Primoz

What we need is a trail grading system so that we can genuinely know what we are riding. What i'm riding seems normal to me. But looking at man made trails with tons of berms, boy do i ride rough stuff (normal hiking trails that can often be also quite steep). But since i ride it all the time, it, like i said, seems normal.

@clink83: Do you have a link about that? The diagram i have gives 2,5, 50 and 97,5 percentile of trunk lengths for men of 425, 455 and 458 mm while for women it's 400, 425 and 455. So the average male has a trunk length of women who have their torso longer than 97,5 of other women. Sure, the difference is 'only' 30 mm, but a 20 mm difference in reach of a frame is supposedly a size up or down. The more i'm looking at it, it does appear the average woman has the proportions (height-wise) of a man in the 2,5th percentile with the woman in the 97,5th percentile the proportions of the average man. I'd really like to read more about this. It has always been said women have shorter torsos but it might be that they are just smaller all around and that that makes the difference.

@Elbear: A real expert. I took the bolt out of my Giant, measured it with calipers and weighed it with a kitchen scale. 6 grams and around 0,83 cm^3 gives a density of 7,17 g/cm^3 which is MUCH closer, mistakes and approximations at measuring, than the 4.5 g/cm^3 of titanium. So yeah. An expert. The bolt on the 2015 Reign IS, in fact, steel. And i bet it IS also on the Trance that me and jclnv were talking about most of the time. It might be titanium on the proto above in the article, but that'd be a damn minuscule weight saving of a grand total, on two bolts, of around 5 grams. Given the size of the pivot and given bolts on other bikes, the axle could be aluminium. Having a titanium axle in there would negate any weight savings and would mean a weight gain. Screwing a titanium screw into an aluminium axle would be a god damn genius move, since the two metals are almost at complete different ends of the galvanic potential and wreak havoc when used with one another without proper care. While i do not know what the bolt on the proto is made of, looking at the pictures and comparing it to the one on my desk, i'd say it's too bright to be titanium. I could be wrong though. What i do know is that there has to be a damn good reason or somebody has to have some really weird decision making logic to use titanium bolts on that pivot.

@Elbear: You de realise stainless steel is MUCH cheaper and also stronger than titanium? Heavier too, but stronger still. You use titanium for stuff for weight reasons, not 'structural reasons'. And titanium is a more dull gray than that, it's not as silver.

@coadymacmillan: I don't know what Giant does exactly, but at the face of it, it's the brand, frame/gear colors, marketing, contact points (seat, handlebars), Specialized has smaller sizes for the frames (XS to L instead of S to XL). Some brands do a separate women's brand to differentiate more, others just say 'bike xxx women's'. Different companies, different strategies. Then you have the geometry. It might seem trivial to just do what you mentioned (i'm not an expert on geometry, but looking at women specific bikes, this would seem to be what is done to them), but it is a completely new bike when you do that. The suspension can be moved around as well to give the correct antisquat values, etc. Look at Canyon, they made a completely different women's Spectral.

@adespotoskyli: Agreed. I was more or less replying to clink83 trying to find the reason for 'a lot of women xc riders moving the seat forwards'. I'd bet most of them ride 'unisex' frames, which would then explain the seat being pushed forward.

What has been seen cannot be unseen.