“The hardtail is dead, long live the hardtail !!“
I’ve mostly been riding my Levo for the last year but following lockdown I decided that the trusty hardtail was a safer bet because it’s slower downhill (but still feels fast)!
It’s not as interesting as Andrew’s custom steel singlespeed beast, but there is a story behind it - having met a small bike brand who get Ti frames made in Taiwan, they’d offered to help me do a batch of steel hardtails with that same factory. But just as I was deep in the nitty gritty of chainstay design (that is the worst bit when you’re trying to avoid heavily crimped tubes or machined yokes yet want lots of mud clearance for big tyres) the UK brand Bird launched a new version of their Zero hardtail and I realised that with a shorter fork and angleset it would be within fractions of a degree and a few millimetres of my design, but in alloy. The only big difference was 10mm shorter chainstays.
So I bought one to test the geometry concept, then decided that starting a bike business was going to be too much of a distraction from my audio business and here I am now with this same bike, over four years on, and on its fourth iteration of geometry.
In an ideal world I’d add 15-20mm to the chainstays, raise the BB 5-10mm and maybe slacken the seat tube by a degree but as I can’t easily or cheaply test that idea then I’m happy to stick with this bike for even longer!
Further rambling here:
[https://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/bird-zero-am-review-warning-bicycle-content/](https://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/bird-zero-am-review-warning-bicycle-content/)
May 13, 2020, 3:32 p.m. - a.funks
“The hardtail is dead, long live the hardtail !!“ I’ve mostly been riding my Levo for the last year but following lockdown I decided that the trusty hardtail was a safer bet because it’s slower downhill (but still feels fast)! It’s not as interesting as Andrew’s custom steel singlespeed beast, but there is a story behind it - having met a small bike brand who get Ti frames made in Taiwan, they’d offered to help me do a batch of steel hardtails with that same factory. But just as I was deep in the nitty gritty of chainstay design (that is the worst bit when you’re trying to avoid heavily crimped tubes or machined yokes yet want lots of mud clearance for big tyres) the UK brand Bird launched a new version of their Zero hardtail and I realised that with a shorter fork and angleset it would be within fractions of a degree and a few millimetres of my design, but in alloy. The only big difference was 10mm shorter chainstays. So I bought one to test the geometry concept, then decided that starting a bike business was going to be too much of a distraction from my audio business and here I am now with this same bike, over four years on, and on its fourth iteration of geometry. In an ideal world I’d add 15-20mm to the chainstays, raise the BB 5-10mm and maybe slacken the seat tube by a degree but as I can’t easily or cheaply test that idea then I’m happy to stick with this bike for even longer! Further rambling here: [https://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/bird-zero-am-review-warning-bicycle-content/](https://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/bird-zero-am-review-warning-bicycle-content/)