Why No Yeti Love on the Shore?

trail worker
With all the talk of not hosing your bike down after a ride, I feel as though I should mention that I've been hosing my Nomad down after every ride for the past 2 seasons with absolutely no ill effects to the bearings. The locking collets seem to do a really great job at keeping crud out and Santa Cruz uses quality bearings in all the pivots so there's been no issues.

This is the reason I sold off all my Intense bikes and bought a Santa Cruz Nomad! I still have yet to replace a bearing after 2 years of all season riding.

I don't hose my bikes down either but the space around the bearings and swingarm is so tight that grit just grinds its way in (after it takes the paint off first).

That's why I brush the grit out of the tight spaces in any linkage before every ride to reduce wear from grinding…pretty simple maintenance, really. Takes less than 5 minutes. Moving parts + mud and grit = wear.

My dealings with Yeti have been unbelievably good. Hands down the best service I've had in the industry in the 25 years I've been riding.

Anyone who's seen the attention to detail and love that's gone into the design and build of these bikes wouldn't think Yeti is a company that is looking to cut corners to save a few bucks on a high end bike. I've heard first hand that one of our most respected local brands looks to Yeti as a model for a successful rider owned company that does things the right way and all my personal experience confirms it.

You wankers can keep pissing and moaning though, since that's really what this gear board is more about. I'm so tired of seeing good, hardworking brands get dragged through the horse shit on here. I figure the life cycle of a thread on the gear forum is typically this…

some brand or part is mentioned and unless it's x preferred brand of the minute then negative anecdotes and rumours start rolling in…

everyone jumps on the bandwagon to get their shit-talk on, whether or not they have any first hand experience…

then a few engineers ( armchair or legit) might chime in with the geek talk and a couple guys take the opportunity to mention that they're mechanics and rant about "the industry"

then the topic fizzles out or it derails into a completely unrelated debate.

Done wasting my time here looking for decent bike talk or experience. I'm off for a rip on my Yeti.

Welcome to the internet :lol:
I'm guessing you don't spend any time on the MTBR or Ridemoney forums hahahaha

This is the reason I sold off all my Intense bikes and bought a Santa Cruz Nomad! I still have yet to replace a bearing after 2 years of all season riding.

This really should be the end of this thread.

Dirty's analysis left out the part where some brand homer gets on and gives a long winded version of how they love the company despite whether or not there are any issues.

Thankfully we didn't miss out on that very important part of a gear thread… continue on

Rating on the quality of a high-performance frame by the longevity (or lack thereof) of the bearings is kinda like not buying a high-performance AWD car because it doesn't have tires that will last for the type of terrain you wish to drive it on.

Between Enduro and Timkin, you should find a quality bearing for almost all of the ball-bearing'd linkage designs out there..

[QUOTE=ol' dirty;2713231]That's why I brush the grit out of the tight spaces in any linkage before every ride to reduce wear from grinding…pretty simple maintenance, really. Takes less than 5 minutes. Moving parts + mud and grit = wear.

Anyone who's seen the attention to detail and love that's gone into the design and build of these bikes wouldn't think Yeti is a company that is looking to cut corners to save a few bucks on a high end bike. I've heard first hand that one of our most respected local brands looks to Yeti as a model for a successful rider owned company that does things the right way and all my personal experience confirms.

Dude, I've been riding, wrenching and designing bikes for well over 20 years so I know how to maintain them. I have 4 MTBs that are always well maintained and in immaculate condition. When the gap between the Switch link and the rear triangle is less than 2mm that is a fail in my books. It wore paint off my rear triangle and wore anodizing off of he Switch eccentric. There is absolutely no way of stopping grit from getting in there during a ride and I sure as hell wasn't going to ask my riding buddies to stop so I could clear the gunk out. There are more than a few pics on MTBR showing the grit getting forced into the Switch eccentric due to this design issue. Yeti obviously knew this was a problem because they opened this are up on the SB66c and the SB95.

If you've actually seen the bearing choice for the main pivot they are pathetic and don't belong on a bike. I wish I had of known this before I bought the frame. This along with the grinding is an absolute lack of attention to detail IMO.

The straw that broke the camel's back was finding 3 cracks in my frame. 2 of them were in the same spots as others were finding theirs and the 3rd crack (over 1" long) was in a different spot on the rear triangle.

Successful rider owned company!? How many ownerships have they been through in the last several years? Nuff said, I just got back from a great ride on my NomadC.

Dirty's analysis left out the part where some brand homer gets on and gives a long winded version of how they love the company despite whether or not there are any issues.

Thankfully we didn't miss out on that very important part of a gear thread… continue on

LOL

As for rider owned, I guess John Parker doesn't own them any more! Hmmm….Yeti…

[QUOTE=ol' dirty;2713231]Done wasting my time here looking for decent bike talk or experience. I'm off for a rip on my Yeti.

Just because you've had a good experience with the product doesn't mean people are wrong about it. People get way too emotional about things. Honestly, if I know how good the customer service is on anything, then it means that thing has broken. Hopefully your frame issue was something minor.

lots of reports of bad bearings

Bearing problems in a frame are more likely from bad alignment, sideloading or skewing the bearing. Most bikes use 6000 series bearings, which are deep groove ball bearings, and not designed for any sideloading. So many suspension designs I see rely on tolerancing to make sure that the bearings are not sideloaded: This is an overconstrained design, and honestly, it's sloppy.

Rating on the quality of a high-performance frame by the longevity (or lack thereof) of the bearings is kinda like not buying a high-performance AWD car because it doesn't have tires that will last for the type of terrain you wish to drive it on.

Between Enduro and Timkin, you should find a quality bearing for almost all of the ball-bearing'd linkage designs out there..

My bearings were Enduros except for the upper link bearings which I replaced with good quality bearings. If you could actually see the bearings that Yeti used for the Switch link you'd have a great laugh.

Bearing problems in a frame are more likely from bad alignment, sideloading or skewing the bearing. Most bikes use 6000 series bearings, which are deep groove ball bearings, and not designed for any sideloading. So many suspension designs I see rely on tolerancing to make sure that the bearings are not sideloaded: This is an overconstrained design, and honestly, it's sloppy.

^^^^^^^^^ Very accurate comment. :agree::agree::agree:

My SB66 bearings were way too tight from the factory because the frame and pivot hardware wasn't machined perfectly. The links would hardly rotate.

Just one reason I'm big on the SC bearing design.

I still think Turner has the best idea,high quality,high tech bushings and a grease port.If they weren't so stupid expensive up here I'd own more than one.

For anybody that is looking for Enduro bearings, RWC has pre packaged bearing kits at pretty good prices for a lot of bikes out there. I paid $40 for a bearing kit for my Mojo HD for the 8 bearings needed. On that note, $40 for a 1000 hours of riding on the Mojo, pretty decent return on these bikes as well. Yes I'm a Ibis fanboy (and Chromag)-unbelievable CS, but man I really want a Blur TRc (REAL BAD):|
http://www.enduroforkseals.com/

Hey guys-

As others have mentioned, Kinetik and Lynn Valley are our dealers in the Vancouver area. Lynn Valley is brand new with us, so they won't have their first shipment of bikes and demos until the end of this month (January, 2013).

Regarding the bearing and service issues some of you are reporting, that's a real bummer to hear. If you ever feel like you're getting the runaround from another source, please feel free to contact me personally. I can't promise I'll be able to give you everything you ask for, but I'll give you honest answers and make sure you get the best deals possible on replacement parts. My personal email address and phone number are in my signature below.

Later,

John P.