MEATengines 2022...

Posted by: Vikb

This is a great thread! I'm glad everyone found their way here. FartMarty gets full credit as OP though. Nice work. I just talk a lot. :-)

Ah, yes, my bad, Thanks FM, you have given me a place to come escape the "disabled" masses.

To echo everyone else, this has definitely been a great thread and compliment to Andrew's site. Mandatory morning reading for me!

Lynx - no worries

Posted by: Endurimil

Posted by: taprider

another decal idea

We ride these things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard...

JFK

Easy way?

I also keep gloves for a LONG time, and fix them often before eventually retiring them;)

Love the toast article.  If only it was simply a bike industry problem, but most job lists are filled with postings requiring 8 hyper specific experiences and qualifications and nothing whatsoever about what it takes to succeed in the job.

And like, I’ve given up on getting upset about generic selfish people that hurt others to benefit themselves.  And we got lotta people running around hurting themselves with dumb decisions.  That’s just life.  People gonna people and no amount of ranting or anger is going to change it.  

But there’s a certain breed of lazyness that transcends such human excuses.  When a mentally fit person chooses to make a decision that fucks over other people AND fucks themselves in the process?  When it only takes half an hour of dedicated thought to realize “I’m going to pay more and wait longer if I make formal education a requirement but it has nothing to do with making toast”?  And when this person is in a position of responsibility that they actively pursued with their career choices?  

There’s not a special circle in hell or anything, because they’re not actively trying to hurt others.  But if there is actually a big guy who has a chat at the end of it all I hope he plays back the tapes of those moments.  Let them sweat it out while stumbling for an answer for why they chose to fuck everyone - including themselves - over instead of putting a little effort into one of the more important decisions in their life roll.

Eventually businesses will catch up, but quite a few are going to deservedly die for their pointless inflexibility along the way.

Posted by: AndrewMajor

Posted by: fartymarty

Posted by: joseph-crabtree

I prefer the center of the grips to be about 15-20 mm in front of the steerer axis so with my 16 degree sweep bars I end up with a 60mm stem

Centre of grips on Centre of steerer for me. I roll the bars to suit.

Interesting discussion. My V2 the grips sit a bit behind the steerer and my V1 they sit in front. When V1 is back from the WZRD I’ll try and capture the differences in images but in the aggregate it’s probably 20–25mm difference relative to the steerer at the headset bearing cap (where Stack is measured).

V2 is a crazy stable bike - long rear center, long wheel base, slack-slack HTA - and handles as such with a 31mm stem and 16* SQLab bar.

V1 is still a decently long bike and pretty slack (66* static) but handles better with a 50mm stem if I’m using the same sweep.

I’ve tried to explain ‘what, why?’ a few different ways, and I’ll agree with anyone who says we can adapt to most anything, but I find it interesting all the same.

OK, now to get into this discussion as I also find it extremely interesting. Like Andrew, I found the SQ Lab 30x 16 degree bar a good few years ago and it's my preferred bar, but I only have one, so run regular 9 degree sweep bars on the other bikes. I measured where the tips of my grips line up relative to the center of the stem/steerer and was surprised to find that it's , like Andrew quite far behind at about 35mm running a 50mm stem, all the other bike setups it's just in front of the steerer/stem.

I've been riding the rigid Unit with this bar is on almost exclusively for the last couple years and just now switched back to my Phantom with a 9 degree bar and a bit of attention to grips and the right ones on now and I don't find it uncomfortable in the least, just not as comfy as the 30x 16 for long seated pedaling. What I'm finding hard to get accustomed to is the handling characteristics of the Phantom vs the Unit, which I initially put down to the fact that the reach is about 30mm less on the Phantom, so I run a 70mm stem, head angle is a bit slacker, so WB comes out to about the same, so fairly similar geo, but the immediateness of response to steering input on the Phantom is taking some getting accustomed to since I've been on the longer Unit almost exclusively for so long. I had put it down to just those differences in geo/fit, but now thinking about where my hands are relative to the steerer center, this has me wondering if maybe that's an even bigger factor in the responsiveness more so than the shorter reach :-\

Bars / grips.  For reference I'm on Ergotec 70mm rise 12 degree back with a 30mm Chromag Ranger stem.  My Murmur has a 515mm reach (I'm 6'1") so super long and HA is about 65 (with 140 fork) so not slack, not steep.  As the bars have so much rise the roll has a massive effect.  Hence lining up with centre of steerer seems to work.  Plus it came from Paul Aston and his G1 200mm enduro bike.

Interestingly I recently swapped the 30x 12 for the Ergotec 12x50 and slammed the stem hoping to squeeze out perhaps another 5mm of reach only to find that the narrower sweep start point on the Ergotec puts the grip position further back so I actually lost reach… Put next to a set of 30x 16 the grip set back and angle is nearly identical so for those looking for a higher bar with nearly the same actual sweep as a 30x 16 the Ergotec is worth a try.

Bumped into “North Shore Betty” on Cypress last week as she was finishing her ride. She mentioned encountering a young guy on an E-bike as she was pedalling up BLT to Fifth Horseman. 

As he motored past he asked “When are you going to get an E-bike?” 

She replied “I’m only 73. I’ll wait until I’m older”.

Inspirational lady: https://www.patagonia.ca/stories/north-shore-betty/story-119987.html

^ I like this.

That was a great read. We need "Be Like Betty" stickers too.

Posted by: AndrewMajor

Have you seen me in riding photos? Check out that ape-index. I’m a f’ing T-Rex.

Thats not how I think. For me it’s ‘One More Rigid #1FG MTB.’ Or ‘Min-Max’ or ‘Buy The Bike You Already Own.’

The culture conversation now is MB-1. It’s what do you ‘need’ to have fun riding in your local forests under your own steam (that may be a 7”+ Freeduro bike) and it’s reflecting the joy of accomplishing something yourself. 

If it wasn’t for the amount of time I spend thinking about how to both work in a shop and not interact with the machines I think I could even heed my own advice and just focus on what’s awesome about RIY bikes. MEATengines.

Posted by: HulaOtter

Bumped into “North Shore Betty” on Cypress last week as she was finishing her ride. She mentioned encountering a young guy on an E-bike as she was pedalling up BLT to Fifth Horseman. 

As he motored past he asked “When are you going to get an E-bike?” 

She replied “I’m only 73. I’ll wait until I’m older”.

Inspirational lady: https://www.patagonia.ca/stories/north-shore-betty/story-119987.html

Betty is rad. That was a very well crafted piece too. Thanks for sharing!