may have been the poor mans hardtail even though of course the actual poor kids just got a XC bike and rode that to death (which was way too soon) or got an aluminium DS/4X/DJ bike like a Cube Flying Circus or anything. A Trailstar is already way too cult to be cheap. On-One was cheap and still fairly hardcore (back when Planet X was about extreme trials and DJ instead of about road cycling). Either way, well before 2008 you got lots of high end (and not so cheap) hardtails. Billy soon enough upgraded to a Dialed Alpine to ride the Megavalanche. You got Stanton, Cotic, stuff like that. Some titanium frames even. And if people can ride a hardtail with a 160mm fork down the Megavalanche and even do well, we can say that it does actually work. DMR already had the Exalt downhill hardtail well before that. Not sure how well it worked, but at least it was there. As for Bearclaw riding that Specialized bike. At the end of the day the original Specialized enduro SX was a 80mm rear travel hardcore bike Matt Hunter rode in the Collective movie and Anneke Beerten raced to second place in the Lissabon DH. The next generation of their Enduro was kind of based round that first SX and meant to be ridden just as hard. So yeah Bearclaw rode it like that but it is what the bike was for. Then yeah you indeed got the mini DH thing but that was also simply because not everyone had terrain that required a full on DH bike. Single crown forks had gotten longer by then but mid/long travel bikes were still heavy. So instead of one long epic race down, they had mini DH races where riders would push their own bikes up and race down several sections. Now we have these capable bikes that can actually be pedaled up and we now call this "enduro" but this was what happened before that. Much easier and cheaper to organize hence cheaper to attend too, as you didn't need uplift services. With the British DH series becoming more and more expensive to organize and British DH talent running thin at WC level, it wouldn't be such a bad idea at all to bring this format back. I'm with you on your other statement though. Sure a BMX will teach you skills for on the mountainbike and a hardtail may teach you skills that may benefit you on the full susser, but you will only learn to ride that bike properly on the actual big bike. Which brings me back to my earlier point. I ride my hardtail most of the time and I can ride more technical terrain on that bike than I dare to do on the full susser.
Funny thing is I once rode some XC fully from Focus with that Hugin shock around the Magura plant on some truly horrible pedals (one side spd, the other side a steel cage) under my flat shoes and I was honestly surprised that I could even get away with that on most sections. Maybe it was tuned perfectly, maybe the suspension linkage helps, maybe the fact that I couldn't put any aggressive input into those slippery pedals and had to sit more often actually allowed the suspension to consider me a dead weight and do its job the way it was supposed to do .
Either way, I already have that slackerizer headset here so this fall I'm going to have that installed. The slacker head tube angle should move the front wheel out a little, so with my same body position it is going to put more weight over the rear wheel. Which is good as I've now got quite some oversteer. And the extra weight over the rear wheel would cause me to increase rear shock pressure, then increase rebound damping into a range where it might perform better. Worth a shot. I was looking at other shocks indeed but they don't seem to be cheap. Seems like the Cane Creek DB IL with the separate rebound HL rebound adjusters should work for me. But it is quite a risk. Shock dimensions and mounting hardware are so frame specific that it is only worth the investment if I can be very sure that it is going to work for me.
Look, I just love my hardtail as it is so I'm already happy. If I could make my (or a) full suspension bike work for my style and perform the way I think it should then of course, I'd do it and get out on that bike more. The new headset is probably going to help. If not, I'm getting the DMR Bolt Long frame, swap all parts over and inflate the rear shock to just zero sag. I may not get all the advantages that rear suspension can give me but it sure should be fun.
But yeah, it is definitely some guesswork at this point. I'll setup the full susser within the next few months, put the front wheel on a personal scale and see what it does.
Love in the Time of Seat Collars
Life of PSI
Fifty Shades of Chain Stays
In fact I cannot see how any Sram brake can work for a heavy rider...
My 2 pence worth
Modulation = bollocks, its code for under powered
Saint yes
Zee yes
Shigura yes
Cura 4 no
Code no
Mt7s no
Guide no
Key to shimano wandering bite point is the viscosity of the original fluid. Switch it out for low viscosity high boiling point and problem solved.
honestly, "heavy" here is superflous
Slap of a derailleur? I haven't heard that noise since clutched derailleurs came in. Both my FS bikes' drivetrains are whisper quiet.
As for climbing, with remote lockout you can get what you need, but again, matching the gradient and traction of the hill with the right gear makes spinning out or stalling a thing of the past. And I love to climb.
Suspension isn't just about absorbing bumps - it's main benefit is keeping tires better glued to the ground, helping you with increased traction under power, under brakes, and in the corners. I've been riding MTB for thirty years and have owned many HT and FS bikes. Except for BMX, street or jumps, FS is the way to go. My last HT was bought to race XC and ended up being a commuter before it was sold.
This is something PB has to say for legal reasons, but it is not as much of an issue as people make it seem. The big thing is to look at the weight limit of the bike, and how far under it are you. Your weight (or more accurately, your inertia which depends on your mass) combined with the fork length is responsible for the creation of torque on the headtube with your standard highschool physics formula of Torque = Force x distance.
If your bike has a weight limit of 300, and you weight 150 lbs, you have a pretty huge factor of safety of 2 - in an ideal world and keeping everything the same, you can theoretically run a fork twice as long (because of the above formula). In the real world, the factor is slightly less because of the geometry changes, but increasing the fork travel by 20mm still doesn't cut into that safety factor. If you are lightweight, you can go more than 20, but then you ruin flat and uphill handling of your bike because of very rearward weight bias.
The only thing this doesnt apply to is dual crown forks, because they bend way less due to 2 clamping locations, and thus transfer all the bending force to the headtube. But you shouldn't be running dual crowns on anything except a DH bike in any case.
I'm not sure I really see the point of going much beyond 130ish on a hardtail in the first place, and going 110-130 isn't really doing anything that wacky to the geo. You can make the front as squishy as you want, the back end is still going to punish all your mistakes and make you feel the bumps. A cheapish 130-140 fork and a volume reducer or two will probably make it as good as it's gonna get.
The Judy is a 30mm noodle anyway so even upgrading to a 32mm platform like Recon, Epixon, Fox 32, etc would be a big step up.
That sentence was painful to read.
It's true, you're probably just fine over-forking the bike, but that math made my eyes bleed.
I overfork my HTs, but only 20mm max. But my current HT frame now is a Chameleon C. Before that, a Nukeproof Scout 290. Not exactly entry level hardtails to begin with. I always shudder when I see people in the local FB group asking if they should put a 140-160mm fork on their old Specialized or Trek hardtail with a, you guessed it, Judy fork. Like yea, you can totally do that. But should you? Frame over fork. Get the better frame, and then add the fork.
Perhaps I mis-worded my statement. I should have said stronger brakes allow you to spend more time going fast by allowing later braking.
m.pinkbike.com/news/pinkbike-awards-component-of-the-year-winner.html
Just put a set on my bike and took them to Downieville. Sublime modulation coupled with excellent power.
If you want good quality brakes from a lesser known company, get Formula Curas (2 or 4 piston) or good'ol Hopes.
Have way better modulation than anything else I've ridden. Only complaint is the lever is a bit bulky. I'd swap it for the Shimano lever.
And I'm running at like 230-240 pounds.
Same here. I got a set of TRP Quadiems this summer, and have put ~20k ft of descending (including a day at a bike park) on them since I installed them. I've crashed a couple of times as well.
I've had exactly 0 issues with them. The bite point hasn't ever changed, they don't make weird noises, they haven't ever faded, and they have more than enough power for me (and I'm a larger rider, 6'1", ~200lbs or so all kitted up). There have been no leaks, nothing has broken (although, levers have a few scratches from the crashes), and I am really happy with them.
I personally suspect that most/many of those saying they are low in power, are thrown off by the linear lever, and modulation, as that does take a few runs to get used to.
I will agree with others on one thing though, that the levers really are quite large. The length is a bit longer than SRAM levers, but its the thickness that surprises you. It feels like twice as girthy/thick as a the SRAM levers that I replaced. So if you've got small hands/fingers, be warned.
@onemanarmy:
As another "larger" guy I appreciate how you framed this like it's a setting we have control over:
Q: What's your current weight?
A: I'm currently experimenting with around 235lbs & 2 tokens...
Sram is overpriced in the aftermarket, though. If you can get a set of MT5s or Cura 2s for two-thirds the price of the Code R, the choice is clear.
Shimano mineral oil then, 280degC boiling point and it doesn't degrade. As with any hydraulic brake, water will enter the system and with mineral oil systems, it will pool at the lowest point. Which is typically the brake caliper except maybe for those whose brake hose routes under the bb and/or along the chainstay. If the caliper gets hot, sure the oil won't boil but if the engineers haven't designed around this condition, the water will boil and you'll get a vapor lock (where the brake won't work). Ideally the rider will bleed these brakes on a very regular basis to avoid getting too much water in the caliper. How often this is depends on the brake. Some are just better sealed (less porous) than others.
Magura mineral oil indeed has a 120degC boiling point so that's what they've designed these brakes around. To not reach 120degC easily. Probably stay at a safe distance. Whereas Shimano engineers would consider 100degC oil temperature very acceptable, for Magura engineers this is already critical.
Then you have BFO, using water as transmission fluid...
Long story short, the lower the boiling point of the transmission fluid, the cooler the brake will stay just because it is designed to stay cooler. Which under unfavourable conditions (degraded DOT, water in the brake caliper) actually works out well.
Magura also has two different oils, the older, green one isn't sold anymore, they have been using the blue one for the last couple of years.
epicbleedsolutions.com/blog/dot-brake-fluid-vs-mineral-oil
It may need a little update by now as Formula has also switched to mineral oil. But the article is nice and their bleed kits and tools seems nice too.
Yes all systems degrade over time, but this shouldnt be a consideration in a high end set up where the user is on top of maintenance. I've had my maguras fail completely halfway down the megavalance and rob me of an awesome result. Just simply cooked the fluid.
Either way, what I meant to say is that it isn't about boiling temperature. It is about the amount of energy the system can absorb and how quickly it can get rid of it. Yes it is related to boiling temperature but also to the amount of oil in the system, the rotor thickness, surface area of caliper, hose connector, cooling fins etc. Call it a solution or work around, as long as it works it is good. Yes Magura doesn't used sintered pads to limit the heat transfer and I know sintered pads are known to be long lasting, but then again in my experience these organic pads still last long enough. I brake hard and short though, I can imagine someone more subtly dragging them would wear them a whole lot quicker. But yeah you're correct that if people perform a regular brake bleed etc, their brake performance will stay closest to how it is supposed to be. Water is constantly entering the system so in theory it already starts to degrade right after your brake service. And my point was, the one positive I see about a non-degrading brake fluid with boiling point close to that of water, is that a tiny amount of water shouldn't affect the brake performance much.
Ah sorry it takes me forever to drive my point home. The comment I responded to was that a boiling point of 120degC is unacceptably low. My response was no if the engineers take that boiling point as a given and design their brakes to work nice with that, they should still be able to get you a good brake. As an analogy, it would be like if someone said you can't build a good bicycle frame out of aluminium as the material surely is weaker and less stiff than steel. Whereas we all know by now that if you play to the strengths of the material it can all work out. Steel enduro frames like those from Cotic and Starling are more or less in the same weight ballpark as the aluminium versions.
I am no fan boy and will literally throw $$$ at braking systems and use them in high performance and continually demanding situations. I am also very heavy 110kg (not overweight) and wanted to share my real world experience that is on the OP topic for brakes for big riders. Simply put, I have put the bold claims of manufacturers and big magazine Dyno tests into practice and reached my own conclusions to what works or not and dissected the reason behind why something works or not.
You may have read the big disc brake test here
enduro-mtb.com/en/best-mtb-disc-brake-can-buy
which is a bit older hence doesn't include for instance the newer Hayes Dominion brake. What I'd be interested in though with all the equipment they have available there is, how do the performances compare after three months of hard use (with fresh and bedded in pads)? If I were correct (as I only have theories, not in the position to test everything under the sun) the Magura brakes would have degraded less than other ones and Shimano is more likely to experience a vapor lock than Magura. Could be completely off though. As Magura has bigger pistons, chances are there will also be more ways for water to enter.
Over forking is fine, you can always change it back to stock if it sucks.
My two favorite bikes are my SS hardtail (over forked) and my 8” downhill bike (Cura 4). Turns our corner speed and clean lines is very helpful on both bikes...
As a 60-70% SS hardtail rider, I too took a while to truly appreciate the FS mantra.
Jumping from one to the other is a dramatic feeling... like comparing a Mini to a Land Cruiser. But both have their place.
If you want to make the switch, I’d start with an efficient bike and put some time in. Something like a Tallboy, which firms up nicely when standing and mashing, would be a good gateway drug. On the other hand, if you are going to own two bikes then a medium to longer travel FS sled might be a better option. I have a Honzo and a Ripmo. Together they cover a huge range, and keep me happy on nearly any trail.
The benefits of FS include, but aren’t limited to:
1) long rides are just so dang comfortable. Who knew??
2) you can plow into a rocky dh with abandon. Then do it again, and again. And again.
3) hit that 6-10ft drop to (near) flat, or case that big jump... and trust that your rear tire, rim, and spine will be good to go afterwords.
It's not an air problem. I ride more slowly than pro ;-)
The sram disc doesn't cool enough. I have no problem with uberbike radiator disc.
If he want modulatio maybee the solutio is sram code brake with uberbike radiator disc but for reliability shimano saint or zee.
Ive had zees and xts, the biggest problem that I had with them is that if you let the bike sit for 2 or more weeks unridden, the brakes start to squeal and loose power. Happens with both metallic and resin pads. I checked for leaks (clean the caliper, ip tie the lever down over a bleed block wrapped with a tissue paper, leave it overnight) and none were found.
Never had that problem with Srams, even though I like the response of the Shimanos better.
Sure, but im not doing that every 2 weeks when I can just have srams and not have to deal with that.