jd profile

I'm with you Phil! Maybe my memory is clouded, but I want to say I'm at 1 derailleur in 29 years, and my young and stupid days overlapped significantly with the shitty component days (and non-replaceable hangers). It has to be at least 10 years since I've been on a ride where someone killed a derailleur.

I'd really like to see the manufacturers publish their piston diameters, and reviewers to include this information as well. There are pros and cons to 4 piston vs 2 piston, and the difference in clamping isn't always as much as you'd think. Given that they typically use the same master cylinder, any difference in total piston area should have an impact at the lever as well (have to push more volume if the piston area is larger). I'd love to see a back-to-back comparison of 2 piston vs 4 piston models.

In that case, I'd view the "not-readily-available-in-Canada" aspect to be a benefit!

The ZLok looks pretty good as a bare-minimum deterrent. Are they actually "keyed", or is the key really just a release tool (ie one key fits all)? Have you tried to defeat it with, say a bent piece of wire?

I just have to jump in here and support you on the smell thing Perry, since no one else has. I've been using Tri-flow for, uh, 27 years, and it might be entirely for the smell at this point. 27 years ago I legitimately liked the performance too, but since the advent of 1x and narrow-wide, I have to say that while I'm still perfectly happen with my chain under the "never-clean-the-chain-but-tri-flow-and-wipe-down-as-needed" regime, every time I have to scrape the grime out of the pockets in the chain ring I think there has to be a better way...

On your first point... I also feel that attention or focus plays a significant role. All of my worst crashes were on the most basic sections of trails, JRA, and never on sketchy moves with the big pucker factors. This actually gives me great comfort, and whether there is truth to it or not, it gives me the confidence to continue to progress and try things that I'm not sure about.

I too had skipping issues from day 1 with my hub. It was grease-filled, and I started riding it in the fall, so the lower temps didn't help. By the time I had ascertained that it was indeed slipping, I had metal filings inside. P321 supplied replacement pawls and drive ring, but it was a little bit of an ordeal as they had to send the drive ring tool as well from the US to Canada, and I had to ship it back. All of that took some time, but it was over the winter and I had other bikes to ride, so no big deal. All in all, I was mostly happy with their service, and I'm pleased with the hubs since the fix. The hub is significantly louder now with the oil - yes it is quieter than my I9s, but with the grease it was damn near silent. I would consider buying again, but then again my Hopes and my I9s have been trouble-free...

If there were hard numbers (X% stiffer, Y% greater strength, Z% more "performance"...) then we'd all be here arguing about whether the lab test methods are representative of real world conditions, and talking about the "feel" of the bike being more than just the numbers... I don't think you can win either way! I think the graph is a useful visual for people to understand what Knolly thinks are the pros and cons, and to get them thinking about what factors the material choice influences. Unfortunately it also could be misleading, and there's really no way to justify even the relative rankings.

I don't need to steepen my angles to clean technical sections, so I'd prefer to reap the rewards of the low bottom bracket, and the simpler, suppler fork. Pretty simple.