Kopkins

Got a chance to ride one of these a few months back and it was pretty sick. Felt like the bike needed no time to recover from huge hits and also cornered like nothing else I've ridden. Even climbed pretty well for a 180mm steel freeride bike.

@ayatollah-of-sausagerollah: This is exactly backwards. A hollow tube will be stiffer than a solid rod of the same mass. With a solid rod and hollow tube of the same diameter, the solid rod will be stiffer, and also has more mass. Good discussion of this here. https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/12913/hollow-tube-stronger-than-solid-bar-of-same-outside-diameter-o-d

@phops: This is purely my speculation, so take it with a grain of salt. I think that due to covid era supply issues and the timing of the industry crash Knolly has raised prices to meet certain internal goals, whether these goals are to reduce old component stock or to meet financial pressure, I'm not sure. When the latest generation of Knolly bikes was released the prices were much lower for their frame only options. The Chilcotin was one of the first released and the frame was $2400-2600 depending on which shock you chose. They were also doing some crazy sales on build kits with the last gen of components but not on frames for a while - to me this indicated a huge surplus of covid era parts. At one point you could get a Deore Fugitive build kit ($2800) for slightly less than just a frame ($3000). Further, since Knolly started releasing the new bikes at the end of 2023 the bike industry has crashed. Raising the prices of the frame only options incentivizes consumers to opt for a build kit instead. This could do two things: 1. Increases margins on frame-only sales. 2. Increases up-take of parts they don't want sitting around anymore. Ultimately, I think Knolly is reacting to market pressure, and while I think they used to offer great value as a frame only option, I can't personally stomach spending these crazy sums that so many brands are asking for frame-only these days.

immediately looked like a separated shoulder to me

@DoubleCrownAddict: then the brace didn't fit right. Once I put mine on I forget about it until it's time to take it off.

No option for neck brace?