rm7freerider

"If you are experiencing wandering bite point issues, and this goes for any brake, it's likely improper oil volume, or trapped air is causing you problems. Revisit the bleed procedure and follow the instructions, or bring the bike to a professional." This right here tells me the reviewer has no idea what they are talking about and didn't do their homework. The wandering bite issue is experience in two specific situations. In both, the bite point moves out further, to the point where the lever basically locks up at full extension. There is no "soft" or "squishy" lever or air in the lines, the lever is solid all the time and it never goes to the bar. It's the exact opposite of what air in the lines feels like. What happens is on steep stuff during extended braking, where you naturally have to let off the brakes and then quickly re-engage for terrain, that bite point moves further out, and at that point, the brake has a lot less leverage/power. It also happens in cold weather, which not as many people may experience. Down in the single digit Fs and below, it's the same exact thing. Squeeze once, then twice, and the bite point has moved out. That is the wandering bite point. Anything else is just air in the lines, normal brake stuff. Lots of people use their brakes more intermittently because they don't ride that steep stuff, so it's possible that you may never experience it. For both reasons (summer and winter riding) I had to move away from shimano. I like the servo concept a lot...but the wandering bite point was a deal breaker. I think maybe some old formulas that I ran many years ago had the same issue...but IME it's rare outside of shimano brakes.

My DVO experience is pretty poor. I had a Diamond fork, but it was harsher than my Pike and half a pound heavier. The "OTT" only barely made the very initial travel softer, but it's preload, not actually high volume, so the travel was still harsh hitting bumps. I had a Jade and Jade X and they bizarrely had almost no compression damping. One blew up. I got them custom-tuned/rebuilt, but still, very little compression damping. It makes me question whether they understand suspension forces. I did get them for pretty cheap...but in retrospect it wasn't a great deal, because the performance was poor. I hope they have upped their game, the mtb suspension world is scraping the bottom of the barrel constantly and DVO was unfortunately a good example of that.

@VorsprungSuspension: No no, I ride the most perfect bike ever made, the RM7! It was only designed to self-destruct from inception. And yes, that's who I am. I do not think a stiffer spring rate is the answer, if anything, I'm on the side of oversprung vs. under. I'm not able to test next week, my trip down south was shortened...but I have the fork before-Smashpot to compare to and other forks and just none of my other setups did this and I'm well aware of what being under-sprung does. The Smashpot sucks down on compressions for me and as I said before, I had to take it off the bike for safety reasons. I'll do some more testing when I can and do have some opportunities in the winter for it, but I've never had a fork suck down like this. I had to purposefully under-spring the rear end of the bike to get some semblance of balance, didn't correct the issue, but more symptomatic that it was an untenable situation. I do want it to work, I do appreciate coil spring. I think the Mezzer air spring suffers from not having a big enough negative spring for 180mm of travel due to using spacers instead of air shafts and that plus the seal-drag seems to make it beat my hands when set up linear for harder riding, vs. diving all over the place if set up progressive. I tend to think most riders set it up progressive and just go slow...which is fine, but I want it to hold up during harder riding and also not beat up my hands. Somehow the Zeb with the Secus does this, but even the old Lyrik with the Push ACS3 and Avalanche cartridge was far better than the coil Mezzer. Again, no suck-down.

@ratedgg13: Lefty forks are not a valid comparison, they have what are essentially "square" stanchions, so there is no torsional flex (like we see on forks with round stanchions). This makes them exceptionally stiff, probably not nearly as dependent on the axle, although a tapered axle is the best way to distribute the load.

I have the Smashpot V2 and even with HBO turned all the way out it nose-dives after big compressions, like g-out to jump. That affects the bike attitude and rotates the front wheel down/raises the rear. I find this dangerous. I'm trying to find a way to solve this, but so far no dice.

It's impressive to combine all the known worst-pedaling features into one bike. Belt drive...check Gearbox...check High pivot idler...check Mullet...check

@TasGravityGirls: And they had prior lawsuits and issues and lied about them in court. That's why they got creamed in court. People don't read though and just base their opinion on whatever meme they see..

We are well past peak humanity.

"This new layout might look like a traditional Horst link bike. But this one is not like the others. I have specially tuned this layout with my CBF special sauce to give it the power transfer you expect from CBF." Like the Giant NRS? That had the special sauce to give you the power transfer.

@JonDud: I put that in my critique. Kinda hard giving that it's a smaller event, but some more food choices would have been good for sure.