powturn

@Freddye: aka "no wireless only" ;~>

@Snowytrail: Good catch. That and the Forekaster front plus a big stack of HS spacers point towards this being a test bike for Norco staff, not one of their factory XC pros.

2 water bottle mounts and no cable tourism, no "wireless only," no stupor-boost. Everything a fast & light bike needs, nothing it doesn't. Bravo Norco!

@R-trailking-S: The game changing element of the Aheadset design is that it completely separates your bearing preload assembly from rotating forces & impacts on the headset by putting it above the stem that provides all the clamping force. The exact dimensions of the bolt you use to preload above the stem are irrelevant. As for quill stems, I rode them for most of 70s & 80s before Aheadset came out, and never once had an issue with the quill. It was heavy, but it stayed where you put it with proper torque. As for headset wear & adjustment, top quality threaded headsets on road bikes that were prepped and set right would stay in adjustment for a good long time. On MTBs, in the era when there was no suspension and flexy 1" steerers, headsets were always the very first thing to rattle loose on a bike. Even in the era of sub-2" suspension that didn't work very well, you were constantly adjusting and replacing headsets. It was the progression to 1-1/8" steerers, coupled with Aheadsets, plus several inches of properly-dampened suspension that finally removed headsets from the top-10 list of mechanical liabilities on an MTB. I've had a basic Cane Creek 40 headset on a trailbike that has done 20k hard miles and it is still smooth, silent, and I only ever adjust or lube it if disassembling for fork service.

@Aem221: Sorry, but this idea has been a failure since the dawn of mountain biking. Every headset on earth was threaded before 1992, and the combined quill, steerer, threaded locknut interface required multiple large wrenches, was fussy to adjust, heavy, and and would only stay put if your frame was perfectly faced and you spent big $$$ on a top of the line Campy or Shimano headset. Since the advent of Aheadsets and the removal of failure-prone, external threads from the entire steerer/stem interface, many attempts have been made to create spacer rings w/ cams, wedges, teeth, etc to add adjustability that would replace the silly-simple M6 star-fangled nut & top cap preload assembly. All those designs have been rightfully consigned to the dustbin of history. If you like the look of knurled spacers, by all means rock them, but run, do not walk from the from the thought that anything in that assembly could be locked in place with zero tools.

So many flavors of DH: 1199, Garbanzo, & AirDH; thanks Crankworx!

@liammullany: As a NorCal kid, I grew up w/ DJ Shadow & the Quannum crew right there in my back yard. Swollen Members & Sweatshop Union didn't show up on my radar 'till the 2010s. Better to find (out) cool stuff late than not at all ;~>

@Jparker164: Have you done this since Covid? German shipping rates to US have gone up 400% since then. Most major German online shops charge $40+ minimum. I used to live there and send components, tires, etc back & forth on a regular basis. No more: factoring in shipping it's quicker, cheaper, and easier just to get stuff here. The only European ski or bike deals I've scored in last 4 yrs that have been worth the extra shipping have been from Spain or Italy from shops like Tradeinn (Bikeinn / Snowinn).

@rickybobby19: Wow, I weigh just 160lbs & have serious tire-wear envy: I wish our rocky, ultra-abrasive soil here in NorCal was as kind to soft rubber as where you ride: a MaxTerra tire on the rear wheel won't last much more than a month of riding 4+ days a week on our "cheesgrater" hardpack. Picture decomposed granite gravel imbedded in brick-hard clay that simply shreds the entire inner edge off the cornering knobs 'till it's curtains for traction. On the front, I can get 4mos out of a T9 Spesh tire vs 2mos with 3C Maxterra for the 8 months a year it doesn't rain here. Out back it's either Maxxis Dual, or Spesh T7, or replace tires monthly. I wish rubber here lasted long enough to tear knobs off tires: I can only do that w/ Schwalbe, which shed knobs in weeks, not months.

@JesseMelamed: firing on all cylinders! Instead of feeling depressed that we'll never shred that hard, your edit is built to draw the viewer into the stoke & joy of just getting out to ride, at whatever fraction of that speed we can muster as mere mortals. Double bonus points for soundtrack built on DJ Shadow's Organ Donor to boot!