Go Gunners! (there’s a pub in Austin that broadcasts all the Arsenal games and a big following here. Sometimes we’re at the pub at 6 a.m. to watch the game, even though the bar legally can’t serve alcohol.)
To be sure, a hardtail is going to have a better whip-able feel than a FS bike most of the time. FWIW, suspension and linkage design keeps getting better, to the point that I hear many riders who swore they would always ride a hardtail saying they love ____ FS bike they are riding now because the design is that much better than what was available in the past. I have yet to put any serious trail miles on a FS bike, but I can see how rear suspension is preferable or even necessary for mere mortals on trails that combine speed and lots of technical features. For the trails I ride, FS is nowhere near necessary, but most of the locals insist that they need it. for a lot of these people, the suspension covers up poor bike handling skills, strength, and line choice. For someone like me, who has decent bike-handling skills (most of the people I ride with can’t bunnyhop to save their life), I can do without it.
However, I am looking for some insight about the finer points of geometry in mountain bikes. In recent years, mountain bikes have gotten … lazier. Long reach, lower bottom brackets, long front-center, slack seat tubes, wider and wider (and heavier) rims and tires, more plush suspension, steep seat tube angles to make up for the long reach, and dropper posts are almost ubiquitous.
they change in rider position, I believe, is still based on how a rider fits in a static, seated position, which is important, but it compromises the handling when standing and wrangling over tough terrain, when sitting and spinning the cranks is not an option. I see this happen all the time when some guy on a really nice $6000 squishy bike sits and tries to grind up a hill in his lowest gear, and then I pass him on my singlespeed rigid bike, the difference is, I stand up and hammer instead of letting all the technology do the work for me.
I really think the new breed of mountain bike is being designed so that unfit riders with no skills can just pedal and plow through everything with minimal effort put into wrangling the bike. They are designed to stay glued to the ground like the tires are made of velcro. This is boring as hell to me. I want a bike that I can ride somewhat comfortably for hours on end, but also allows me to whip it around, bunnyhop logs, etc.
In the same way that a dirt jump-oriented BMX bike is longer and lower than a flatland bike, I am looking for a middle ground. My BMX background instilled in me a sense that riding should be very active and dynamic and the bike should encourage you to use those skills. I love that about bmx- it’s really not about the bike because the bikes are so simple and have barely changed in decades. Mountain bikes from five years ago, however, are effectively obsolete because axle standards, headsets, seatpost sizes and such change all the time.
On that note, are BMX bikes still being sized by actual top tube lengths? Have they adopted the trials bike version of “reach” – distance from BB to center-top of head tube? I hope they figured that out because actual top tube length tells you nothing about how a bike fits.
Topic: Mountain bikes (Read 24413 times)
