devlin-cycles

@HeatedRotor: yeah I do think Trek are doing a good job with their mtb range. Can't say the same for their road bikes. Might ride great (opinion varies) but my eyes do not like looking at them and that whole seat mast set up on race bike is questionable..

@HeatedRotor: ahhh....got you. The bigger brands should probably be doing this as a way of customising teh bike. It does add complexity and SKU's to their business model though and minimising costs is one of the main goals in operation. I get what you are saying about having options though. Even having the lower mount flippable with a few different options to really tune in to the shock used and the rider, course etc. The bike above is a prototype so I imagine they have it so they can do what you are talking about before settling on one or two positions for teh production model. I don't have any adjustments on my bikes other than on the Jester Enduro being able to run full 29 or mullet while maintaining the bike geo the same between the two wheels sizes with just a simple move of the lower shock mount. My philosophy is to design a bike that is good all round rather than one that is operating at either end of agile to super docile. So then offering different parts doesn't seem a neccessary thing to do. My DH and EDR models are set geo's but the trail bike is a platform I can customise to suit the customer and what they want out of the bike. I can tweak the DH and EDR models though if the customer has a tweak that fits in with my geo philosophy of the bike.

Only problem with that is sometimes moving a pivot/mouint location only a mm or two can have drastic changes. In this location though you could adjust the shock progression with out affect too much else. Have to be carful that the wheel travel doesn't exceeed the space available and contact the frame. Also most frame designers have iterated the hell out of their layout and there isn't much gained from making changes.

@bigbrett: thanks mate. It is an incredibly capable and versatile bike. Rides like a super enduro/mini DH with 170-180 in the front but can still pedal a four or five hour back country ride. The new DH frame is proving to be really good so far as well. Still need to tune everything in to get full potential out of it but it's already faster than I am capble of riding.. I have spoken with Henry at Quater HP about getting a Jester frame over to them for a review, so hopefully that lands with them before xmas. It's a expensive cost for a small one man brand to absorb. Flow MTB (Australia) is interested in testing my personal one with a year of abuse on it to see how it stacks up over the long haul. I think taht is an interesting review as most bikes a great when new but some don't stack up over time.

@BikesBoatsNJeeps: the Fuel is an awesome bike. They have been pretty consistent on the performance of that platform over the iterations. Would be on my short list if I was shopping main brands.

@nnowak: some carbon rear end manufacturers do this so they only have to have one mould for the rear end. They have a different mould for each size front end so it easy to absorb the CS length there. Conversely I do different chanstay lengths that grow proportionally on every single size frame I build. A lot easier for me to be able to do that.

@watchtower: I would welcome that. wink wink I have multiple paltforms to cchoose from too. wink wink

You are welcome to go and design your own version, go to Taiwan and meet with Ora and plonk down a sizeable amount of cash and get 100 frames made then come back and tell us they should be sold for teh cost of materials. Go for it.

or Aus$18,000 (US$12,900/Cad$17,860 (exchange rate)) if you want your eyes to bug out a little more.

Except the product manager at Specialized has to sign off on teh last 3 or 4 years of product development which given they won't sell as many Demo 11 bikes as they would say a Stumpjumper will push the amortisation numbers for the demo 11 to very tight margins. Think how many people have worked on it, plus each interation. Plus the supporting staff and company infratsructure. They may pay pennies on the dollar for the raw parts but teh development cost for a project like this is going to easily be in the tens of millions if not approaching $100m at teh end of it's lifecycle. Just do simple sums or 25 staff on say an average of US$75k a year over four years and you are at US$7.5m already. It quickly adds up and being able to cover those costs, plus make a little bit of profit of each unit, because companies actually need to make profit to stay afloat, means teh price tehy ahve set for these is actually cheaper than I would expect.