rybrentd

Dhr2 rear and a kryptotal fr in front is actually a great combo, better than the double dhr2 (2.4R, 2.5F) that is my go to.

27.4 rear tire! 27.5 step aside.

#5 That's not how you win the gates belt drive challenge...

Have the v2 and love it. The only thing I would change is slightly longer chainstays and reach (455 to 460). I actually wouldn't make the head angle steeper. My only quirk with it is the small screws at the downtube cable entry ports and the suspension. Even with the cascade link, it doesn't perform well over repeated impacts and is hard to find a good balance between bottom out resistance and tracking at speed. Fox float x for reference. If they improve rear suspension performance this would be on my radar for an upgrade.

I appreciate the article, but just out of curiousity why did pinkbike remove my comment criticizing the bike industry for their inability to design and implement bushing tolerances on their forks? Is this a censorship website now?

Awesome article! Make more dimensionally accurate bushings though since that is the interface between the stanchions and lowers. If you haven't figured out that by this point please tendor your resignation.

@ethanshredz: I'll second the undercutting of the side knobs. I just replaced a dhr2 on the rear (MT compound, DD casing) with good center knobs because the side knobs are completely blown out. I noticed this started to happen when riding rockier terrain with sandpaper like grip in the dry.

@cueTIP: I assumed you would use a different forging die for each crank length rather than a one size fits all die and just trimming and machining down. I agree with you that the latter wouldn't be a good idea and would compromise strength. A die optimized for the appropriate crank length and grain flow for that length would be the way to go, although that would increase tooling costs, changeover times, etc. I don't think a lot of people understand how expensive it would be to set up your own company (as you outlined) specifically to just make quality cranks rather than outsourcing to a larger plant that already has the capacity to fabricate it.

@cueTIP: "because you cannot (or should not) machine down a forged part as it disrupts the grain of the metal which reduces its strength significantly" That isn't a true statement in terms of reducing strength significantly (in regards to aluminum). It depends on your manufacturing process but aligning the grain structure to account for forging and using robotic compaction on forged/heat treated/machined (in that order) parts will increase your fatigue life by a huge factor. We used to do that at a previous automotive company (although the pressure applied in robotic compaction was a closely guarded secret). Non compacted aluminum saw fatigue life of around 100k cycles where compacted aluminum saw upwards of 1x10^6 (a million) cycles (actual empirical testing). We were also able to get the yield/ultimate stress of 6061-T6 aluminum up to 50k/55k psi (measured). So machining a forged part does not make it weaker, but it also depends on your process and how much material you are shaving off during machining. Now is this practical for a mtb application? Probably not, since it would be cost prohibitive.