Video: Developing the Next Generation Santa Cruz V10
 | This is the eighth generation of V10, one of the winningest downhill bikes of all time. What you see here is still very much in the prototype stages. This video series goes behind the scenes and shows the work that the team at Santa Cruz and the Syndicate put into this and other bikes. Episode one takes us back to just a few weeks after Greg Minnaar won the 2021 World Championship and went to work validating numerous test mules to decide the direction of the next bike. You might be surprised to hear that other suspension designs were tested before Greg settled on VPP. The Syndicate will be racing this bike in 2023 and they will continue to develop it throughout the year. Future episodes will dive further into the process of making a world class downhill race bike. When will it go on sale? No time soon. This is development in plain sight. |
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26" normal pivot , normal bb height has a slightly rearward then vertical, then slightly forward rear wheel travel path.
27.5" has an axle 10mm higher thus to get same travel path pivot point needs to be 10mm higher than the 26".
29" has an axle 30mm higher thus to get same travel path pivot point needs to be 30mm higher than the 26".
This hasn't really had much talk about but might be another reason going back to 27.5 rear as well as getting bucked in ass by rear wheel for us shorter folk.
Me I've an old 26" mini mullet high pivot with next 3" of rearward travel, It pedals like crap, but makes braking bump bike parks feel like smooth tarmac for an old man who maybe turns pedals once or twice going into jumps.
Even Commencal is doing something similar with the V5 Supreme with a much more vertical axle path.
@russthedog: The lack of responsiveness seems to be the Achilles heel of many high pivot bikes.
@blensen: I agree but I wonder if some of it is due to them only probably riding the high pivot bike a few days and not really being used to them versus being on them full time. But I think the responsiveness is the key, so much time can be gained from manipulating the lightweight bike and using it's suspension to pop or hit things, pre-jump, or pump to go faster. The Cannondale high pivot bikes are more vertical and responsive also.
It's a very similar-shaped path to the outgoing V10, but with more travel and a less progressive leverage curve (compared to the V10).
Id bet all my bikes that when he first got on a 29er he probably found it much harder to corner because of the wheelbase, but he had to get used to it to stay competitive.
ibb.co/mhBJsR9
The v4 only has about 10mm more rearward from the sag point so is trying to be vertical in the last 2/3 of travel instead of the start.
The other issue is that there is no way to know for the anti squat chart whether this is frame anti squat (as describe here www.pinkbike.com/news/definitions-what-is-anti-squat.html), or chain anti-squat (polebicycles.com/2015/06/16/what-is-anti-squat-and-pedal-kickback), or a combination of the both. Generally, you really only care about the chain anti squat, especially for DH bikes.
I got sent a anti-squat chart from a manufacturer for a high pivot bike, and it listed the anti squat at ~170% at the start of travel. This was clearly derived from the linkage software as frame anti squat.
Who are the winners?
Not tried a cascade link yet for my current nomad but I would like too.
Development work is not all concept work, characterization testing and refinement, it's the commercial organisation and project managers saying, get to design verification ASAP unfortunately.
Generally, what average trail riders like or prefer is vastly different than what DH or Enduro guys prefer. Former prefer ramp up - keep he suspension soft in the first part of travel for compliance, then ramp up for bottom out, pumping, e.t.c. The latter don't want ramp up, they want the suspension to predictably compress in response to big bumps, and as a result they generally run firmer spring rates/higher pressures to actually absorb all the impact. So cascade link gives the bikes a more trail like feel for the recreational crowd.
The benefit of the link over a shock air volume reduction is that even though it gets you about the same force curve, the shock shaft velocity with the cascade link is faster, which gives you more damping. That being said, you have to be a fairly competent rider to notice and take advantage of the damping - most people are not.
SC have just firmed up the start stroke on the latest V10, I am gonna predict they lose some small bump compliance when the rear is unweighted, wont make much difference against the clock, but may impact confidence.
I dont run a cascade link, but would want to try one, I run a coil on the rear of my Nomad, 50lb too heavy for me but only because I want more of a trail feel in the mid stroke for big mountain days and climbing!!!!
But I was always different and run my setup different to many, the pros.... some run soft, some run firmer, even at WC top 20 level they are all different and there is no magic formula at each level.
Just because this brand and team weren't able to achieve their goals with that design doesn't mean it won't work for another brand/team. Particularly one that's not beholden to one linkage layout by their brand identity and marketing.
Look for a bike that has the ride you want, not one that uses a specific design.
Bearing that in mind, similar to more conventional high and mid-pivot designs, equipping a VPP bike with an idler would allow them to use a much more rearward axle path without suffering the negative effects of chain growth as the suspension compresses.
From the rider's perspective this would reduce feedback through the pedals drastically (as noted by Greg), and would give a very free moving suspension feel. It would also in theory allow the rear wheel to move out of the way of impacts by moving rearwards, and give the bike a higher level of total stability at bottom out due to the lengthening of the wheelbase as the bike compresses.
So it seems like the issue here is really that Santa Cruz is looking to make a bike that excels at generating speed as opposed to one that excels at maintaining speed. Based on that, it seems pretty unlikely that a more rearward axle path and idler routed chain would work for their goals.
The reason why it takes so much R&D is because there pretty much next to no engineers in the bike industry, just industrial designers. This is the same company that had Greg riding a comically small bike for a long while because they couldn't figure out how to make a properly sized one, even in 26 wheel size. So they basically have to go through the process of guessing, manufacturing, and testing, multiple times, which all drives up budget.
Meanwhile, if you look at dirt bike manufacturers that actually have engineers that can do actual math, early 2000s dirt bikes look very much like modern dirt bikes, with roughly same geo and suspension. Its because they took the time and actually figured out how a bike needs to be laid out for certain performance, and then micro optimized on all the individual components.
From an vehicle dynamics POV (which is what I think you're getting at) a motorcycle is actually easier than a MTB in a lot of ways.
Its still a problem that can be solved quite efficiently with engineering rather than guessing. If you wanna capture all the dynamics of the rider, all you need to do is to is just instrument the bike with load cells in the contact points, and accelerometers/gyros on the bike and the rider, and you can back out how the rider is moving around on the bike.
Likewise, it shouldn't take multiple years to make a 29er dh bike. For one, there are already a lot of constraints already that essentially limit how slack and long can you go, namely the equipment that you can spec on the frame like forks as well as the actual size of the track. Start with the extreme and let the rider test that, with full data collection. I mean, Yoan literally piloted the Grim Donut faster down the track than a competitive enduro bike. Then between the current bike, and the extreme, you can start to gain a picture of what the rider wants.
But none of this is going to happen, because there is enough income from the idiots that spend massive amounts of money for premium bikes that don't ride any better than cheap ones, and the way to keep that income coming is through marketing and vanity, not actually making a good product.
My point is that Moto industry does actual engineering. There is a very well known book, "Motorcycle Dynamics" by Vittore Cossalter that is very math intensive that describes all the dynamics of the motorcycle, along with some equations taking account rider positioning, especially in cornering. No such book exists for MTB, because nobody does the math. I would bet that quite a few people in the industry still think that the reason one can balance a bicycle in motion because of the gyroscopic effects of the wheels.
Wonder if Greg is finally going to figure out that he needs a bike with more than +500mm of reach for his height...
And yeah an alloy version would sell like hot cakes but I don't see it happening.