2manyoranges
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Drat - so it was …. ApologiesIt was Yoann Barellibut yes that bike is ridiculous!View attachment 677848
The stirrings of radical geometry…
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2manyoranges
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This really does look like a startled rabbit…Joe told me in 2018 that 36" wheels were the future and he's not been wrong to date. The fact they cropped up on Doddy's IG and Pilgrim's YT channel recently suggests that it's not as mad-cap as it sounds. On that basis, rip-up the rule book and start again
My fav bit of bonkers design is '99 Stab Dee-Lux. Most modern day enduro bikes have a S-bend downtube, so the logic was there...the short wheel-base wasn't
Credit to @Buzzsaw
Streeeeeetch everything and you would have something sensible. As it is, it’s just bonkers.
Forgive my ignorance - out my league - but what makes this radical in the evolution of DH bikes?
benjabbi
Bontrager Fan
It's a 160mm travel 'Enduro' bike not a DH bike, just an experiment, they basically looked at the same thing from 2010, took the difference in the geometry to a bike from a couple of years ago and applied that to that bike. Ending up with an 57° head angle, an 83° seat angle, 500mm reach and a wheel base of 1409mm on an otherwise medium sized frame. It really was just to see what happens if you take it to the extreme.
2manyoranges
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THAT is a great historical find ….
Sometimes I find funny the head angles ... now the XC is around 68º ... That is what my ETSX have in LT position and it was nice to have that in 2006-2007. Thay is why I dont really like modenr 29er and Im stuck in 27.5. They are not funn, I find my self lazy and in funn narrow paths the inertia, the wide handlebars, and over all handling is not the best to ride fast in narow paths ... Yes they ride well int wide gravel paths but that is not MTB for me, that is boring. Or the enduro bicycles are for big stuff, like my Meta with 65.5 heand angle that don´t want to take close turns in very narrow sections ... The new bicycles are built vith a very specific type of ride and to make money. They show some videos but you will never do that in your area, I don´t have a bike parks, only mountais and narrow paths that I love it.
The geometry changes with 3-4-5" travel, this chart is for the maximun travel:5" but there are more charts for the other settings. That is why I still love my bicycle, it has some tricks to stay in the podium (2019 second place in a small race in a village against modern stuff
)
The geometry changes with 3-4-5" travel, this chart is for the maximun travel:5" but there are more charts for the other settings. That is why I still love my bicycle, it has some tricks to stay in the podium (2019 second place in a small race in a village against modern stuff
)
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2manyoranges
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Well……my experience is a bit different…Sometimes I find funny the head angles ... now the XC is around 68º ... That is what my ETSX have in LT position and it was nice to have that in 2006-2007. Thay is why I dont really like modenr 29er and Im stuck in 27.5. They are not funn, I find my self lazy and in funn narrow paths the inertia, the wide handlebars, and over all handling is not the best to ride fast in narow paths ... Yes they ride well int wide gravel paths but that is not MTB for me, that is boring. Or the enduro bicycles are for big stuff, like my Meta with 65.5 heand angle that don´t want to take close turns in very narrow sections ... The new bicycles are built vith a very specific type of ride and to make money. They show some videos but you will never do that in your area, I don´t have a bike parks, only mountais and narrow paths that I love it.
The geometry changes with 3-4-5" travel, this chart is for the maximun travel:5" but there are more charts for the other settings. That is why I still love my bicycle, it has some tricks to stay in the podium (2019 second place in a small race in a village against modern stuff
View attachment 678870
I have ridden singletrack since the days of the Dawes Ranger and the first import batch of Marins….
Now I have a BfeMax - 29er long thing with 63 static head angle. 42 offset on the forks. It’s that mixed chemistry which makes it stable and reassuring pointed downhill…but surprisingly agile in singletrack. And I mean agile. But then…
I have a Stanton switch9er and that has 65 HA, 42 offset forks and very short wheelbase. I can tell you … that handles like a bmx in single track. Really. Unbelievably agile. I’m turning before I think consciously of it…
But you have optimise everything. Fork offset, suspension set up, and… bar width. A professional looked at my son’s bars and said ‘too wide’. And I was running 800 too…they came down to 780 and then 760, in increments, and that made a huge difference to agility and climbing performance.
I love my little 26ers lurking in the barn. But that’s not what I ride by preference - and I’ve never been faster or felt more secure…’new classics’ I think…
The 26" race bicycles were so agile that they were quite inestable going down. So more agile than that ... a 24" street bicycle.
But the wide handlebars don´t pass as fast as we did, and if you try you crash. And when I say narrow this photo is the wide area with no trees, so you can imagine that you pass some times with 10-20cm between trees and a 740 handle bar. With a 580 mm of my ETSX I can run around 30-35km/h and with this stable bicycle (Yes, it is more in the enduro area, it is quite different, but I do routes with it too) ... not even 20-25 km/h. And heavy brake and aceleration is in every corner, so 29" is a nightmare.
Yes, 29" are good in other places, but not here.
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