The shock rate and tuning improvements on the Bronson are pretty amazing, huge improvements in small bump compliance, but its best for air shock. What didn't you like about it? I don't think a coil on it is going to feel great. If you want more big squish feel, the new Float X has that in spades for this bike.
I'm a serial hater of air shocks. I have not tried the FloatX in any bike, let alone a Bronson, but the stock air can in the Bronson compared to my push/rc4 nomad is night and day. Pick up my back wheel and drop it and it sticks to the ground. Do the same to the Bronson and it bounces 3 times. It's rough as guts in comparison on the trail. I don't see why people sacrifice the single most influential component of their ride just to save a little weight. Boggles my mind really, but I'm in the 1% here it would seem. To me it's like buying a $400 music player and using the $3 headphones it came with and telling their friends how awesome it sounds. And you're saying it won't work well with the highest performance suspension (which is coil) and that to me is a bit of a tragedy considering its being raced by your team in enduro. So that's really the biggest gripe. As for wheel size, yeah I could tell a difference. It was slower to accelerate, had to be leaned more, didn't feel as poppy and playful, and combined with being rougher due to harsh suspension it really didn't roll over stuff well and made me want my own bike back. If it didn't feel different, there would be no point right? If physics says it rolls over 10% better, physics also says it's 10% harder to turn, accelerate, pop and drift. I notice it and I don't see it as an improvement. Maybe I'd get used to it, but why? So I can ride without pumping, manualing and flicking as much?
As far as making the Nomad look like a V10, thats pretty hard if you want a seat tube angle that puts you in a good pedaling position, and will accept the seatpost. Believe me, I'd love this, its something that comes up frequently.
Could it be done with a dropper post? Who rides without one now anyway? Not many people who have a $3000 frame. I could be wrong but I think if you said to any NomadC owner 'I can make your Nomad look like a replica of the V10 in 6.3", but you have to run a dropper post' I think most would say hell yeah. But really this is just aesthetics and doesn't matter nearly as much as ride. Sure would be cool though.
Revised Nomad is a tough one, we've been struggling with that for a bit. What would you do? 26 or 27.5? Geometry changes? How much travel should it have? What fork travel would be best for it? What size and stroke shock goes on there? air only or? 1X only or does it need a front der?
-1D headangle
1/2" lower BB
1/2" longer TT
keep 1.5 HT
160mm fork optimized (it is a trail bike right?)
lose 1/2 to 1 lb (unless this makes it to weak to take heavy abuse).
keep travel where it is (because it's a trail bike). Or make it adjustable like the V10 (super clean way of doing it by the way. Doesn't have gaping holes that aren't used).
Optimized for coil (maybe it's an option by having 2 different links).
I find that mine climbs just fine, but maybe a steeper SA would be good.
And before you start thinking 'but the driver 8 didn't sell'… The driver 8 was too damn heavy. It weighed more than a V10 that could be travel adjusted down to about that anyway. It couldn't take a front mech which is totally acceptable now, but not 4 years ago. And it had too much travel. I believe people have realize that 160mm is enough if you are pedaling the thing. I heard someone say the other day that 150mm is the new 160mm, so the awareness that too much is too much is becoming clear. I was almost going to get a TRC instead of the Nomad as I came off a Blur 4X as my trail bike. If it had any more travel than 160mm (unless adjustable back down to that) I would not like it at all. It would be a pig, like the driver 8, on anything other than DH tracks which means you should just buy a V10.
Keeping in mind we don't all live on the shore eh?
Fair comment, and you have to sell enough bikes to make it worthwhile. I don't know the market so I can only guess. But… you have a truckload of bikes suitable for riding in the rest of the world. You have bikes that are very close to a Nomad, like the Bronson and TRC that are suitable for less heavy hitting terrain but are still up to the task mostly when called for it. If you don't smash into shit, jump big gaps and launch senders and you own a Nomad, you probably don't really need one, but lots of people own them anyway so they would probably find a market still even if they were a little lower and a little slacker. It's not just the shore that would make a bike like this shine. Think about it this way; are there more places in the world where a V10 makes sense than places in the world where a 'DH angled' 160mm bike make sense? My guess would be the 160mm would actually be more suitable in more places (you might just need to convince them a little, by making it look like a V10 and putting a coil on it). There are much fewer places in the world where a set of 115mm underfoot powder skis are worthwhile, but thankfully people make them because skiing here would not be the same without them.
Here's another idea that might be a little premature because of the lack of fork options, and the difficult single vs dual crown question… but I've been thinking a lot about this lately. What if you made a V8 that was adjustable from 200mm down to 160mm and if you had a fork that did exactly the same. With a dropper and 1x11 you could have 2 bikes in one. One DH set of wheels with 7 speed cassette and spacers (a switch on the shifter to block the 4 gears would be sweet, but adjusting the limit screw on todays tech would work)and one 'trail' set of wheels with the 11sp cassette. The new reverb stealth is supposedly getting quick connect hydraulic fittings, so you could run a stealth post that could be removed easily for DH duty. My new V10 frame weighs pretty much the same as my nomad anyway, and pretty much all the components except wheels and tires are the same on both my bikes. It's so close to do-able now that it just takes a little cooperation between a fork manufacturer and a frame manufacturer and I think the first one to market on this could do well, especially if the travel switching was as simple and unobtrusive as the current V10, and you could get the desired angles and BB heights in both modes.
Joe, if you made it through all that; thanks for reading.
