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SRAM GX Eagle AXS, Common MTB Problems, & Top Tires Not Maxxis...MTB Podcast Episode 81 [Podcast]

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Overview

On the MTB Podcast today, Jeff and Jared are back in the saddle to chat about all things mountain bikes including SRAM GX Eagle AXS, the newest wireless drivetrain offering from SRAM. The guys also talk about Pirelli tires, the Shimano anti-counterfeit program, problems with mountain bikes (aside from cost), and touch on a few of our latest YouTube videos. Last but not least, we close it out with listener questions around brake problems and Fox suspension. Enjoy!

SRAM GX Eagle AXS, Common MTB Problems, & Top Tires Not Maxxis...MTB Podcast Episode 81

00:00 Intro
1:01 Personal Stories
7:57 SRAM GX Eagle AXS
14:36 Pirelli Tires
18:18 Shimano Anti-Counterfeit Program
24:20 Common Problems With Mountain Bikes
38:25 March Top Products Recap
53:50 Non-Maxxis Tires
1:05:33 Customer Questions

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Submit any and all questions to podcast@worldwidecyclery.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]
hello mountain bike friends this is jeff and jared and we are here with episode 81 of the
mtb podcast presented and hosted by worldwide cyclery this episode's topics will be a couple
funny stories from myself and jared and we will also go over sram gx access
pirelli tires shimano's anti-counterfeiting program problems with mountain bikes aside from
the cost and service intervals uh march 2021's trending mountain bike products tires that are not
maxis and listener questions around brake problems and fox suspension
action-packed i like it action-packed action-packed sheet build-in seat belts that didn't
make any sense run a sound effect
stories stories stories all right mine revolves around the four by four by 48. what is the 4x4
by 48 it is a challenge presented by this guy david goggins
uh if you don't know you should know the one and only the one and only legendary yeah so his his whole thing um
is four miles every four hours for 48 hours a lot of people do it running i think
that's how it originally was but people do it of all various different types and ways and the whole thing is about challenging
yourself mentally and physically and also raising money for charity and so david goggins promotes it it happens
once a year and i decided to do a through hike version i guess you could call it that so it's just a point to point
48 mile hike so i covered four miles every four hours for 48 hours
through the santa monica mountains 20 000 feet of elevation gain and loss brutal my feet
were toasted i ended up doing just over 51 miles because of a mapping error
never really planned out a hike that far so i made a mapping error reasonable um it was good it was fun i
mean we we raised over uh we raised over five thousand dollars four thousand five hundred
awesome various different peoples various different charities basically took pledges thank you for reminding me of my pledge
by the way yeah what was your pledge um i believe it was like forty dollars to ventura county animal shelters nice did you make it i need to i forgot
you better do that man i followed up with all my big pleasures but if you were under 50 bucks i didn't
follow up and count you down what you just did perfect we were followed up awesome yeah
yeah it was a good time it was uh early in the month of march and i had a great time other than my
feet exploding it was really fun uh dominic on our crew also did it he did like a multi-sport version of it out
in and around reno nevada where he lives and then tyler on our crew did it too he did some running he did some riding a
little multi-sport variation we documented the whole thing on the kettle mountain instagram
and if you want to check that out go to the kettle mountain instagram it's a story highlight on there you can recap it it was a good time it was good
fun it was it was a mental and physical challenge because i think we slept two hours the first night and three hours a second night
um just you know and a lot of just sitting in the dirt and yeah it was a good it was a good time i
enjoyed it major challenge don't know a lot of other people that would attempt that yeah that one was fun i mean i was thinking about doing like a
mountain bike version of it but i've been kind of too easy four miles on a mountain bike every four hours or 48 hours like
yeah i feel like it seemed easier than that you know yeah you have to like yeah eight by
eight right ooh that would be eight by four maybe we should host one of those like a mountain bike challenge that'd be cool yeah but i don't think
that many people would do it because even this one i asked about i don't know 100 people if they wanted to do it with me or their
own version of it and just about nobody said yes so that's far what is that like basically two marathons
like worth in two days yeah i mean that's definitely challenging it's a challenge not a lot
of people i don't know like this can handle that for a good cause yeah oh it's a great cause so that's my story it doesn't have to do
with mountain bikes but i i definitely also really enjoy hiking and a few other uh
sports i don't know if i can consider it a sport but activities i enjoy other activities than
just mountain biking so yeah that's what i did for that one yeah what is your story jared well a couple of wildlife
encounters lately um most recently i was out for a ride in sycamore canyon
pretty close to our shop out here in newbury park and it's about an hour northwest of l.a yeah ish um
so we're about to climb out like finishing the ride and pretty out of it but like just saw this
like at least three foot rattlesnake across just stretching across the road and assembling road or dirt road oh paved road okay
yeah it's a paved road like uh right before you're basically going off the blacktop hill and um stopped and it
started rattling and then basically watch this thing go up like a near vertical slope i've never seen a
snake go up a steep hill it was like kind of unnerving it was very unnerving and it
was yeah very crazy to see and then a couple weeks prior i basically um
was going down a single track and i was chasing a coyote basically like i just
came around to turn there was a coyote chasing like going down the trail in front of me and then i got to the bottom of the
trail and the coyote was maybe 30 feet away from me and we're just staring each other down like we're both
just standing there direct eye contact stare down stare down and then uh you know he started to creep towards
me a little bit and i just picked my bike up over my head and like kind of went after what do you
think he was gonna do it's a coyote i know but he was looking like a small mangy dog i know but i figured if i just
kind of like kept on like if i turned around and i kept going that he would have chased after me yeah so i was like i'm gonna scare the crap
out of this guy so i picked my bike up over my head and i started yelling like a madman and i ran after the coyote and he was
like okay screw that i am out of here so my plan worked out great that's pretty cool both encounters
i was safe from the wildlife yeah so that was great yeah wildlife encounters are fun when you're out on the trail yeah um definitely it adds a little flavor to
any mountain bike ride oh yeah that's for sure it was definitely exciting both times yeah i remember so when we
did this 4x4 by 48 so 51 miles through the santa monica mountains a lot of it was at night time
we didn't see any animals what we literally saw one bunny and one squirrel that isn't
i couldn't believe it that's crazy a lot of the night hiking we thought we heard animals but we didn't even see deer it's like every
time you go into sycamore you see a bunch of animals yeah and that's like that's super surprising that you didn't see a lot of
animals in socal man there's not that much water here yeah that's true there's more fish in the
ocean yeah that's what we got fish and cactus that's great i figured at least you would have seen a bunch of
creatures like in the middle of the night like yeah no you know like when we go on night rides you know we see like toads oh yeah
there's a lot of birds that like fly up and down and stuff yeah you and i were on a night ride we saw it was that big toad remember
yeah big old desert toad that was cool all right those are those
are our story recaps let's get into some products they were cool i've brought to market two bicycle
bidets to soothe your hole squirt 1.0 and squirt mini squirt 1.0 is
a fully electronic three cylinder hor 8 horsepower dingleberry blasting machine
squirt mini takes all the engineering of squirt 1.0 but easy and conveniently screws on to
your water bottle for trailside relief pick up your squirt 1.0 for 49.99 and
your squirt mini for 29.99 or for a limited time only get both the 1.0 and the mini for 14
easy payments of 9.99 you do the math visit squirtdingleberryblaster.com
bye my name is billy so this month march this is probably podcast going to
go live in april but we're recording it on the last day of march so march 25th sram
released announced let out of the cage electronic mountain bike shifting for only 600.
highly anticipated release highly anticipated yeah so it's their gx version of access axs pronounced access access
um yeah wow i mean very cool we've we've both ridden the x01 and xx1 access
pretty extensively eagle i guess we forgot the word eagle yeah don't forget the word eagle eagle
um eagle axis yeah it's cool it's it's really nice i mean it's it's very fancy and it was
just cool to see electronic mountain bike shifting come to a different price point so that 600 dollars is basically gets you your it's
an upgrade kit so derailer controller which is the shifter but they call it a controller is
it just called a controller because it's electric it still shifts the gears why don't they just call it a shifter
because it's electronic and like you know it's like you're playing a video game with your controller it's like you're controlling
the derailleur it's a controller remote control for your tv because it's electric exactly yeah i mean it passes your
controller still shifts gears yeah i don't know i think you should call our shifter but i'm i'm in the minority clearly because it's called a
controller so the 600 gets you the derailleur the controller yep the battery battery charger right yep
does this all come with this and your little b tension tool yeah yep the tool um does it come with that cool new little
housing cover for it what do they call that uh the battery cover the battery cover isn't there a fancy
little name for not believe it comes with the battery cover it does it does come with the sources we're getting some external information
that it does come with the battery cover battery cover yes the picture shows that so the picture does and it is also
available as a accessory for other axis kits yeah if you want a battery cover
yeah yourself it looks pretty cool yeah it's a nice little nice little tricky add-on if you have any problems bashing your battery into
stuff yeah that was pretty cool much of a problem i'd ever heard of but i guess it is maybe for some
maybe for some maybe for some um we made a youtube video about it and uh it was one of the more fun ones
we did i think jared and i are gonna try and do more of these comedy like anchorman style news skits
so if you didn't see our video our youtube video on sram eagle gx access please watch it we're very proud
of it very proud there's a lot of like funny bike industry jokes in there the first minute and a half is just this
like anchorman style news skit that's hilarious and the second half of it is just like actual detailed and from informative
product stuff um but it was fun it was very fun we got to wear suits
we uh got to basically play anchorman yeah that was cool i'd love doing those i would i'll do one
for every product release yeah yeah i think you should do it more they are awesome i love dogs but yeah so i mean so far so we
basically sold out we were only able to secure inventory wise uh just less than 30 of
those kits and we sold out in less than a couple hours yeah which was crazy and uh yeah we have
a bunch more in order they'll be trickling in we do have them available for uh what we call special order which is kind of like
a back order or pre-order basically you can like pre-purchase it and then put yourself in line so when we do get the
inventory we can ship it out but yeah the mountain bike industry is still which is probably selling up sounding like a broken record now it's
just an inventory pinch and so yeah inventories hard to come by whether that's bikes or components or
anything and gx access was a major hit and yeah i think everybody everybody
sold out oh yeah really quickly definitely but it's it'll more will come um it's cool if you want to upgrade your
shifting so basically the gx access works on any and all existing eagle drive trains which is
which is rad i think that was why they called it access right like it's accessible to all the eagle drive trains
oh that just make that up i think you'd maybe have yeah i thought i heard that yeah that's not confirmed
sram maybe can confirm or deny that but awaiting response from sram on if that is why they call it axes
um but it's all cross-compatible i mean that's one of the cool things about eagle yeah eagle was like completely everything was cross-compatible until
they introduced the 52 tooth then there was some like would it be called forward or backwards
compatibility backwards compatible like if yes like the 52-tooth cassette wouldn't
necessarily work with a derailleur that wasn't made for the 52mm specifically but the
new derailleurs are backwards all the new ones that are made from 52 tooth works with that cassette
and the 50 tooth cassette too yeah yeah exactly so if you have ceramic on your bike and you're looking for an electronic upgrade
yeah and your price point's 600 rather than a thousand gx access and it's only what is it maybe
75 grams heavier than yeah yeah because i i addressed that in the video it was
you know because i'm sure people are wondering like well what's the difference why is it 400 cheaper and like most
things in the mountain bike industry when the price point lowers the it's usually just materials
almost sometimes they like you starve off some features in there to change the price point but no this in this case
like the features are the same the batteries last the same the the derailleur lasts about 20 hours worth of
riding the controller lasts about two years there's just a coin cell battery in there um performance is also great performance
similar flawless yeah yeah so i mean it's just slightly heavier than the steel cage right on the
gx right yeah so yeah just a little bit different materials which adds a little weight and that's it and it's 400 bucks less
yeah so i did good yeah it's cool it's just cool to see electronic shifting becoming a thing and yeah it's it's it's fancy it's
interesting it's it's easier to install than having cables and i don't know it's a cool fun toy that's for sure
mountain bikers are inherently gadget wizards and they love they love stuff like that us
included so yeah yeah cool to see um yeah check it out sram gx eagle access
600 bucks for the upgrade kit um the other quick product thing i wanted to discuss real fast was pirelli tires
sweets so we're going to mention uh later in the video about uh later in the video i keep saying
video it's a podcast video too oh it is a video it's a video and a podcast it's on the mtb podcast
youtube channel if you want to watch it that was a perfect segue right what do you know um later in the podcast we'll mention uh
just a quick overview of a video we recently did on youtube called tires not maxis which we've kind of
talked about like all the various popular tire brands that are not maxis since maxis is kind of like the dominant
player in the field in north america but one of them that we forgot to mention which was a total oversight
um was pirelli and pirelli is well really i don't know how long they've
even been making mountain bike tires yeah it's an italian brand isn't it it's got to be an italian brand i believe so
i mean but it's not it's not from north america that's for sure but um pirelli is is probably one of the the
tire brands that i'm actually really excited about just on as far as like specs like what those
tires look like and their widths and their weights and everything and they just have a long time history of making some of the best
motocross tires ever so i just have a lot of faith that their mountain bike
and gravel tires are going to be really good oh yeah and they've never really made it they've never made a splash
in north america because they've just they just haven't you know they've never really been available per se in a good way but they
have the brand has now their their mountain bike and gravel tires have been picked up by qbp
qbp quality bicycle products is a is a kind of behind the scenes wholesale distributor that
works with on a wholesale level all of the bicycle stores all the bicycle retailers in all of
north america they're the huge big dominant player there so basically now that pirelli is at qbp
every bike shop in the whole country and canada should essentially have access to pirelli tires as soon as they all start
coming into stock so that's something i'm really excited about i just trust their motocross tire reputation and i think
they're going to make some really good stuff so yeah if you're interested in trying some new tires um in the next couple months
here there should be some pirelli tire availability hopefully sweet um across the board with
some really good models i mean i've already got some of their gravel tires on on item watch so i can wear those when
those show up nice i don't know if i'm like i'll probably will try some of their mountain bike tires but i got to dig in a little
deeper into the specs and compare them to some of my favorite maxis combos why not you never know what to try they
don't have a big yellow logo on the side that's there you go which is surprising because i'm pretty sure their logo is does have yellow
yeah you're right yeah i remember i was talking to guys at maxis about that a long time ago and the whole concept was like max is coming
to the u.s market and there was like goodyear and dunlop and this is like the nascar market those like big yellow
tire logos were the thing and they've kind of just made their way and even if you're watching this video
there's a there's max's tire but it's got a white logo so i mentioned this in some max
entire video but the white logos for maxis are oe only right so like if they come with the complete bike
you purchased you can get a white logo that says maxis but if you buy max's tire aftermarket the logo is yellow which one do you like
better oh dude the white yeah i mean i guess it depends on the bike yeah i mean ironically this bike we're
talking about it's got some yellow accents like the yellow logo might look good it looks perfect on this one um but in like a lot of bikes the yellow
maxis logo just really stands out as like a clashy color because yeah i don't know why they don't just make it
great like wtb they love gray logos it looks super nice especially on like a more subdued
you know color scheme bike it's like you maybe don't want a yellow hot patch on your tire yeah i agree yeah
i mean i've i've told maxus that a thousand times they refused to listen to me they didn't listen they didn't listen they didn't
um all right well let's jump into an ad and then we'll discuss our next thing all right
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and now back to the show shimano's anti-counterfeit program
so this is kind of an interesting topic that i wanted to include in the podcast just because it's
it's near and dear to my heart as a long-time bicycle industry person and and it's pretty interesting so
shimano you know they came out with a quote here that was quoted in bicycle retailer just basically saying
in recent years we have confirmed that counterfeit goods of shimano group products and repair parts have been circulating around the world
blah blah blah blah uh that to me kind of just makes me go duh
i don't know how to really put it in nicer than that but yeah it's interesting i mean you can i mean
just like anything but it's seemingly shimano is is really all over there you can go on things like
aliexpress alibaba even ebay and buy counterfeit shimano product and it's
just fake and it may have come i mean who knows where it came from did it come from the same factory after hours with no serial
number did it come from like an oe like a bike brand who
actually is genuine product but it's not meant for the aftermarket so then you can't warranty it but it's really cheap shimano's got a lot of supply chain
problems that really kind of gives them a bad reputation in the bike industry um so it was just cool just cool to see
this and it's an interesting thing to highlight because as a as a listener to this podcast you
have probably bought shimano products like we all have as mountain bikers and uh yeah where you buy it how much it
costs and if it has a real warranty and it's a legitimate product is is pretty important so i don't know it's
just an interesting thing to talk about because um yeah i mean you got to be safe with that stuff you can't be buying counterfeit
products and it's kind of it's it's too easy to buy fake shimano stuff what did you find
i mean well i found a fully xtr equipped you know bike here on aliexpress for
fifty dollars so i don't know you tell me but i mean
i've had people reach out to us through the worldwide email asking if our shimano stuff is
um authentic or not that's kind of good at least people that means that they know that there is a problem which is not an
authentic shimano product you know or like or that they've had an experience where they've ordered it on a website that
seems legit and they've gotten something that's clearly not yep which is like wow i mean
even if you go on aliexpress like you could look at like if you search like a fox fork it's clearly not a fox four yeah but if you're ordering
something like shimano i don't know derailer shifter like you might not know i mean on a regular website or something
right like it's probably a little bit easier to counterfeit just a shifter or something like that but you're right it's like it poses the
question was this actually made in the factory like after hours or yeah and and just doesn't have serial
number or is this exactly yeah or could it could be legitimate and it could be you know uh you know oe product that's
not meant for aftermarket sale yeah it could be completely counterfeit which poses a really big issue
yeah which is i mean crazy to think about yeah it is it is totally so i mean
that's that's just a problem so i mean that's just one of those things that's like buy your product from good real legitimate retailers yeah basically
exactly even even if it's a matter of like i could get it here for 20 dollars cheaper you'll get what you pay for typically
yeah but it's it to me it's like surprising to see shimano make sort of this public announcement about this like
and address the problem which i respect and say that they're going to now launch this whole program to
prevent counterfeiting and they're modifying their packaging with qr codes
and various things to make sure that you know you can confirm if the shimano product you bought is
legitimate um yeah that's really cool i like i like the fact that that is
coming about because i think that problem is more pervasive with shimano than any other brand in the industry
yeah and it doesn't seem like they've done much to address it but now they they're definitely doing something to address it yeah so it's cool
i like that yeah i mean i i was surprised you know even just in the last few years the amount of people i've heard of whether it's just
like friends or people out on rides that are buying these uh frames the chinese
frame the chinese frame it blows me away like full carbon like mountain bike frames yeah full
suspension or hardtails for like 300 bucks yeah it's just i would personally usually from alibaba
aliexpress whatever yeah like i would never touch that
your life on a chinese yeah carbon frame when it's you're
trusting your family jewels because when that head tube snaps and you hear you all of a sudden yeah yeah oh my gosh
well it's just that's like yeah beyond me i would pay more for a lower quality frame if that's what it
meant for me to be safe you know it's like you're asking for it almost yeah i agree but yeah i understand if that's like
what's in the budget or whatever yeah but like you know i would definitely like i said go for something
maybe a little bit lower tier like just aluminum frame like totally versus being like i got the carbon frame but it was 300 on ollie and
i might break it yeah i might die i know yeah it's weird i mean it's a touchy subject because
there's obviously a lot of biased opinions on either side of the table and then there's people who argue that they're the exact same things from the
same factory and sure there's you know the certain people in the bike industry of course have a very
different perspective on the whole thing but a lot of the times like consumers will look at that as like oh you're just biased because you're trying to sell me
whatever you have you know it's like so i don't know it's there's just a lot of shenanigans on that whole topic but yeah when you
see like a big public release of like shimano launches global anti-counterfeiting program like there's clearly a problem there's a
problem here like we're not just making it up because we want to sell you our shimano stuff for more expensive like we're just kindly letting you know you
might be buying a counterfeit product yeah that's crazy i don't know interesting stuff definitely um
slightly rolls into the next topic which jared and i were i would say bickering about prior to
recording which is problems with mountain bikes aside from cost and service intervals because
if you look at like okay the modern day high-end seven ten thousand dollar mountain bike
um what are we're not talking e-bikes e-bikes are in a different category here because they probably have some other problems that
we're not that familiar with because we don't ride e-bikes enough um but your seven to ten thousand dollar
high-end full suspension mountain bike what what problems exist
that aren't you know obviously you can always say like oh i want the same quality for less
you can say i want things to be service less like you just want your suspension to last 500 hours or your drive train to last 6
000 miles or your chain to not have to be lubed every ride like yes yeah you know those are all kind of
table stakes so like the reason this topic got brought up is because there was something in popular science and a few other outlets talking about these
these new wild airless tires and from some startup with some like nasa space technology
like i don't know we didn't look too much into it it was it was very it was something about the mars rover
tires you know it's a similar in design too yes because obviously you cannot but i think the prototype they made was
on a road bike right right yep exactly they call it the metal tire m-e-t-l yeah so our thought was like oh
it's never i mean who knows how long i could take to be affordable or show up on mountain bikes and yada yada but anyways
my my comment was that's kind of the only problem left like good modern-day mountain bike
works so good like you get the occasional flat tire and jared's argument was like that almost never happens and if it does it's
your fault because you like smashed on some rock and you have enough doesn't check your tire pressure
valid like you yeah check your tire pressure you got for a ride you get flat yeah that's valid but i mean it's i don't know there's to me that's still like
i mean yes it doesn't happen often i don't get flat tires on my mountain bike very often no but you're right like hypothetically
you could get a brand new tire and you could go for a ride you get one ride on it and you get a flat and then even if it's bad enough
you're screwed you've got to get a new tire yeah if you're running tubeless or whatever even if you have a tube in there you probably need a new tire
um but yeah you're right that is hypothetically a problem you know a design problem that
like we could hypothetically fix it is yeah because i mean flat tires are still just an issue yeah
um and i and like mountain bikes are one thing right mountain bikes usually getting a flat tire because you tear sidewall or you puncture snake
bite it thorn thorn so thor that's what i'm gonna mention so like thorns aren't as
common on mountain bikes because you're riding on like mountain bike trails right right here where you don't really have issues
yeah thorns are more of like a non-native plant species from what i remember um but you usually get them on like the
side of the road you don't get them out on mountain bike channels um or cacti yeah that's true i mean you know arizona
you have to mess that one up cacti out here you have to go off the trail by mistake yeah it's like on the trail usually
yeah i've seen them on the trail it depends what you're doing yeah um but yeah i mean i i don't know i
think that's that's kind of the only problem left you know i mean you could argue that brakes could be more powerful
or like yeah consistency is the probably the main thing brakes aren't
perfect with hydraulic or any kind of brake no brakes are perfect yeah it's like yeah you obviously have to bleed your
brakes like you gotta make sure your rotors are aligned and your brake pads yeah brake rubbing that's a pain that
still exists so i mean you got to put in a lot of effort and you have to be really
well versed as a mechanic to understand how to get rotors not to rub you could get a brand new rotor out of the package and still have it rub
well they're they never come perfectly straight yeah no that's supposed to you're supposed to do that yourself yeah but it doesn't say that on the
package so people get mad i don't know please bend the rotor with your hands to make it perfect yeah it
seems like it seems to me like breaks and tires are probably like the those
are the two things that i would like start nitpicking at i mean they're not honestly not bad yeah you know if you know what you're doing a
proper mechanic you know how to work on your stuff it's not bad right um but if neglected
yeah exactly if neglected you got an issue yeah yeah so i don't know i think man i think those are the only really
two problems left i mean they've kind of solved the dropper post unreliability issue
yeah like gear ranges are dead yeah i mean depending on what post you have true um
now this is this is like we're talking high in mountain bikes right like again because we're trying to avoid this
whole conversation we're trying to avoid the cost and the service intervals thing because like the cost thing you could be like well i want a reliable dropper post and it's
like well that exists but it might be totally out of your budget yeah um so it's they don't make reliable dropper posts under like
200 bucks yeah i'm a 150 i don't know so i mean there's yeah there's still that problem but i
don't know bikes are pretty pretty amazing yeah they really are i mean much better than they were 10 years ago
like you said yeah that was the thing we were talking about because i mean if you rode mountain bikes if if you're listening to this and
you're a long time mountain biker you remember 10 15 years ago there was like an infinite amount of problems
suspension was not progressive enough well you realize that or not yeah whether you realize it or not i mean you're still having fun yeah but
like your suspension was basically a pogo stick because you either had enough pressure so it wouldn't bottom out and then it was like
or not bobbing yeah like yeah you had bobbing issues you had suspension had no progressivity to it and no like
proper adjustment to it um you had front trailers yeah which was horrendous and geometry
you didn't have narrow wide chain rings ugh you didn't have a dropper pose i mean
there was so many problems back then i know your brakes were horrible but we just like learned and
lose quick release with it quick release hubs that's just like flex it's just
yeah that's just like what we knew you improvised yeah because that's that's all there was yeah yeah so it is it is really cool i mean
that's something i love about the mountain bike industry is there's always innovation and creativity going on and problem solving and like yes it
comes at a cost like things are not cheap like a high-end mountain bike is an expensive device and you'll never hear the end of
people being like that's the same price as a motorcycle yes no we understand
it's the same i could get two cars for the price of that new specialized e-bike like yeah yeah i know i got it like we get it
um this stuff is expensive because there's not that many people that are in the scheme of things you know you
know there's so many cars out there and motorcycles and mountain bikes are just a smaller smaller niche so that the scale of
manufacturing doesn't quite get that big yet yeah you're paying for the development you're paying a ton
for the r d yeah and and just the fact that like you know none of these high-end bikes are really made at like a
serious scale yeah like look look at the amount of iphones apple makes versus the amount of like
sb 150s that yeti makes it's quite a big difference in the number there so huge so yeah you're gonna pay for
that um but yeah anyways i mean bikes are pretty cool so random topic but something that we've been thinking about because
i don't know we we look at that forecast that for our industry because there's always different things in the
industry that cause sort of economic activity per se you know 27.5 inch wheels 29 inch wheels
dropper posts 1 by 12 drive trains 1 by 11 drive trains there's always like various things that sort of cause these like
cause economic activity that's like oh this is latest and greatest and it's actually significantly better rather than
negligibly better yeah and that's usually what gets people to pull out their wall and be like bam i want that
you know and and i'm i'm always kind of talking about this product innovation plateau like i i worry about that for the bike industry
because i mean as much as sram eagle gx access is amazing
the upgrade level there is like arguably negligible i mean you
love it right like you're just like dude it's just it's just amazing it's like yes yeah but okay but the one thing you
can't do like already just good mechanical shifters just hold it down and it keeps shifting like
true you know you have to push that's pretty substantial and it goes where is that
pretty negligible it goes way faster okay faster shifting than you could ever complain you've been slow shifting have
you no it's a cool these are these are funny things to
discuss right it's something you didn't know you needed until it came out like oh my gosh i once you try it it's like well now you
can track your head like i agree if i had access yeah i mean if you ride a stram access
drivetrain it is pretty like wow especially if you have one on like for instance i don't
know maybe if you have two bikes you have one on the other bike and it's like well okay i'm not going to have one on one bike and not have it on
the other bike yeah well that that was talking about yeah you have it on one bike and you have to have it on the other device yeah
because you haven't you're like oh i gotta push this paddle this is ridiculous
yeah i want a button yeah yeah you'll get the button and then it's everything is amazing yeah that's funny
you say that cause like liam was just so liam who's normally on the podcast he's he's busy as ever with various
other work things but so we had to skip this one but he was yeah he was saying that he was like talking about getting gx access on
back order for himself for some other bike because he has like three bikes and he's like dude you can't just have like two bikes with
access and not one i mean yeah it's this this whole thing sounds very bougie but like if you live in the
bike world like you spend a lot of your money on nice bike stuff um and yeah you're right
if you get used to it on one bike you hop on another bike and it's like man even if you try it it's like yeah oh
man that's like or it's like when you go to demo a bike and you have a you know 2012 like i
don't know nine or santa cruz or whatever and you try 2020 yeti and you're like oh my god yeah yeah i shouldn't have done that
yeah because now you can't stop thinking about it yep it's like you try access you're like okay wow that actually was really
awesome maybe i should get it yeah angry and then you're rolling and tossing and turning at night thinking about it
i think that's more of a you problem okay it's just me jared has a serious bike part addiction i shouldn't say
anything because i totally do too but it's like i have other weird problems like it's just it's like a loop in my head it's like okay yeah you
thought about it you should get it okay no maybe i shouldn't know yeah you probably should i'll think about like tire and wheel setup for until the ends
of the earth well i'm also the guy who took it i want i wanted a basically i wanted the eagle
drive train but where i ride and where i ride mostly on you know my shorter travel bike my
revel ranger i don't need a huge gear range like i don't need 10 to 50 or 10 to 52. like i just don't
need it it's because you're in killer shape dude i'm in good shape and uh i'm not doing rides over like three
hours long like i just don't need it i just would rather have something lighter i'd rather have my derailleur cage shorter for better just clearance and
again wait yeah um so i'm the guy who was just like hold out on eagle even though i knew it worked great
and then i was like you know i really want that gold eagle set i love gold i love gold baby i
like that awesome powers video gold number smelted shmelted gold and so i was like
i had this idea of like why don't i take a 12 speed eagle cassette that's gold and just cut
that 50 tooth off and then i'd take it and then i'll take the eagle derailleur
and i'll remove the cage from it and i'll put an 11 speed cage on it so i have the shorter cage
and it's 11 speed and it's 10 to 42 and it's all gold and it's all
gold because the only cog that wasn't gold was the big 50. that's we literally dremeled that off well i didn't liam did yeah i don't have
the skills to do that liam literally dremeled off that yeah it was if you want to see this it's in i made a youtube video about my revel
ranger like bike check new bike day type of thing um where we talked more about it and oh man we posted
an instagram reel about that tons of views and yeah i got tons of views i think like half a million people
some people got really wow hot oh yeah people got mad at me a lot of hot takes why the hell would you do that i was
like you know i mean 90 of the reason there is like i'm just bored yeah like he's just like
what do you what do you do like because it's awesome yeah just like playing around like some people totally got it and other people
were just like what's the purpose of this or you ruined the cassette and then i had to like backpedal and explain like this is why i
did this i didn't ruin the cassette i just removed one gear i'm still using it like i've been using it this whole time
i've had the bike i have like hundreds of miles on that cassette now like i didn't ruin anything i did ruin the largest car modified we
modified it yeah but you know what you need to do next is 11 speed axis
oh yeah that's that's trickier though because like a mechanical driller you can just lock out the top gear with the
limit screws but how do you do that on axis [Music] it has mechanical doesn't have limit
screws doesn't it yeah but you'd still have the the button would still work so it would like jam into the limit screen it would
basically just yeah i see what you mean yeah i don't know well we've got it because
shifter no i haven't i have a 12-speed shifter but it doesn't go like the the limit
screw blocks the 12-speed shifter from the final click okay right like it's like you can feel like that shifter
is not going because like the derailleur's not going because it's all connected with the cable but like that doesn't work like that with access
okay so sram if you're listening jeff needs 11 speed access on his bike
yeah with a 10 to 42 with a 10 to 42 cassette oil slick this time though i want to go
oil you want some 11 speed oil sleek cassette can you please mail it to 3225
containers thank you all right i don't know that was a long tangent but that's a podcast
for okay next topic and now a word from our sponsors
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and now back to the show march 2021's trending mountain bike
products for those of you that don't know uh we do a video on trending about my products
every single month on youtube and it's a lot of fun we it's it's we actually do a lot of
research on that it's like a lot of stuff that you know we're selling and seeing you know happening in the
industry but um a lot of times we're just trying to like actually show everyone what is trending like what's selling
what people are riding and a lot of that nowadays kind of has to do with what's in stock cause that's a bit of an issue but
um it's always interesting because different products trend every month in the mountain bike world for various different reasons
and the training products is based in sales data not just like oh what's cool and new it's like oh no actually like
what are people buying what are people pulling out their wallet for and purchasing which i always think is kind of cool which is why we started the whole series to begin with
um so we're gonna quickly recap our march youtube video of trending products via this podcast uh so yeah what's up
jared that's right what was your favorite product um like if you were to go get one right now
what would it be ah dude it's a tough question oh come on what do you need uh every biker needs something even if you
already have everything
probably the acid guy max assassin guy tire i had a feeling yeah i ran that tire and although that
tire is a bit heavy and a bit slow rolling oh boy does it grip the ground like
velcro oh it's grippy it's i think it's the grippiest star i've ever written yeah it's amazing oh
yeah i think so i put it right up there with my honest opinion don't lie we don't lie here well i haven't ridden the other tires in
a while like what are the ones like a brand new wtb yeah
it's so hard i mean that's a problem with tires it's it's a very well called qualitative rather than
quantitative which basically means it's really hard to tell it's up to your
opinion man it is a little opinionated when it comes to what tires grip is hard but so a lot of that then boils back down to like where
you're riding what terrain how long you've been riding how that bike you're used to i don't know maybe even the compound of that
tire like you can yeah yeah yeah it could be the next one dhf could be different from another dhf
true but like what's hard with tires too is like a a general person who's like a general
mountain biker that doesn't live in the bike industry every day like we do yeah like you're going to ride a tire
and wear it out entirely and then put a new one on and if it's a different brand and model the just the fact that it's
new yeah i mean it could be a road bike tire for that for that sake if it's just new it's just like whoa it grips better
it's way better than the last one when it's like well not really because you didn't really test it new versus new yeah
on the same trail on the same bike true it's hard yeah anyways the max assassin guy tire was a top selling product um it's been
in and out of top selling products for months and months ever since it was released which is cool so if you're looking if you're not concerned about
weight and rolling speed per se but you're really just looking for an extremely grippy tire yeah maxis acid guy it's amazing yeah it
is cool very good yeah it is very grippy okay so that was one of them yes and now we have start from the top
the park tool ak-5 toolkit ak-5 yeah park tool tool kits and park tool
stands are big they've kind of been a big seller for you know the last 12 months since a lot of people are
at home more now because i don't know what's going on something unprecedented i was told but yeah i don't know the details are foggy
we need not mention it let's listen to other podcasts if you want to hear about that uh yeah park tool kits and park tool
stands are finally starting to trickle back into stock a lot of them ran out oh they've been out for a while
yeah march april may of 2020 basically all park tool tool kits and bike stands for your home
mechanic work sold out forever and now they're finally back so that's cool they're not all back but a lot of them are back
and yeah park tool does a really good job actually like assembling various like good related bicycle tools
that you would need in one toolbox oh yeah um and it's cool because they it this is like park tools a bicycle tool
company so when you buy one of their tool kits you get bicycle specific tools like uh little little japanese
jumping beetle pliers that remove master links power locks um you get a chain breaker
you get a dummy hub tool you get a chain whip you get uh you know chain cleaner a cassette brush
spoke wrenches i mean stuff that works for modern day bikes which is that's cool i mean you're not buying that home
depot or lowe's well you're not [Laughter]
you're not maybe harbor freight but probably not no definitely frank doesn't have a dummy hub cleaner
for a bicycle you're right yeah no you kind of got to go park tool when it comes to all this although i was using a park tool
wrench on my car last night doing what i was removing the intake manifold with a six millimeter
park tool wrench yeah a six mil allen key yes ah
allen keys on what are you your rover you got an allen key on there yeah huh it's six mil really yeah those
things are metric huh yeah that's crazy right that's cool i know it's weird because
like british people don't use them yeah okay who knows different podcasts
if you want to hear about range rovers and land rovers and all sorts of those problems podcast ideas but for the people
listening who do like the rovers what do you got 1995 range rover classic uh 25th
anniversary edition with how many miles 259 000. isn't that halfway to the moon
it might be all the way to the moon all the way to the moon yeah okay uh yeah the other one was a park
pcs 10.2 home mechanic repair stand which you actually have in your garage i do it's great yeah
super good stand yeah park tool crushes it when it comes to tools and stands and stuff like that they really do they do a good job so if
you're looking for home mechanic stuff there you go check out the big blue bike tool company um race face chester handlebars yes
an affordable 35 millimeter or 31.8 clamp diameter very affordable alloy
handlebar offered in various sizes and widths and yeah very profitable yeah
you're looking for an alloy bar i mean that's a killer one and a good price point definitely next thing up was the tannis
armor tubeless tire insert yes which is a unique one there's there's a lot of
various tire inserts these days but tanis is trending like crazy and outselling all
the other tire inserts currently yeah um yeah they have a good product they have a few different ones they have the tire inserts then they have that
other one that has like the tube it's a tube armor kind of where you still use a tube but the insert interfaces directly with
the outside of your tire i guess well technically it would be the inside
of your tire and so it protects your tube it did long story short it protects your tube yeah yeah if you have one in there yeah
well i guess for that insert you would need it you would for that one yeah they make the tubeless tire insert the one that we
saw trending a ton in march yes um this brand is just trending in general and making really cool interesting tire stuff
um t-a-n-n-u-s yeah that's the other thing too is like that's kind of where they're coming in they're coming in with
like some good innovative designs good materials and the price point is really good um so yeah better price than cushcore a
little bit lighter apparently yep which is you know interesting that's what they said it comes it comes
folded uh with four looks like first and when you pull it out of the box it looks like it's for a square
wheel and then just making jokes because in the when we filmed the video we pulled it out and jared's like is this for a square wheel
it was it was it was pretty funny um yeah it looks like it what else we got oh well that's highly crew socks
plug sponsored um we actually just worked with a company called memory pilot to make
actually a really nice high quality lightweight light compression sort of like summer weight sock for hot weather
um worldwide cyclery branded looks sweet cool new design yeah nice new design good price point
for how quality the socks are definitely pretty solid very sweet we did that with jerseys too so white label
white label is a good friend and customer of ours matt armstrong he runs that company and they make custom mountain bike
jerseys we work with them to make um our own branded worldwide cyclery jerseys and they have like just good
fabric cool stuff he's a good dude very cool stuff um we just made a new one uh what are we calling this called the
classic classic long sleeves yes that's a pretty creative name it wasn't
as creative as the afternoon delight classic jersey classic jersey
it's pretty subtle it's pretty subtly branded jersey nice materials very cool i liked the afternoon delight
that was that was my favorite but those were never jerseys those are just shirts right yeah raymond i'm looking over at raymond he's a guy behind the
camera and he designs a lot of stuff and it's rad it would be a cool jersey maybe yeah can we make an afternoon delight
drizzy um i don't know sure short sleeve summertime
summertime baby yeah it'll be done by summer uh i don't know it's always fun making
good stuff we always try them anything branded worldwide cyclery i mean we're we're much more than just bike nerds
that's why we also own kettle mountain apparel because we're also apparel nerds so like we make things out of good materials that have good proper fit as well
um sram universal driller hanger yes yes cool yeah that is that's an
interesting product and i'm really happy to see how many of those are selling because the fact that they're selling means they're just on a
lot more bikes so if you know anything about the bike world every bicycle has a different trailer hanger
they're completely proprietary and it's not even just like specific to the brand it's specific to the model bike i mean
it's ridiculous it's horrendous it's ridiculous it's been like that for i don't know forever forever as long as i've existed
they've had these unique proprietary derailleur hangers and sram is trying to stop that
they're solving that problem oh we were just talking about problems remember that is a problem that is a problem that's a huge problem different
derailleur hangers different derailleur hangers has always been a huge problem at one point so wheels manufacturing
they make actually a lot of tools bottom brackets uh trailer hangers tons of derailleur hangers and
they they sent us i think they sent all bike shops this it was this massive poster it was probably three
feet by six feet you probably didn't see this because we got this like six years ago they mailed it to the shop i think they
made it to every bike shop and it was a all it was just drill hangers it was all the traffic it was drill hangers it was hilarious and it
was like all the driller hangers they make i mean there was literally probably 500 derailleur hangers on this insane on this poster and
and it was like they all fit different bikes wheels manufacturing basically whatever bike you have wheels manufacturing makes a hanger for it we
sell like all that wheels manufacturing stuff we pretty much only curate the mountain bike related stuff they make
hangers for road bikes and everything else too but we just sell the mountain bike versions of it for the most part on our site but anyways like that was a huge
issue like every frame was designed around a different derailleur hanger type um it was just a nightmare the whole
complexity thing because like you break a trailer hanger like you're done yeah you know like you're probably not getting another one
wherever you are it's just really hard and rare to find hangers so sram's trying to solve the problem with
a universal derailleur hanger which basically means if the frame is engineered to use this
thing the sram udh then you use that hanger and everyone's kind of going to that i want to say
everyone i mean like bike brands bike manufacturers the engineers are designing their bikes to use this
sram udh design um so that way there can hopefully be one
hanger there can only be one there can only be one i mean that's that's the hope
it's it's a very well designed hanger has like a break point in it like it should work for everything every mountain bike i mean the the hope
is that we just end up with one hanger for eternity right we have a long ways to go but
this is really cool to see it happening because more and more brands are adopting it and going like huh yeah that's a good idea we should just do
that right it could just eliminate so many headaches especially if you have a you know maybe somewhat obscure
bike brand like you know like oh well i'm out on a trip in utah in my trailer
hangar book on my uno totally what the hell are you going to do yeah like where are you going to get another so i brought a spare one because of that
yeah so i had at the time i went did a moab trip moab utah and i was riding an uno dash uno is like
this extremely high-end boutique rare spanish mountain bike brand and they of course have a proprietary
trailer hangar because everybody does yeah um and i was like oh i need i've got it going to you moab like just
piles and piles of rocks i'm like i'm going there with a spare hanger yeah um i didn't break a hanger i've
never broke i haven't broken a hanger in quite some time but i took one with me because like gee you
have a rare bike and you go to a place like that and you break your hanger like your your trip's gone it's done so i always
bring a spare but i've been like traveling for mountain bike races for a decade that i like made sure to have
spare hangers but yeah anyways it's a cool problem to see being solved even like a not so rare bike like a yeti
like yeah what do you got to go find a yeti dealer yep like that's crazy mm-hmm you know if you're in the middle of nowhere it's
like oh i got to look up the closest yeti dealer to get a derailleur hanger that's crazy that is crazy so sram udh
awesome to see it trending which just means that more and more bike brands are adopting this concept of a universal drill hanger that
fits on everything very cool could take another 10 years to be fully implemented but
we're making headway yes we are uh least but not last at least as we say uh the sram rear derailleur
chain gap adjustment guide yes this is a what a nine dollar little tool that helps you
adjust your ceramical derailleur um it works for the 10 to 50 or the 10 to 52 eagle
cassettes and it's basically i mean the b tension on derailleurs now that there are these big 12 speed
high range cassettes like it's just really important i mean everything in the mountain bike world is really important to adjust properly but especially when it comes to
these like wide range cassettes you really got to set your b tension and your chain length correctly this little nine dollar tool it does it
it's helpful yeah that's that it's a huge part of it it's huge part of it it's an effortless way to adjust your drailer
i wouldn't call it effortless you still have to put in some effort very easy way minimal effort away
minimal effort minimal effort exactly um yeah that's that mean people are buying that because they're
working on their scram eagle drive trains at home and yeah it's cool that's right i like that all right let's
jump into the next one tires that are not maxis what yeah i don't know how we
actually came up with this idea and made it into a lengthy blog article as well as a
youtube video but i don't know a lot of people ask right i mean we talk about tires so
tires are a big topic in the mountain bike world we talk about maxis a ton we've written tons of articles about
them on our site to help educate people and help get them through the decision paralysis of like omg
i've got so many choices what do i buy we've made a lot of videos on it too and then we just you know a lot of other
people don't not everyone wants max's not everyone wants that flavor although max's my estimation is that they have 85
percent market share wow that's my guess i mean i have no idea i don't know if anyone knows right
i'm gonna agree yeah and i mean like in the high end mountain bike space not like all bikes obviously they're not
they're not so you don't see max's tires on like bikes under a thousand bucks or right toy store bikes whatever yeah but
so a lot of people like other brands and there actually is a lot of other competitive smaller more boutique brands that are not quite as large as max's
um making really good mountain bike tires and so we went over several of them in this video and we're
going to blitz them right now via this podcast number one taravail you've run some terribles right i have
yeah i've ran the kessel that's probably my favorite one from terryville for mountain bike
i believe it was the durable they have a durable and ultra durable casing correct me if i'm wrong but i really
like that tire good grip pretty predictable in terms of the traction and fast rolling too for what it is and i
would definitely run a kessel again in the future yeah yeah i really like those caravelle yeah um
t-e-r-a v-a-i-l black and tan wall yeah their tan wall looks good too it's like a darker tan it's like way nicer
than a lot of other tan walls out there it's very nice i like the terrible tires yeah they have like good mountain bikes set up i think they
are like a really well-known gravel tire too several of them i'm not as versed in the gravel side of things
but they're they do their kessel and their a-line or they're more common in the honcho or their more common
mountain bike tires which are cool yeah those are great so yeah that was in there michelin
michelin i personally have not run any michelin but i've heard really good things i ran some of their tires once and the
rubber was incredible nice i ran like their wild ams i think this was before the wild and drill was a
thing that's just several years ago um but yeah michelin is is just i think i mean it's a massive company i think i
think it's the biggest tire company i think in the world i think in the world mitchell is the biggest tire company because they make tires for like airplanes and cars and i
mean every possible thing that uses a tire um i think i read that them or bfg bf goodrich but anyways yeah
it seems like they have a pretty diverse array of yeah you know it's like one of those things that's like everyone knows michelin yeah like
every human on the earth knows the michelin might have been around for like like over 100 years or something like that yeah i think so
um but their mountain bike tires are really uh getting gaining some traction
and a lot of that is because they sponsored sam hill right so sam hill is one of the most all-time winningest
downhill racers turned enduro racer um australian dude i used to like
idolize a guy as a kid because he was just this unbelievably fast mountain biker yeah
and he he's so good so talented and he's famous for his cornering skills flat pedals and metals
yeah and he rides flat pedals that's nothing he's famous for but he's been running michelin tires for i don't know how long a few years now at
least racing ews maybe five years michelin wild enduro
and then he's using that he's also using their dh22 nice um yeah so i mean mitchell they're
they're really hard they're just harder to come by yeah in the u.s like they're not as commonly stocked amongst the bike shops
and available hard to get right now they're super hard to get their inventory is like terrible this year because they what
they did bring over here sold out i mean i don't know maybe they're doing more like oem stuff so maybe more of their
you know uh supplies going towards those applications be that sort of after yeah yeah it's tough to
say i mean all these brands are in their own battle against supply chain issues because of everything that their pandemics caused
but it's wild yeah yeah wild am wild ahem is there all
mountain tires that is good thank you um i don't know so yeah we're just going to run yeah
continue running through these other brands that aren't maxes schwalbe schwalbe is like come on oh you know
what so many people commented and were like totally infuriated like i hate how americans say schwalbe well how do you
say it i don't know i don't know dude it's a german company
right all these people commented on that youtube video and we're just like i can't believe americans say schwalbe
like that if you're listening and you think we're saying it wrong just let's just go read the youtube comments there's like a
hundred people from europe that in germany or wherever they were just like making fun of us and it's like well
everyone here sorry everybody's in swabby here everyone here in a good old usa called the schwalbe
that's what i was going to say before is the only tire that i could think or a couple tires that i could think of that hold a candle to the
acid guys and magic mary and uh wtb vigilante vigilante
or the vigilante vigilante i don't know i say that word those are one of those great tires but yeah yeah
yeah yeah magic mary is good that's like a really aggressive sort of like downhillish heavy enduro tire then they
also make the knobby nick for more trail stuff the hans dump is kind of like a very famous tire from them um yeah all
good stuff those are all really good it's like when you get a new magic mary on the bike and you get the dirt flying up and
hitting you in the face it's like how sticky the rubber is like yes sticky tire
i like it the things mountain bikers getting really excited about brand new tire throwing dirt into your
face there's nothing like fresh rubber there's nothing like fresh rubber that's right um continental con i know there's a german
brand right german that's right from the deutschland yeah i don't know that was another thing
that like people were mentioning i think we said which one are we pronounced wrong they're kaiser oh what i mean yeah i
think i think it's pronounced differently than durkheiser in american it's pronounced durkheisen or kaiser i
don't know that that's one of their continental popular tires they're actually made in germany like almost all their tires are made in germany which is
cool like not many brands are made anywhere other than asia um they're mountain kings popular
they're trail king's popular continental's got definitely a good following um much more so of course
in in europe they're not quite as prominent in the usa uh wgb now that is a usa brand
and wwe has been man they've been i think they've been around longer than we've been around but this is a brand they've been making
tires and forever they even made a bike back in the day rims they made a bike yeah really yes yeah wtb's like an
iconic historic mountain bike brand which is pretty cool from california i think originally or
colorado i know all the guys we talked to now we're going to california i don't know where they're from originally but
um yeah they make good stuff the vigilante vigilante vigilante vigilante and the
trail boss the trail boss
they're always coming out with new tires too i think we missed a couple popular models that they came out with that were new yeah um they make some really good
gravel tires too you love their they do yeah that's what i ride i ride their resolutes on my gravel bike um yeah a hammer on those tires and they
are the only ones that i've found that survive basically my non-gravel bike it's
it's a gravel bike but i put flat bars on it and dropper post and i ride it like a mountain bike your riding style yeah yeah which is
inappropriate for what it's meant to be but for what gravel bike i don't know i can't ride drop bars
i'm too far down the mountain like that or use those no uh you're correct sir vitoria victoria
italian brand um they're they're actually so we like looked them up for this video because they do have some
small presence in the us and looking them up they make a huge amount of tires
for all sorts of bikes which is cool and yeah you don't see them often but they make some really competitive tires when it comes to high-end mountain bike stuff
with good tread patterns good weight uh good weight to width and size ratios
yeah they make good stuff the mazza the martello and the agaro and the multa
oh that's their popular mountain bike ones oh i may have botched all those names but that's close enough uh then e13 either
teams another brand that's like they've been making interesting mountain bike components for a very long time
and they make some tires as well they're one of the few brands that have solved this and i guess it's because
they make wheels too they solved the whole issue of like your tire
logos lining up nicely with your rim logos yes um
that's that's something either i mean that's a weird thing to say that's like a feature but it actually looks really good like their graphic design on the
rim and the tire if you use their wheels or their rims and their tires like it looks amazing awesome yeah yeah it looks way better it
just it looks like they're made to pair together which they are and it looks really good so they're also probably one of the few companies that makes rims and slash
wheels and tires yeah yeah yeah exactly yep so yeah that's how they can pull it off but it looks good yeah and they have that like
bead technology too to make it easier to bead yeah it's cool stuff i mean those those are a handful of
brands that are not maxis that also make really good high in mountain bike tires and obviously we mentioned that we
in the video we kind of for some reason neglected kenda kenda has like kenda used to be a really
big good competitive tire company and then they like disappeared for a decade and made garbage and then they came back and now they're like kind
of back and make good stuff and clearly still have a following there was like a dozen comments of people saying like you idiots you forgot kenda
um sorry yes sorry we did like we just never see them like when was that time you saw kenda in the shop oh man
almost never yeah it's very rare it's just not i mean yes there's a following it's still a prominent brand but like
you just don't see them yeah i don't know anybody that writes those things
he even ride him now though he changes like every six months that guy's on some new tires i thought he was he was on anza that was another brand we didn't
put in there onzo makes some cool stuff yeah but he's not on onsen maybe he went from ons out of kenda i don't know i mean
i think he's on kendall right now kenda and anza pay some money pay some big bucks to
have some professional athletes use their stuff but does that mean they make good tires doesn't mean they just pay people to ride them i don't know
i haven't tested all of them but make the decision for yourself um bontrager and specialized we put that
in the video too obviously bontrager is trek's house brand um they make a bunch of nice stuff
as well for tires and so does specialized specialized makes good tires i mean i mentioned in the video that like i
don't i personally like i just like a it's a it's a personal thing here but like i would never run like a
trek house brand bond tracker tire on any bike other than a track 100 and i would never run a specialized
tire on any bike other than a special i don't think i just don't it's just not it's not it's not cool if you don't want to be a squid and get
made fun of don't do that that's like putting bmw wheels on a mercedes that's exactly my thought
right it's just you just don't do that you don't do that no like unless you want to get made fun of and you very much so well so i don't
know some people might be like oh you guys are jerks like i'll put those on any other bike like whatever like but it's like sorry i mean it's our
opinion man those tires come stock on that bike because they make them like well yeah i'm not gonna go get them just because i
don't know but you're right it's a weird thing to seek out like if you have all these options why would you go get an oem tire
from a big brand yep but if you do have a trek or specialized they do make some good tires and
typically like you see like so there's obviously track and specialized have the most amount of bike shops around the
country truck dealers specialized dealers they always carry the bontrager and the specialized tires
um and yeah they're good options so like if you have a trek or you have a specialized like those are totally good options to consider you know and if
you're not like us and you don't care about that whole you know weenie thing we're talking about there just put them on whatever
bike you want if you want to ride them yeah um just don't listen to us right there yeah yeah there you go
um so yeah that's that's your tires not max's that's right uh hopefully you guys enjoyed that if
you like tires let's jump into a couple quick listener questions around brake problems and fox suspension yes please don't read
that whole first question it's really lengthy just just give us the synopsis of that first question okay
this listener has sram g2r breaks that are just a few months old but they are making some noise and
they're not working to their full potential he is wondering how to get them back
to full potential yeah so my thought with brakes this this is the
common mistake i've seen so many people make over the years is they don't do the break-in process
correctly ah and i don't blame them because it doesn't really say it anywhere where to do it like i don't think it says it on
the box or maybe it says in the instructions nobody reads those come on we're men we don't read instructions no um
breaking in your brakes is so important and the the typical method to do it
is when you get brand new brakes whether that's entirely new new brakes new pads new rotors or
just one of them the way you want to break everything in is pedal up to speed
about let's say 15 to 20 miles an hour like crank it up there and then slowly grab those brakes and
like gently gum come to a roll not a complete stop you don't want to lock them up come to a roll and let go and then do
the same thing again five times take a break you'll be out of breath at this point do it again five times
take a break do it again five times like that's it and that seems very you're probably like
oh i didn't know that i don't know a lot of people have told that it's like oh i didn't know that because the break-in process can totally
determine how those pads mesh in with the rotors and then that really makes a huge difference in how
those brakes work from there on out this is given the like we're assuming
your brakes are bled perfectly which is not always easy that's what i was going to say is maybe he needs to go
and do like a very nice throw bleed yeah yeah that's another like common problem yeah yeah sometimes people install their
own brakes and they don't know how to bleed them correctly or even it's a hard product it's been a few months for this guy and
that could very well be just the thing he needs maybe they weren't bled properly from the start
and also he says he cleans his rotors and he sanders his pads but maybe he's just not betting him in
properly after he does that yeah like he should just go through that process yeah cause that's the other thing like brake pads especially are highly
absorbent so like an aerosol like there's a reason bicycle chain loop doesn't come in aerosol cans
um and it's because brake pads are so absorbent and they're so gentle that like if they even just wince
at a aerosol lube it just like sucks it up and your brakes are ruined
if you get fluid on them when you're bleeding them like they're ruined if you put the wrong kind of
cleaning solvent on there and it over sprays when you're spraying it on your cassette as a degreaser and it hits your brake pads like
ant ruined um so they're so sensitive yeah so sensitive i mean when
i worked in a local shop where we had just like tons of foot traffic um people would come in all day with
contaminated brake pads these things are howling and they don't work and like they were always really
upset because i was like dude like you just ruined the past yeah like or like using wd-40 for your chain lube
like i had a neighbor yeah they asked me hey can i use wd-40 on my chain i'm like yeah you probably shouldn't
here's some chain lube you could borrow yeah like yeah and then yeah that'll easily spray in wd-40 on your chain that'll easily get on your pads and your
brakes are ruined totally uh yeah but yeah if that stuff doesn't fix uh this
listener's brakes i would say maybe evaluate what compound you have if you're using a centered compound and
you don't need that power maybe try an organic compound yeah it'll have a youtube video and article on that topic i do
there you go learn some mountain bike things so yeah maybe do a little bit of experimenting maybe try different pad compound you
know maybe a different rotor if you want yeah yeah brakes are complicated i mean they need to be totally clean
they can't be contaminated they need to be broken in properly they need to be bled perfectly yeah um you need to have the
size rotors that match sort of your bike and your weight and all the riding sort of stuff in your riding
style bigger rotors have more power and are more necessary the faster you're going
and the steeper things are going down and the heavier you are um yeah i mean brakes are a little
tricky yeah nothing complicated given enough information for this listener to be dangerous yeah there we go yeah perfect definitely
hopefully we taught someone something i think so a lot of stuff goes into it definitely yeah it really does all right
the next question is fox factory worth it over performance or performance
elite so that's a complicated question so fox factory is like their premium level
suspension yeah it's got the kashima stanchions yup that's like kind of looks gold but it's the best kashima
the best damper possible typically a stamper yep um and the kashima sanchez and the kids
so then so then like the performance elite correctly if i'm wrong
but it's like identical other than that it has black stanchion so it's pretty much kashima but it still uses the same
dampers and everything else right like if you were to get a fox 38 performance elite it would have a grip 2
damper same as the factory same air spring same lowers just black stanchions
instead of factory or yeah it's takashima yeah so is it better or is it well and then performance right performance is
yet another tier lower performance performance performance is a different category because totally different
dampers and hair springs sometimes exactly yeah it could be yeah it's typically probably a grip
damper with a like just a compression knob no no real like set positions or like high speed low
speed compression adjustments it's typically just a compression adjustment um
so yeah what do you say is factory worth it over performance or performance elite i mean me personally i actually
like and prefer the look of the black stanchion so like the last bike i rode with fox suspension was my
yeti sb 4.5 and i had a performance elite 34 on there and a performance elite
uh dps rear shock that the bike was a looker it looked good if you haven't seen this bike you should you should do
yourself a favor and like worldwide cyclery yeti esp 4.5 and you'll see me talking about this thing
um it looked cool and i custom painted the fork lowers turquoise that's the coolest yeah i like that thing man i really love that bike that
was such a good bike i don't know who has it now but hopefully he's stoked i know he was stoked when i sold it to him it was sweet
um yeah that was cool so i don't know i mean kashima in my opinion and right this is where like oh you're
biased because you own a bike shop but it's like i'm actually gonna go the other way here like i don't think so like i think it's
negligible like i don't think anyone on the planet could tell a difference between
performance elite versus kashima if they were blindfolded which is not really possible to do because you can't really write them out like blindfolded but
i just don't like i get fox's sort of i don't know if they have claims but they kind of say that kashim is like
slicker right like on the seals
less friction i mean i totally i think it's negligible i don't think it's i don't think it's worth the extra money
but then again like it looks expensive and it looks rad and it's like that kashima stanchion
is unique to fox and it looks gorgeous so like there is a cachet that comes along with kashima
that you can't get with performance elite period end of story yeah maybe the performance is the same but the cachet it ain't there brother
that's right it just has that genus
because that's why they call fox factory right the fox factory is the creme de la creme it's like what their factory professional racers are using um it's
the best of the best right like they're not look they're not like sitting there going oh negligible gains they're going like no let's look at like microscopic
gains because we're fox and we're trying to win races and trying to build the best suspension in the world yeah so
like that's where kashima is and if you want that that's kashima totally you know if you don't want to pay the price then like
don't just get performance elites got the same damper yeah everything's the same got a black stand yeah so transfer post
fox transfer post same thing yeah 50 bucks just for kashima transfer first performance elite yeah but it
matches your kasima shock and fork if you have one yes it does so yeah i mean i don't think jared's ever have
you ever read performance elite you're always just kashima i've had performance elite have you i don't know man all of us actually you
don't no yeah you love the cachet a lot of people do people love the cachet of kashima it's the creme de la creme it's
the top end like there's there's some booziness that comes with kashima that you just can't get
without factory series i say yeah if your performance elite performance negligible difference you've
got the same damper the same internals uh the coating you can't tell me the coating is gonna
make the perf like i mean that's what i'm saying yes it looks amazing and maybe that's all you need to make you faster is the
kashima coating yeah you look good you feel good you ride good like that is it right um so is it worth it
it's all what matters to you yeah totally i don't know the good news is that we're so deep into this podcast that
only bike snobs are listening at this point like true bike nerds so like they can relate to this whereas
if this was like earlier in the podcast there'd be a lot of people like these guys are bike snobs and it's like well i'm kind of our bike's not like i'm not
gonna say i'm not um we've just been in the industry for too long and we ride nice bikes and like we just live and breathe this stuff every day so
it's a very different mentality um than people who don't work in the bike industry but yeah
anyways all right that's that fox factory good stuff that's all we got that's all we got for you yeah
thank you very much for listening we love you thank you very much i love you too yeah tell them you love
them i love them send us fan mail to our california store uh 3225 grande vista drive newberry park
california 91320 we love fan mail we're hanging it up on the wall in this one spot it's hilarious the fact that people send us fans i love
it yeah we've got a couple pieces of fan mail we're a very humorous bunch of people in the whole company and our youtube videos
are really based around humor so a lot of people send us funny fan mail and like we like that it's funny it's awesome makes everyone
laugh yes it does um sometimes creeps us out depending on what gets sent so far so far nothing too creepy review
definitely some comments but yeah we love it we love the fan mail we appreciate you guys listening and
it means a lot to us yeah thank you very much for the support and listening this long rock on go ride your bike see you next
time yes sir for the love happy trails
you

April 21, 2021

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