deeeight

They're not strictly prohibited in Canada, it depends on intent when used. Some reports I've seen indicate that these particular caltrops are made from a non-magnetic steel, so you cannot just sweep one of those magnet fishing magnets around and pick them up quickly off a trail like the roofing nails others have been finding.

@SJP: report them to amazon, they're considered dangerous goods in most jurisdictions.

Not returning the defective product as part of a settlement discussion sounds like you don't want specialized to examine it and determine if they can fix the problem to prevent further issues. Was it a specific error in THAT bike or an error across the entire production run. It also sounds like a scam. Its like the people who open item not as described claims on paypal or ebay, but refuse to return the product and expect to both get their refund and keep the item.

Let's test the most expensive bar options and not actually things most people might end up buying, or would come stock on their bikes in the first place. Looking at the major bike brands, or bikes you've tested (like that $1000 budget series last week, how much do the bars on that walmart full suspension deflect, or the polygon, or the giant or the specialized) you get a large number of OEM bars or their own branded parts. Also bars that are on Amazon which a lot of folks turn to for quick replacements on weekends when bike stores are closed, or further away. There's all manner of generic chinese 6061-T6 alloy bars and some shoddy carbons, but you also see brands like PNW and FUNN with actual 7000 series alloys and both bar clamp diameters. There's also the lower spec Raceface bars like the chester and aeffect.

The non tubeless Conti's DO setup tubeless quite well but you REAAAALLLLY want a good sealant inside because there's no extra inner rubber layer in the construction, and if the sealant you use sucks (MEC Sealant is TERRIBLE btw, dries out and clumps really quickly) then you're going to be losing a lot of air during your ride.

@thustlewhumber: Hell there are wide range options in 7, 8 and 9 speed cogsets now that are proving we really don't need all the in-between gears and more finicky derailleur alignment issues.

@jefflinde: Shimano ripped off Suntour (original, not the later merger of SR Sakae and Suntour to form SR Suntour) when they began to offer indexed shifting and to make off-road groups. Suntour held the japanese patent on slant-parallelogram derailleur body geometry, which was a critical ingredient in maintaining proper cog to cog alignment to ensure indexing worked. Shimano's early derailleurs were rather sloppy in pivot/bushing construction though, so the sliding "centeron" upper pulley was made to help fix that. Shimano ripped off Suntour again with the move to compact chainrings and wider range cogsets with an 11T highest gear cog in 1993. Complaining these chinese manufacturers are ripping off major brands today is to ignore how those brands ripped off others decades ago.

@brianpark: I seem to recall the ISIS spline interface is still used by a few companies, like on the ends of some 2-piece crank setups, but i don't think anyone made a good ISIS bottom bracket inside the confines of a 68 or 73mm shell frame, even the multiple-row raceface BBs sucked long term. Some early fat bikes used them in the 100mm shell format and they were perfectly usable then but fat bikes weren't being jumped, weren't hidding roots and rocks with the end of the crank arms on rough trails, and the bearings were further apart so the peak loads didn't have the higher leverages as with the 68/73 shell. So now the high end fats use 2-piece cranksets like regular MTBs (whether its external bearing or internal bearing PF30/DUB shell stuff) and entry level has gone to square taper which again the BBs last a really long time when they're sealed cartridge units. As to sq-taper back in the freeride/DH 90s era, it came down to the manufacturers a lot of the time. Were they using heat treated steels for the spindle (as Raceface and shimano XT/XTR did) or low grade generic stuff (like the Shimano BB-51 cartridge units) in the bikes. Its like the 1.5 steerer tube nonsense... if you use shit materials things break and folks start making a false equivalency argument that its the part dimensions that are the issue. Manitou invented 1.5 to coverup their move to shitty aluminum for their 1 1/8 steerer tubes breaking, when Marzocchi forks still using high grade 7075-T6 in their straight 1 1/8 steerers were NOT breaking.

@andrewbikeguide: ISIS was a dumb standard to begin with. Raceface had excellent square taper BBs and ruined their reputation with an attempt to "me too" a splined hollow spindle without any foresight into proper bearings (shimano octalink combined both ball and roller bearings to handle the load, rather than just going to smaller diameter balls like ISIS).

@brianpark: In Forty years I have bent or broken exactly ZERO square taper bottom brackets, even with titanium spindles.