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Latest MTB Trends, Brake Rotor Size Debate, 2018 vs. 2022 Bikes & Tons Of Listener Questions.. Ep 93 [Podcast}
Prepare yourself for a classic episode of the MTB Podcast! Tune in as Jeff recalls his experience hand delivering an order, Liam goes over the details on his epic new hardtail, and Jared laments his recent injury and boredom riding road bikes. All this followed by a dazzling array of listener questions ranging from the fastest facial hair to how much water to bring on rides and everything in between. Tune in!
Worldwide Cyclery YouTube Channel
Why Cycles: https://www.whycycles.com/
Submit any and all questions to podcast@worldwidecyclery.com
If you are one strange human that would like to read a transcript of the podcast above, continue reading below!
[Music] ladies and gentlemen welcome to mtb
podcast episode 93 i am jeff i'm jared and i'm liam this is the crew from
worldwide cyclery which is who worldwide cyclery is hosted and sponsored by wow
circles yeah this is a good drink i have a really nice drink
this podcast we're gonna cover actually some really good stuff i'm excited it's just us three we're going to go over uh
some trends in the mountain bike industry a lot of things that we're seeing right now that are just interesting talking points regarding
suspension designs e-bikes electronic suspension universal derailleur hangers slowed down innovation i don't know all
sorts of stuff are you excited for that chair super excited for all of it yeah but more importantly we have piles and
piles of good listener questions that range from wow everything from what facial hair is
faster what rotor size you should be running and where to store your water while riding
and how much you need i mean there's drilling holes in your aluminum frame and drilling holes in your aluminum frame yeah drilling holes is a really
good topic and whether you should or not yeah we've done some sketchy modifications on bikes before so we'll
get into that a little bit later as well as cushcore tyron shirts yeah there's a whole bunch of good mountain bike related questions here too
educate your mountain bike brain all right dj green goblin who no longer
has green hair please play a sound effect dj green goblin with no more green hair
all right first question are we ready i don't know jeff you don't look ready
well all right you look ready now what are we going over questions or you want to go over some quick personal updates
oh yeah no we should do that you're really jealous i was just so excited for this question that i really wanted you to answer but yeah i'm jumping the gun
so yeah jeff what's you know what's new tell us well what's what's new for me
so a couple about two months ago right i thought it would be a funny idea to put on the worldwide cyclery and the kettle
Hand Delivery
mountain website a shipping option for a thousand dollars that was hand delivery by jeff and i think most people didn't
think it was serious actually i think probably half of our staff thought it was a joke or didn't really understand why i was there but i was i told people
i was like no just honestly i thought it'd be a funny idea we made it so it's only the lower 48 just the continental united states and i was like i will i'll
just hand deliver the package if someone actually buys that i've done it twice so far so we actually
uh when i was out east recently visiting our shop in pennsylvania we hand delivered a bike mccluskey and i the
other guy who's runs a shop there we drove down to annapolis maryland awesome guy we built up a custom build for him
delivered the bike in person he owns a restaurant we had we had food it was amazing it was a great time and then the
day after i got on a plane and flew to rochester new york to deliver a box full of drive
trains and brakes and and other mountain bike parts and that one i was thinking you know it was like what what should we
do and jared and i were on the phone for i don't know maybe an hour trying to brainstorm i don't know just funny ideas of how we could create content because
we were going i was going to rochester in march it's supposed to snow it's 40 degrees i was like i can't really ride bikes i was like i wanted to make a
whole ordeal out of this when it happened um but then jared had this brilliant idea of hiring a local mariachi band
just came into your head yeah when you said that i was i was instantly
skeptical i was like that's not rochester new york mariachi band no way sure enough just going to google
hire a mariachi band in rochester new york and and there was some sort of gig musician website i put out a thing this
was two days prior to the hand delivery and i actually found the only mariachi
band in rochester the next nearest moment in new york city which was three or five hours away or something and um
yeah i hired the mariachi band and and it worked out perfectly i was you know i was i emailed the customer i was texting him and i said hey here's here's the
deal don't look out your windows and don't go outside until i say until i knock on the door
i was like i've never really texted anyone that's kind of weird not shady at all not shady at all but i was like just just totally got your windows yeah and
uh sure enough i showed up and mariachi band was there we got got all set up and they actually brought me an extra
sombrero and you know knocked on the door and they started playing their music so they actually suggested a song
i forgot the name of the song it's like a celebratory mariachi song it was good they suggested the song and
knocked on the door guy opens the door and you know here i am with a sombrero on a mariachi band just blaring the
box full of awesome buckets and a box full of bike parts that that i literally did carry myself all the way there and
you know check the luggage on the plane and everything so it was a lot of best day ever honestly it was pretty fun it was a lot more work than i had thought
um it was a pretty big box it was a four there was a fork in there and a bunch of other stuff so it was actually pretty
cumbersome to carry that carry that onto the i took the train that day and then to the airport and it was
made me think like wow these you know fedex and ups these guys are that's a lot of work to deliver these boxes yeah
they're also why they get over and smash their bike parts yeah yeah that's true but yeah it's been pretty fun so i don't
know that's that's a couple little things that i've been up to that are interesting and the shipping options still on the website it's at this point
i i'm considering if i need to up the price or if i just i just run it for a little bit longer now that it's summer
time i'll be a lot more happy to go pretty much anywhere in the continental us in the summer time-ish yeah you're gonna throw one up for jared for five
hundred dollars yeah yeah there was a lot of funny comments yeah a lot of people want that option i think you should add that and you should also make
an international option yeah there was a lot of comments there's demand for
not only me but also liam to come yeah i think someone said well two grand get liam here to work on my
bike or something yeah yeah yeah yeah everybody
it's hilarious a lot of a lot of theories on this but the more i thought man if this was international we'd have to be i mean this is a big world i could
end up who knows where yeah katmandu i mean i mean it could cost a metric fortune and then places that with
covered restrictions be pretty uh it would be wild it'd be a challenging one we'll see i'm just glad things like this
are happening again it's good fun shipping options still there for anyone that wants to spend a thousand dollars to have me hand deliver something it's
actually not a joke if you see it when you're checking out so that's that liam what do you got going new hardtail
New Hardtail
uh yeah finally got a hardtail i think i've dreamed about it on the podcast before wow um so we got a
hardtail y cycles el jefe titanium hardtail um it's been pretty sweet we've got like
i don't know 200 250 miles on it so far it's pretty much like i used to ride
hardtails when i was racing xc but they weren't that fun because they had narrow bars and long stems and no dropper posts
and the geo just wasn't nearly as good as it is now so now this bike rips um
yeah it's been fun to just like put in long rides on it and uh
you know do you know why hardtail riders are so adamant and serious about why hardtails are the best no i don't that's
a good question i don't either i don't actually think they're the best i think they're super fun and simple and like
i purposely made this one have like a mechanical dropper mechanical drive chain just so it's kind of like
you know naturally aspirated yeah kind of just you know then you're kind of just like a straightforward bike
there's nothing too fancy about it but it's just going to ride good like for years yeah um and i kind of
i i wanted a hardtail again because i was riding gravel bikes and spots that they weren't really supposed to be
ridden like too often to where i was just like this is dumb because a hardtail like would do this way better
yeah so that's kind of why i built it because i was just tired of like smashing square bumps single track on
the gravel bike yeah that sounds like our tail is good for that kind of stuff yeah and a lot of people
also email and you know chat in saying i want to hear more about hardtails so
you have answered their prayers yeah i have a pretty racy build on it it's pretty like
i'd say definitely on the xc side how much did that bite turn out weighing uh
right now with the rw27 the revel wheels on it it weighs
about 20 just over 24 pounds with pedals and you have a sid just say there's
ultimate yeah oh okay so that's the only the 35 mil standard yeah it came straight from my ranger right on that bike
um i've got g2 ultimates with 180 rotors um 2.4 tires dropper post
um so it's it's meant to handle some like actual riding uh if i wanted to i could put on some
weight winnie wheels and get it down like 23 flat nice which i think is pretty solid for a titanium hardtail
yeah definitely seem nice and light yeah that's cool nice and light
so uh jared turns out you have a bum hoof bum hoof yeah man oh man you bummed
your hoof not ride dude that's actually a pretty funny story so you were you were sitting in the shop
with your foot up on your desk yeah this the whole last two weeks every time i've walked out yeah just with your foot
elevated on your desk yeah but some guy came in and said oh you bummed your hoof
customer that lives probably to the beach came in and he was like oh dude you bummed your hoof i did and it was
awesome and then cracking up and i said we talked about that on the podcast last time but the last podcast we recorded
with adam the founder of rebel bikes we were riding with him yeah you were actually riding his bike i was riding
his bike you crashed it which is like a huge part of the reason why i crashed it hard and bummed your hoof but yeah well
right in front of him right in front of two other guys and two other guys were watching us ride the sketchy part of the really go check it out dude i'll show
you how to ride it that's how you do it right there you technically didn't crash right you
just washed it out front washed the front stuff stuffed your foot stuffed my foot yeah like didn't even touch dirt
yeah it's just like was bracing my fall basically and braced it at the worst place there's a huge on
the inside of the turn and i just landed my foot right in there you mean your hoof my hoof that's right yeah i mean your hoof was all purple and green for
is it still purple and green it's actually not anymore it's still a little swollen but it's looking pretty purple and green there for about a week yeah
totally it's it's a lot better i don't know if you're free or for real or not if i'm being honest until like a day or
two later and it's like actually purple blue like yeah you really bummed your hoof yeah it was bad but yeah it was
it's a lot better i mean i went for my first like decent ride since i heard it today in
sycamore um hour and a half 18 miles on the gravel bike so that was cool um and then yeah you're able to get out
of the saddle or you just kind of stink a little bit but yeah pretty much trying to stay in the saddle i mean like yeah um yeah just not trying to push it but
yeah it's pretty much a little road ride with my dad and uh solving over the weekend we went up there and did some
wine tasting and beer drinking as well so it was nice to ride up there just kind
of you know he's into it did he get his new e-bike he did but yeah uh he hasn't ridden it yet on trail
no just like it's just so funny to watch him ride around and he's just like smiling and he's like this is ridiculous
and i'm like i know it's crazy the transition repeater yeah repeater did you read peter can you
repeat that please that's pretty cool yeah he loves it it's rad i'm gonna try and ride it when he's out
of town like the other bikes that you bought
yeah but you know jared and his bike purchases for his family that are actually sort of for him
yeah you know just not the first time out of town this weekend sweet yeah let me take it out
exactly i can't wait i think it's sweet but yeah that's pretty much all i got going on yeah very cool stoked to get
back on mountain bike in a couple weeks yeah yeah i can imagine i haven't had an injury in a while except you said your
back hurts other than my back i gotta i got the back of an old man but uh that's just that's just part of living a life
of and doing extreme sports as a kid and bmx and skating and motocross and all that and scorpioning myself
you should give it back to him that was good dude thanks back to him he said you're in the back
what i need is a backyard of me i gotta get a backyard i'm gonna get a becky out of me all right let's go over
MTB Trends
some of these trends in the mountain bike industry i just wanted to chat about a few of these because they're always interesting and i figure you know we have tons of listeners that love the
mountain bike industry and want to know what's happening trend wise right now and it's it's kind of been i'll start out with the the fact that it's been a
bit slow i mean i feel as if trends used to happen and they would kind of they would show
up sooner and they would be more talked about and all these new stuff would be coming out and it would have to do with xyz and but i don't know there's there's
a lot less sort of innovation right now and a lot less i think effort being put into r d in the last couple years
because um you know the pandemic obviously caused a lot of turmoil in the bike industry so people are just putting less
effort into r d and more effort into hey we just need to get product and get it on time and solve all these other million problems rather than worrying
about introducing new products constantly since that's getting just harder in this day and age um which is
kind of bummer so it's i don't know i think the main trend is that there's less new stuff all the time we used to
see new stuff all the time i mean it was like every every other month yeah you know it's almost two months yeah it was
almost too much it was just like all these new products and new bikes coming out um slowed down a lot holding close
standards so i don't know i i'm hoping that that'll pick up again i mean obviously
keeps the bike industry interesting and has for the last probably 20 years is just kind of constant innovation and constant new products which are rad so
hopefully that'll kick back up once supply chain stuff gets in a little bit better shape but some things that are still trending
a lot of new bikes that are coming out almost all of them i think have the udh sram's universal trailer hanger which
from what i understand sram designed and pretty much just said hey this is open source everyone should use this trailer
hanger works great everyone just use this because most everyone knows there's a million
different derailleur hangers it's comical how confusing that is to buy so sram's trying to solve that problem by just telling everyone hey use this
design so yeah who's not doing it i mean i don't know exactly who isn't doing it
it seems like most brands even big brands track specialized santa cruz
santa cruz on some of their bikes i think um some of them they do use that sliding
drop out for the chainstay length so it doesn't work with that but um chameleon but i feel like yeah i feel like if
you're not doing anything funky with like chainstay links then why would you not spec a udh that
you don't have to design you don't have to manufacture you don't have to manufacture extras like you just
ram like you're buying you know chains for your oem bikes yeah yeah the idea is that you know every rider on a
modern mountain bike with a universal derailleur hanger can go into essentially any bike shop in the world and they'll have a drill here in stock
and it's about half the price of what yeah they're yeah they're not 25 or 20 bucks or something like that where like
other derailleur hangers are like 40 to 50 um i just don't know why it took us so
long to get to this point where we were like oh we should maybe make these universal like idiots
how about like the first time we made a mountain bike we were like oh we should just make this thing standard for all of them well
i get your point but there has been now a bit of a settling in terms of hubs to some extent yeah and hub standards
whereas before you had qr axles with 135 and then you had 142 and then 148 yeah
and now there is some stupid boost stuff going on but um but also throughout
the same yeah exactly which which is why you see udh on super boost or just regular boost
and it's getting there it's got some good designs too where like and not only is it meant to break like
every other hanger but it also i believe will swing a certain way if you hit your
derailleur it'll actually swing up out of the way so it some derailleur hangers if they get hit so hard to actually crush into
your frame where the spam udh will swing in a different way that also won't damage your frame so yeah it's good
yeah yeah that's cool so that's a good trend to see new bikes being released in the last five years that are all coming
with the udh so yeah i'd probably say last two or three it's really caught on that's true yeah that's that's when it's
like oh wow this everyone's gonna do this yeah this is good this is really good um
Electronic Suspension
i guess another thing we had on here was uh suspension electronic suspension so
fox live valve that was kind of the first electronic suspension i think that was like yeah really talked about and
big and then rockshox released their flight attendant not too long ago this is a trend that's
not taking on so much right now right yeah i think for a couple reasons too
it's one it's expensive outrageously expensive yeah and it's only available on certain bikes yep yeah it has to be spec'd oem
for fox live valve or rockshox flight attendant live valve your bike actually actually
has to be like wired for it kind of how like original di2 bikes were back in the day
like shimano di2 road bikes they need a mount for it
flight attendant uses uh sram and rockstar's axis wireless systems so just
to access battery and it's wireless so that's what makes it a little easier on the manufacturers but you still need to
spec at oem yeah so i think like the enduro was something like a 13 000 bike
or something like that that came with it yeah so huge price i mean
also negligible benefits yeah i mean if you read a lot of the i
haven't ridden it yet we've had a couple guys on our team that have ridden him um and just some of the reviews and like no
one i don't know no one is raving that this is revolutionary it's like oh there's some cool things here and there
i just i don't know i don't think anyone is really pushing hard of how incredible it
is because which kind of tells you it's maybe not that i guess we should also say too that this is an electronic
lockout for your suspension yeah and it's the whole point of it is to
basically read the terrain as with you know um what do you call them like all the
accelerometers excellent yeah data inputs from its sensors and
either have your bike unlocked or locked based on the terrain the difference is fox live valve is
kind of geared more towards the xc side where it kind of seems to be always locked and then it opens up as you're
hitting rough terrain or jumps and drops rockshox flight attendant is kind of geared more towards
longer travel enduro bikes and it kind of seems like it stays open until you need it to be firm to climb
so there's there's two totally different ways that these companies are going after it too so it's not like they're
both tackling the same problem yeah it's just really early i mean i think there's some merit to the idea but
Flight Attendant
until they really dial it in really very well and the cost comes down yeah could be well before you see that yeah and
just the more pad ability and yeah exactly making it universal yeah i mean i do see you know the application on a
long travel under a bike that maybe doesn't pedal that great like you know off the showroom floor the bike probably
like doesn't pedal great or it has a bunch of bob or something like that right maybe flight attendant would be good in that scenario but like for a bike that
pedals pretty well it's just like why why other nice thing about flight attendant is you can actually it does
have its own um algorithm and sensors but you can actually override it right
and toggle it for your needs so right it could be useful i think some of the specialized entero ews guys were running
it and it makes sense because they can firm it up a little bit for a 20 second sprint and then open it back up and go
smash some downhill trails yeah but that's a very specific use i don't think any of us need to go no stiffen up our
suspension for a 20 second sprint yeah yeah exactly good point
and if i did i'd probably just reach down and flip the switch yeah
yeah i don't know it's it's it's tough to imagine how much this is yeah we'll see i'm obviously on the side of
thinking that bikes are kind of at an innovation plateau because they just work so amazing right now as is good
high-end mountain bike just works so good it's hard it's hard to imagine that anything's going to be revolutionary there'll be
tons of iterative stuff that will make small improvements but over the years but yeah anything big revolution things
are going to be as important as a reliable dropper post i mean that was a big deal there's been a lot of innovations in the last 20 years and i
think it's it's hard to imagine there'll be ones as revolutionary in the you know preceding 20 years but we'll see
High Pivot Mid Pivot
speaking of suspension stuff so high pivot mid pivot the first downhill world cup was just
this week this last weekend and there was a ton of bikes that were using i guess what could be considered a
mid pivot so they're you know if you listen so we had niko malali one of the racers that we sponsor
um in his whole program this year where he's designing his own bikes to race at world cups he was on the podcast and he really
really dove into high pivot suspension design so if you're if you're curious on that topic or looking at a bike that is
a high pivot there's there's certainly i don't think there's yes it's better or you you know know
it's worse there's just it just is different and depending on your riding style and terrain and all of that and nico did a really good job breaking that
down because he's just so living in that world of suspension design and it's just interesting to see he's in my opinion
just really ahead of the curve on knowing and understanding this stuff which is why he's doing things like designing his own bikes to race
but you have all these different brands in the downhill world cup that are trying to mess with this and it seems
like it there is a lot of merit to high pivot and or mid pivot with the bikes or going
really fast and have a lot of suspension travel and maybe a little bit less merit when it's just your average six-inch
travel or below trail slash enduro bike it's just not as relevant there so i don't know we'll see but i mean
Bike Design Trends
there is still some pros to it in just this enduro bike with a high pivot for sure depending on your riding style and
what you're doing so yeah but that is a trend that's happening i mean people are talking about it and bikes are designed
like that and so kind of popping up you know last couple years in enduro scene right forbidden has one
deviate which we carry has one yeah norco has two i think a high pivot and a
mid pivot um and there's more coming so you know
they're making it maybe they're just making it because it's a niche and it has its you know benefits but
they're definitely out there and they're growing so yeah it like you said it just kind of fits a certain rider and their
style and that's what the beautiful thing about bikes is is they're a little bit something for everybody mm-hmm yeah i
EBike Trends
mean exactly if if you're really looking for that that rear suspension to perform its absolute best with no limitations
when you're riding the thing very fast over rough terrain then it's a great design makes a lot of sense
um you know there's some sacrifices there here and there and other uses of that bike but yeah it depends on what
you're looking for yeah i don't know it's another one of those cool things where it's like wow we have so many choices as many bikers
seriously which is good and bad yes i think one of the only other you know
major trends that everyone's aware of is e-bikes e-bikes and e-mountain bikes are just getting a lot more popular and
growing and more people are riding e-bikes that used to hate e-bikes or used to think they would never ride one
and it's just a really growing segment right now it's actually when you look at kind of the overall growth of the mountain mic industry in general it's
it's uh let's let's exclude 2020 and 2021 because those are very abnormal years
um but mountain bike industry has not really grown in a sense but e-bikes are growing like crazy in all segments
especially in the high-end mountain bike scene so that's an interesting trend to see not losing steam whatsoever
yeah it's only gaining and like pretty fast totally i think
yeah you get people who are used to be not down and now they're down and they're and they want to ride them
or they rode one and they're like okay now i get it yeah you know and then they're telling their friends and then
they try them and then you have whole groups of people that are going to get ebikes yep yeah just like that surprisingly there's some network
effects stuff too right where where one person gets one and it's really fun and then their one buddy gets one another
buddy and then now there's like isn't that happening to you liam you have a group of friends that only ride e-bikes
now so you pretty much can't ride with him unless you're on one yeah i mean most of us do ride both like a shorter
travel bike that you know normal bike and then an e-bike which is you know
your 171 70 travel kind of enduro bike um so yeah i'm kind of i'm getting edged
out or should you say edged in to the bike yeah yeah he's like if i want to
ride with my buds then i need an e-bike now um where otherwise maybe i would have never had an e-bike if that wasn't
the case mm-hmm um but yeah i mean i went to local riding zone
a couple weeks ago and i think i saw me and my buddy were on normal bikes the rest of our crew were on e-bikes and
maybe saw two or three other normal bikes and one of them actually had a rope attached to his but
i've actually seen that already so and like and the wrestlers like 20 25 riders on e-bikes yeah and it's just
insane because that zone two years ago only had one person on e-bike and his trojan yeah who's like early early
adopter because he hates pedaling so much yeah so yeah it's it's quite an interesting
trend i'm definitely excited for forestall so four stall is an andorran e-bike brand that we're actually going
to start carrying in winliam hopefully eight to ten weeks we should have some bikes eight to ten weeks yeah
so it's we have a couple test bikes right now which look incredible and uh yeah they've been developing those for a
long time with cedric gracia and a bunch of other good riders so yeah i'm excited i mean it's one of those things for us
like we're a retailer right so we want to carry boutique high-end brands and if there's demand for e-bikes we're gonna
find a really premium e-bike brand that makes fantastic stuff so i'm excited to
see forest all kind of come to life and get some of those bikes in here as demos and see what our customers like and
staff and everything so that'll be cool yeah they look rad so yeah if you're if you're curious
forestall f-o-r-e-s-t-a-l just hit them on instagram they actually post some really cool stuff on instagram so we'll show
the custom paint work they're doing yeah a lot of behind-the-scenes stuff yeah yeah
it is cool so e-bikes they're not losing steam um they're gaining lithium though
they're gaining lithium that's right burning lithium ions uh well before we hop into our listener
questions a quick word from our sponsor oh and now a word from our sponsors hello mountain bikers jeff again just
wanted to quickly ask you all for a favor i would genuinely appreciate it if you would check out trail one components
trail one is a brand we are invested in and one i personally worked on crafting the founding team which includes an
obscenely overqualified engineer as well as the famed bkxc the idea was to create
premium mountain bike components that truly support the sport of mountain biking by giving back to trail networks
with every single purchase we have a growing line of products which can be seen on the worldwide cyclar website as
well as at trailone dot bike speaking of which if you use the code podcast on the
trail one website you can snag fifty dollars off your first order only fifteen of those codes exist so get
after it that's trail one dot bike thanks and now back to the show all right jeff
please rate this facial hair from fastest to slowest mustaches goatees beards
uh as far as aerodynamics i'm going to say mustache didn't go teeth and beard
but what but i don't know if we're just talking aerodynamics here fast for the sake of being fast makes
you fast looks fast doesn't have to be like you know like actually like could
you imagine a sick goatee with some really cool glasses that guy's going fast in life
liam what do you think mustaches and goatees are pretty neck and neck i think
beards are like the man's makeup like beards are just beards you know but
yeah yeah this is a tough question i've never heard that a good mustache is probably faster yeah i think he actually
ranked them already he did order kind of slowest yeah he should have thrown the terms more of a curveball but yeah i
think it's mustache's goatees beards i don't know if i've ever seen any mountain bike racer that was really fast
that had a full-blown beard i mean that's like super not arrow
uh controversial one luca paulini he got caught doing some stuff but he had a full-blown beard
okay well was he fast because of the stuff he got caught doing or because he had to be both we're talking about
bikers here i don't know any fast mountain bikers with a full-blown beard yeah jeff kabush had some gnarly
sideburns for a while yeah that's true chops i thought i saw someone will ask can somebody chops can somebody solid
facial hair yeah yeah but like a beard yeah it's like a beard steve pete's got a good goatee that's
true maybe maybe a mustache i'm still talking about beards [Laughter]
can somebody please email podcast worldwide tackler.com with the answer to what fast mountain bike racer had a
full-blown beard um somebody will i feel like steve pete's probably the closest that i can think of
and he's a legend so he's a legend well how about the next one store the bike with dropper post up or
Dropper Post
down this is definitive up well yeah
yeah up unless you're my roommate and it's down yeah well the the reason is is there's
it's there's an air pressure chamber in there so when it's up there's less pressure going on and therefore you got
less pressure on your seals and everything else and it's just a better way to keep the post maintained for a long time
so yep yeah leave that thing up same reason if you ever tied your motorcycle or your dirt bike down on the bed of a truck you
don't leave it like that overnight with the suspension all compressed that's not good you don't want that compression sitting
there overnight i remember doing that always keep that dropper post up but more importantly don't yank on it to
pull it up oh you know what i mean if your dropper post is in the dropped position do not pull up on it yeah or
like hang your bike from it oh yeah oh yeah definitely not yeah those are your absolute worst case scenarios yep
absolutely where's case ontario worst case ontario how about this guy with his 2018 sb555
read it jared all right i'll finish it well this listener is looking to get a shorter travel bike like the revel
ranger or the yeti sb 115 with the gx spec but his 2018 yeti sp55 has an x01 build
would an average rider notice the difference between that sp55 with the high-end spec compared to the new bike
with the gx build spec well those are great for starters they're very different bikes so five
five is a five and a half inch travel which is like six inches travel in the front it's like a full-blown skiing enduro bike yeah whereas he's talking
about going to more of a light trail bike right so it's totally different bikes so because he lives in a flat area
and he thinks he has too much travel for yeah well that makes sense so a lot of things he wouldn't be the first guy to
have bought a bike with too much travel for his requirements of trails and needs around him he wouldn't be um
i would say he would definitely notice a difference but that's just like a really tough call um on like
if you were to swap them out because that's like such a different experience x01 yeti sb55 versus gx ranger like gx
yeah hdx level suspension is if you try to just take the differences in the drive chain the
suspension yeah you'll probably notice a bit of a difference in 2018 was still eagle still nice parts um gx you know is
still really good i mean half my bikes have gx like it still works really well
um the new gx the new gi which i guess when did when did the new gx get released a year
ago yeah well that's just like a year ago and
then the revision like probably two years ago yeah but that was a huge revision yeah because yeah current sram
gx is really nice yeah it's solid yeah impressive super solid um i would say i'd say you would but going from a five
five to a shorter travel bike you're already gonna feel kind of like superman too so like
that's the bigger difference yeah with your your part spec difference you assume like man this bike feels way faster even
though you know might be you know heavier than the x01 spec or xx1 spec but yeah true um yeah they're
really good yeah like gx level suspension whether it's rockshox or fox you get performance or select like it's
really good i think i think the the gap there in 2018 there was a much
bigger gap when you were looking at a bike that was a gx bike with you know
gx price point suspension versus an xx1 or an x01 bike and the premium suspension there was a bigger gap there
yeah there's less of a gap now i agree so nowadays 2020 2022 gx has come a long
way shimano xt or even shimano slx and like the suspension it's they're that
gap's tightened up that yeah so you're getting less of a huge jump in performance with going from something
like slx to xtr or gx to x01 now than you did in 2018. yep
yeah because i mean i i remember people used to be like on you know they would always want to spend the extra money for
x01 yeah and nowadays people everyone's totally satisfied with gx they're like stuff works great
i have no problems with it yeah so i feel like also the pricing has gone up on the x01 builds and so it's less of an
incentive that's true too like the yeah the x01 build is like almost nine grand down it's like a little happened a
little less digestible that's called inflation yeah inflation and uh yeah just one supply chain so one of our best
viewed youtube videos is the whole breakdown of sram drivetrains basically
going from nx all the way to x01 and talking about the kind of every little difference between all of them and
there's a whole graph in that video showing every individual component and their weight and price point all that
sort of stuff so if you're curious on that definitely look into that um but yeah it's uh i don't know they've
yeah drive trains are i don't know it's one of those things too like you read a lot of the comments on that video some people are like
this this is a great video it totally helped me justify the you know getting gx and then other people read it they're like oh it's a great video totally
helped me justify getting xx1 there's no right answer here i guess there's a perspective shift too yeah
i thought it was hilarious reading the comments on that but it's a popular video we did it for shimano drivetrains as well if you're curious to check those
out yeah those are good well how about the next one moving on a suspension stuff what are the pros and
Cascade Links
cons of installing a cascade link specifically to yeti but also in general do you think cascade components also
makes fishing reels uh so i want to put this question in here
because i don't i mean i i think cascade is doing some really cool stuff
and just fine-tuning links to make bikes behave in a very certain way but i don't i don't know i just i have hard time
believing that that's really all that necessary for 98 of people well some people would
disagree with me that's why they don't put them on from the factory that's why they exist it's because it's
for those that niche people that want that extra or
progressiveness progressivity whatever you want to call it yeah they just it's right it makes it a little more fun a little better travel
yeah i mean essentially it'll change your leverage rate most of the time cascade
makes these links for bikes that could benefit from having a
higher leverage ratio and most of the time it also slackens the head tube by roughly half degree and lowers the
bottom rack a little bit so say you had a you know sp 150 and you
want to put a cascade link on it one the bike will work better with a coil if you put it on slightly because it is
uh making a higher leverage ratio um you also get a half degree slacker head tube if you want that and lower
your bottom bracket a little bit so it's just just another adjustment for a bike that's made by third party company
instead of being like a bolt-on from the factory yeah i mean there's some pretty fantastic engineers
designing these bikes to begin with so i don't know i i have a lot of trust in
why they're designing things the way they are and i think that for the vast majority of people that buy those bikes they designed them really well at least
nowadays yeah um i agree yeah and i think like another fine tune mountain bikers just love fine tune stuff yeah
look at that look at the push 11 6 plus plus that rear shock look at it the
cascade link is a beautifully machined link yeah that often comes in a like silver or a different color yeah
definitely adds that extension to your yeah like jared said
stock bikes are good for 95 98 of people so it's that two to five percent and that really is like oh you know either
you think it can be better and you know you're just trying to have it mask your skills and or you actually know what it's going
to do and it might make that bike just perfect for you yeah yeah or you just like to experiment because it's fun to
just buy new things you see a shiny cool part and you would think that would look really good on my
bike yeah jared you love doing that i love doing that that is the one thing i
haven't gotten is the cascade link and i would i would totally get it i'm just you know it's just that extra thing yeah
i mean part of the mountain bike scene that is so cool and fun is how much customization there is yeah you could
just change all these different things and you can make your you know 100 mil travel bike a burly version of it and
then you can change your suspension wheels and make it a light version of it and it is really fun to do and you can
just do it based off of you know i don't know it's like always just changing the flavor of that bike and how it works and totally that
is really fun to do so fun to tinker it is fun to tinker yeah you love to tinker
i do i've i've done some tinkering
are you it's so weird because i used to do so much more tinkering you know pre-pandemic because
the just the parts supply was so much better i was changing my bikes out every six months and just always upgrading to
the latest and greatest and something new would come out i have to have that and yeah and now it's like oh something new came out finally it's not in stock
for another three months i'll forget about it by then like i don't i don't know i just i'm i've been less i also
think too that up i'd say probably a year before the pandemic was a good like
jump and bike iteration to where you almost needed a tinker to get a bike to work exactly how you wanted it and
now these stock bikes kind of are like pretty dope they have the adjustment and they've caught on to the geometry trends
and stuff that's yeah we no longer have to cut yeti seat tubes to get the bike jeff once right yep yeah you don't need
to use an angle set anymore to get the head tube angle it just actually came right from there because that brand knows that that's a good one now yeah
yeah and some some companies are doing really good like adjustable headsets like specialized on their epic or their
stumpjumper evos i think really good like built-in adjustable headsets yeah awesome yeah
yeah there you go here's a nice simple question but maybe not everyone knows the answer
why are rotors a different size on my bike my current setup is 203 front and 180 rear please help explain
Rotor Size Debate
uh that's pretty easy question there's there's much more braking power i think it's like is it 70 30 that they say the
split is yeah i mean it's just way more braking power comes from the front wheel than the rear wheel this is the same
thing in cars and i think any wheeled vehicle it's just the physics of the machine so you're always going to run i
wouldn't i shouldn't say you're always going to but uh because of that you know you you need that larger rotor up front and so a lot
of brands will spec a bike with a larger front rotor and because you don't necessarily need that larger rotor in
the back now some people definitely yeah i have the argument of that of yeah heat
that's like just been the trend um but why if you have 70 more braking power up
front do you want a bigger rotor to even extend that gap and make your rear brake feel less powerful
than if you were to maybe run a bigger rear rotor which sometimes we're seeing in the downhill
racing now i think joy brosnan's running 220 rear 200 front on his bikes you sure
about that i'm pretty sure he's running a bigger rear rotor than the front yeah a couple people are yeah i wonder if they're wondering why though
if it's more related to heat i don't know if it's heat but i think they said it it has a more even fuel
halfway down the track because your rear might fade a little bit and you're losing a little bit of power which could be related to heat yeah that a lot of it
has to do with heat so a lot of people are dragging rear brakes too and yeah way hotter and a bigger rotor is going to disperse that heat and might work way
better in that sense so i don't know that that's just kind of how it always was traditionally done i don't know if
there's a huge scientific reason behind it yeah well yeah also if you look at a car typically like you said cars have bigger
rotors in the front or even like something drum drinks in the background yeah exactly so you don't need that much
power in the back to achieve what's necessary to get those wheels to slow down yeah yeah yeah which is interesting
though on a mountain bike you can't always like guarantee you're going to have grip on the front right like
case and point my ankle is all jacked up but i mean yeah so you guys i think that was
because of the brakes are you blaming the brakes for your crash no i'm blaming the lack of traction adam
have too small of a rotor and because of that you didn't break enough i think they were actually too powerful that's my
complaint yeah what brakes were on that one trp uh dhr evo another
powerful never run before and whatever um
whatever anyways um i see the argument for both bigger rotor in the front and bigger
other than the rear and i've seen racers running bigger rotors in the rear so yeah but that's great yeah racers also
do weird things so yeah because they're riding their bikes at a speed none of us are which is one
thing to take into consideration but the other thing to take into consideration is that they're racers so they're very very in their head yeah and doing things
like wearing unmatching socks because one time they won some race without a matching socks the next 15 years they weren't matching
it was gonna work again so there's there's a lot of stuff like that going on in the racing scene and any competitive sports so that's amazing be
cautious of that superstition that's true all right jerry read the next right well
Professional Fit
i love your show my question is we know how important a professional bike fit is for a road bike but how important is a
pro fit for a mountain bike excellent question yeah it's interesting because
being professionally fit in the road scene is super important and huge and everyone kind of does it but it's it's
certainly not uh really a thing at all in the mountain bikes especially anything away from xc riding yeah like
once you get away from an xc bike it's pretty much non-existent yeah yeah it is and i mean i i think uh
liam i'm sure you'd have a good perspective on this since you've spent more time riding road bikes than jared or i have and fit people on road bikes
but to me it's you know mountain bike fitment it's it's different because you're in and out of the saddle so much
more much more dynamic you're not yeah it's much more dynamic it's much more preference so like you'll be like oh i
actually prefer the bars higher up because it helps me pull the front wheel off the ground when i want a bunny hop or manual which is like not what road
bikers are saying totally different thing you're riding a bike for less time most of the time like the average mountain biker goes out for an hour or
two hour ride road cyclists are on that in that saddle in the same position sitting down for five hours i think you
know it's just a totally different sport the way you're on the bike and how you move and so it's it's just that whole
fitment concept is is very yeah it's just it's just very different from mountain biking yeah i think that's
pretty much exactly it your mountain bike is more dynamic right you're moving around more even just climbing yeah you
might be on an hour climb but like you're not on a perfect gradient for an hour climb that smooth most of the time
you're going over rough terrain you're you know balancing your bike up and over rocks
and then how much of your mountain bike are you actually out of the saddle going downhill has nothing to do with fit
so i think it's probably important to get your right saddle height and if you're
more towards like the pedaling side of things saddle height four and a half of your saddle
um on your post and then maybe cleat placement matters the more you're sitting down
pedaling and the longer you're doing that the more important it is to have your fitment really dialed in but if
you're worried about going downhill then you just want your cleats kind of push back anyways or if you're only worrying about doing
sick whips thick whips you know well then jumps you don't even really want weightlifting if
you want to do sick whips oh people can do sick whipped clip oh i'm saying you can do sicker ones not clipped in
i feel like a lot of people also they just like when if they're buying a mountain bike they just get on it and they're like this either feels good or
it doesn't like either need a bigger size or smaller size or a shorter stem or not yeah it's like and then they just
change that house down there yeah obviously you need your saddle height correct yeah saddle hype like you need satellite
correct but i think for a mountain bike it's more important to dial in your suspension and tire pressure
and that'll make a much bigger difference for your mountain bike ride yeah totally totally and and figuring out your preferences realizing if you
like high-rise bars i mean high-rise bars that was a trend a while ago that i mean still on trend to some extent but a
lot of people realize oh i actually really enjoy high-rise bars my mountain bikes we made a whole youtube video about it did super well people were
really interested in that topic because high-rise mountain bike bars definitely change the way a bike feels and handles
and it might change it the way it feels and handles in a way that you just absolutely love so yeah something to consider there
which again has something entirely to do with ride and handling preference and not to do with quote unquote fit yeah
i want to get some high-rise drop bars specialize mainly for a while go find them do they seriously yeah yeah
some type of was it an april fool's joke no some girl that would have been awesome travel
trail one high rise drop bar and it's just literally a drop bar that puts your
your bar height at the exact same height of flat bar i love it
oh man all right here's a question from josh saunders saunders he was on our uh we did a
Bald Rich or Fat
collaboration trip with chasing epic mountain bike tours and he was on crest debut right right yeah uh he was a rad
dude his question is bald rich or fat must choose two of three
i'll go first because i already know um i'm working on the first actually i'm working on both of them bald and rich
i thought jeff had a different comment earlier well we were thinking we were like well this is lame we're we're all just going
to say you want to be bald and rich but then i thought whoa slow down why not be rich and fat because then you
can just you know ride your bike more and all of a sudden you're rich and fit and have hair yeah and or you're rich
so you can double yeah you know rich people do and get surgery i know it's just jeff could have
been collection jeff's all of these actually but he just grew his hair back and he lost the weight actually
that's a that's a tricky question yeah i mean it kind of reminds me of that uh which is more of a mountain bike related
thing i think it was it was keith bontrager the quote it was it was light yeah
light cheap and strong pick two you pretty much oh maybe doesn't that cool
like that yeah something like that yeah all right liam what are you going with oh i mean i'm working on going bald
um and i'd love to be rich [Laughter] oh there you go jeff bezos here we come
i don't know it was my body type i don't know if i could ever get fat so it would have to be pretty yeah i mean
you'd have to work there's a lot of follow-up questions because like how fast like 700 pounds like that's a serious issue yeah yeah or is it like
you know you're knock that off in a couple months yeah yeah yeah we're overthinking it all
right it's not supposed to be a serious question in the weeds how much water do you bring on rides uh
that that question i don't know i feel like that's it's a fairly novice question but the answer is
you know just consider how long you're riding and how hot it is outside and how much exertion level you're going to be
putting out and then uh maybe it's not that much of a novice question well yeah it also depends if you can refill like i only bring a water
bottle with me to sycamore these days because i can refill but i'm going to like i don't know any other zone almost all the time if i'm
just going to do a one hour ride which is kind of the norm for me i'll just bring one water bottle yeah yeah i
actually plan roughly one water bottle per hour i'm gonna be riding that's maybe push an hour and a
half if it's not 90 degrees and dry yeah yeah but then you got to factor in two if there's water bottle refill stations
or if there's creeks and then you can bring a filter with exactly so that's the way i factor in but i try to plan
for one hour per one bottle per hour yep so if i know i'm doing a five hour ride with zero water
out there i'll put two on my bike and the rest on my back yep which i did the other week and it wasn't fun to start
with how much water it's a lot yeah i feel like most you know hour-long two-hour rides are fairly
easy to figure that one out it gets way more complicated if you're doing these big adventure rides um and you're just you're going to be in
the bike on the bike for more than a couple hours and it gets more complicated and you've got to figure out is there water out there can i refill
there's those things called be free water bottles or they're the filters those are my absolute favorite ones i take those with me all the time on huge
adventures and backpacking trips and hiking and big long rides um really simple you can film up in a creek and it
just has that you know filter um but yeah that's a that's a must i always take that with me on online adventures
that colorado trip some guys were only using one water bottle for three hour rides because there's creeks everywhere
yeah yeah exactly fill them up yeah and you just bring it's like yeah that's awesome yeah yep that's that's a way better way to do it in my opinion
and it's nice if you're going on a big ride to just have one of those filters with you because which is safer totally
brew totally bro for real how do you make the frames float
asking the tough questions the so that question for context we have posted a lot of really cool photos of mountain
bike frames floating and then we made a real instagram little video about how we
do that and jared was the host and we showed we
that that's that's been the most controversial yeah piece of content we've put out in a long time because
people thought the whole thing was serious and they really got yeah i shouldn't say everyone a lot of people thought it was absolutely hilarious yeah
it was just like tons of lols but there was a ton of people like are you kidding me you just ruined the frame so then in
the video which was a spoof just for the record we actually asked revel hey do you guys have a it was like a throwaway
frame like something that was a defect or a manufacturing issue or warranty whatever that looks relatively new
so what we're gonna do is you know basically make this video saying hey everyone asks how we take these photos
of these floating frames and then you know we we set up the whole scene we got the photographer the camera tripod and
then we just like threw the frame and just dropped it on the concrete and then and then i was like it wasn't in the air long
enough and then so someone goes on top of some like dumpster thing and throws it off higher and eventually throws it off a roof and it's just like basically
destroying the frame for the sake of a photo um which was hilarious and uh that was obviously a throwaway frame but
people got um very uh very upset about that so they did but it was not a
readable frame so everybody knows unusable we didn't just chuck a perfectly good rebel rail off the roof
but i mean as far as making them fro float that's how we do it so moving on
yeah it's it's uh it's photography wizardry yes so and none of us are really actually the photographers that
know how to do that but the rough actual answer is you take a photo of a scene and then someone walks in with a frame
with the seat post in the frame and then kind of holds the frame in place they take a photo of that and combine the two
photos and then put in some fake shadowing do i have that relatively right louie yeah nailed it there it is nailed it so
that's it that's all but if you want some good humor go to our youtube channel look at the shorts look at that one i think it's like almost a million
views and the comments are out of this world some people some people are livid other people are
making fun of people who thought it was serious and there's people who was laughing like why are you laughing there's ruining frames i mean it's like
it's ridiculous you can hang out in the comment section you can hang out in that comment section there's a lot of comments in there just bring your popcorn yeah i'm just here for the
comments baby they're so funny it totally is trying to put fires out like god it's not real i know
well yeah we did have to put a pin comment at the top that said hey this was a joke this is it was a warranty blah blah because people were just
freaking out yeah even people at revel didn't know apparently oh yeah that's right you went out there yeah i can't believe you guys threw it like we did
yeah yeah yeah yeah i don't think i don't think adam informed all the employees yeah he just
grabbed one the back and said yeah this is trash that's hilarious yeah
good stuff yeah good fun content i like doing things like that that's what's great about being the mountain bike industry you can do fun things like
totally that was a good time it's all good we can make jokes because we're in this industry yeah so it's fun absolutely well that's it that's all
jared has to go to dinner he's got a hot date that's right is that right where are you going i'm going to transfer hill brewing company here in town highs very
nice 9 out of 10 gonna say italian food
oh man well if you've made it this far in the listening thank you very much we love you we appreciate it and we will
talk to you guys in the next episode sure will over and out cheerio mates
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