pieters

i think the bike can affect riding style more than riding style affects what bike works for you. there are exceptions of course, especially at the extremes. interestingly you could argue that longer bikes are the reason for the rise in blue flow trails as the are not as suited to the old school tec of classic north shore trails. that being said while you can learn to ride a bike the behaves differently to what your used to, having sorted geometry and kinematics arguably makes a bigger difference to racers rather than average bike park riders. not claiming that i am a massive nerd about these things because I'm so skilled, but i doubt one would tell a world cup racer that they should not experiment with geometry and just learn to ride a bike. personally i find longer chain stays helps with my lack of skill on jumps, because i don't have to push the bars into the lips so hard to prevent an endo.

I have size 15 shoes, and am a heaver rider about 290 lbs. large pedals are must, especially if the shoe has a flexible sole, as my little toe hangs over the edge of the pedal and causes foot pain on long rides, even siting down and pedaling. This is almost an even bigger problem with clipless pedals, where stiff soles and a larger platform around the pedal body are necessary to prevent discomfort on the ball of my foot. For mountain biking i believe i would prefer to have stiffer shoes rather than bigger pedals because pedal strikes eventually break my pedals and cranks. I like 5 10 impact pro shoes but the soles are foam and eventually break down before they wear through now the the rubber harder. My favorite pedals currently are the tmac pedals, but i really don't understand the lack of seals. this is actually a big problem given the cost of the the replacement parts which include redundant parts and are sold to service a single pedal. they use a nonstandard bearing size which is almost impossible to find although the bushing are more common. also i really like the feel the tmac pedals even if it means more pedal strikes, so i would definitely be willing to try larger pedals. However i didn't mind the feel of the one up alloy pedals either. they slightly reduced pedal strikes, but break way to easily and require constant service. these have the potential to be amazing pedals if they used outboard bearings instead of bushings to prevent the larger being destroyed by play. Also the pedal body and spindles bend and crack to easily otherwise i would still be using them. also the deity tmac pedals are significantly lager than my dmr vaults or one up alloy pedals so i don't know if the overall dimensions accurately represent pedal / shoe contact area.

To me it is unacceptable for a company to make something that had objectively worse performance for subjectively better aesthetics. A few extra grams is ok, but if parts break it is so far from ok, i cant even imagine someone being ok with that.

@dripdripdripcheck: i would guess it was the V4

@zanda23: you can replace the bushings on the ext vaia. its only $2500 usd. i also have the same problem with loose bushings on all my fox and rockshox forks. and i really hate it. ive had the bushings replaced many times and even the lowers replaced on my 38 and it still comes back. the bushings on fox and rockshox forks are not really designed to be replaced despite being a wear item. idk how much of a difference a 17% increase in overlap will make but it will make a real difference that is mathematically calculable.

@zanda23: increasing the distance between the bushings should decrease the effect of the problems created by the bushings being the wrong size. having the bushings the right size every time would make the fork cost a lot more.

@ekimox: this should reduce the stiction in the bushings, at least when it counts (like when riding, not when you compress your fork in the parking lot). looks like fox is doing exactly what you wanted.

not saying this fork is way better because I've never ridden it. but more bushing overlap and "glide core" are attempt to solve a serous performance issue with 38. so at least they are trying to make it better. personally i think this is a really good way to go about solving the problem. maybe even the best in terms of cost / performance ratio. so in short this is not marketing bs but an actually what riders have been asking for.

lots of guys at the wc dh have really high stacks already...