JKL250

Every review goes on about the weight of Linkglide, every single one! Have you ever heard a complaint about the wi eight of transmission? No cos SRAM have amazing marketing! Yet with the parts where weight might matter, the cassette and derailleur, the difference is 40g between Linkglide XT and XXwhatever transmission if you include the derailleur battery!

@eh-steve: in which case a road bike must = bike. An Mtb = well, Mtb. E road = ebike. Emtb = urm….emtb. The thing is what ever a group of riders is on becomes the centre of the focus and narrowed down to “bike”. A group of riders out for a Sunday blast on a Firebkade, Gixer and R6 just call these bikes. Off road stuff becomes dirt bikes or if they’re into it Enduro and crosser (uk) woods/dirt bike and moto elsewhere.

@porkchopsandwich: have you ridden one on a bike that might benefit from it? (And some that theoretically shouldn’t!!!)

Shame it’s an EC cup for 1.5 lower steerer. That’s going to put a lot of people of including me. I’d have tried it otherwise

@Svinyard: “Out of all of this, it seems like no one has the appetite to simply grab some mates, rent some bikes and spend the weekend shuttling and timing things” I’ve done this, on a limited scale, with two bikes. Really interesting but also really tricky to isolate for just the fc/rc ratios. It would be incredibly hard to get an article like this to start up to any scrutiny. Said said for personal info it unfortunately made deciding on which bike to go for pretty easy. I found that times tend to converge when on tracks that are well known. You find a way to ride each bike just about as fast as the other. Things get more interesting on unknown tracks especially if grip is limited. Here the bike with a smaller ratio - comparatively longer rc- becomes easier to change lines and improvise on. I hadn’t considered it before but safety was the biggest bonus for the smaller ratio bike. Far more forgiving on mistakes as it was easier to keep the front from getting away.

@mikekazimer: for enduro (maybe DH but I’m not sure there) the riders towards the pointy end of the field look to be converging on a front/rear centre ratio. I can only think of one brand keeping this ratio constant between sizes. That would make a good article and if enough people start taking and writing about it more brands will make the effort. When that happens Jack will get off that size small and on to something that fits him. Personally I’m finding the best balanced ratio to be different for full 29er and mx wheel, with the mx wheel bike needing a comparably longer rear centre.