Andeh profile

Great article!  My suggestion for #1 is good brakes they can reach, especially for the littler ones on 16".  My 4 year old's Commencal Ramones came with some Tektro mechanical disc brakes supposedly designed for kids, but I couldn't adjust them far enough in for him to easily reach with his hands.  My buddy's kid's bike had a pair of Tektro hydraulics that could so I got a pair of those, and he instantly started progressing at braking now that he could cover his brakes.  The Tektro hydraulics are OEM only, so a bit tough to find though.  I'm sure some old Deore 2-pots would work well too - anything you can adjust so that they pull nearly to the bar.

I can't even imagine how slowly a backwards mounted Assegai rolls (last picture).

I'm a 5'8" mullet convert, and have short legs for my height to boot.  I think your guesstimate of 6'+ to feel equally comfortable with 29" in the back sounds about right.  Maybe 5'11" depending on inseam.

It's funny, I was going through my closet the other day to find old jerseys and shorts that I don't wear often to sell, and the 2 pairs of shorts I found from last year (when I was on full 29) have permanent tire buzz marks on the ass.  And I realized I haven't had a single buzz in 3 months since going mullet.

I experimented with less-than-ideal mullets a couple times before finding a setup that worked on my current bike.  A lot of the ride feel can be attributed to the geometry, as you'd expect.  The first couple times I did it (on a Sentinel v1 and a GG Smash), it got very, very slack and low (like 63 HTA, 330 BB height) and behaved like you'd expect.  It railed berms but had pedal strikes on everything, and the front end got super floppy.  But when I did it on my current bike (GG Megatrail, with short headset cup and 160 fork), all the pieces clicked.  The geometry feels like a normal enduro bike, the rear end is easier to move around under my shorter legs, and the bigger front wheel rolls over chunk and holes easier.  It also carries momentum better on straight-aways better than 27.5.

It really depends on the starting geometry and travel.  In general, starting with a 29 will let you keep the travel the same, but drastically slack it out and drop the BB.  Starting with a 27.5 will raise the BB and slack it out, but you can mitigate that if you drop the fork travel slightly.

Someone on Vital came up with a nice website tool that lets you model this:  https://geo.syn.bike/

I started a thread over on RideMonkey discussing what bikes are good candidates for mulleting here:  https://ridemonkey.bikemag.com/threads/mullet-madness.291264/

Any chance you ran a caliper over them for width?  I briefly tried a pair of 2.6 Hillbillies last year (the pre-T9 version), and they were huge.  I sized up to them because I'm used to tire sizes being an overstatement, but they seemed to be a true 2.6 on a 30mm rim.  Are the new Butchers also true to size?

I'd love for Spec tires to be good because I can get a bro deal on them, at like 1/4 the cost of Maxxis.

I'll be the voice of dissent here:  I don't get why people love Shimano derailleurs so much.  I had the new XTR 12.  That damn thing needed greasing after like 150 miles because it started getting notchy.  Then again after another 150 miles.  Even cranked to maximum, it still doesn't provide the same level of resistance as my last X01 Eagle clutch, which also never needed internal service for me in over 3,000 miles before I "upgraded" to the trendy new XTR.

And even if they theoretically have a much longer overall lifespan in terms of years, the XTR cassettes sure as hell don't.  The aluminum cogs on there seem to be made of cheese.

On my current bike (Guerrilla Gravity), I had it mounted to the attachment points on the bottom of the top tube.  I'm assuming that the bottle's attachment to it's magnetic mount strip was flexy enough that the bottle was bouncing off the topside of the downtube.  But it could be vertical play within the magnetic catch.

On the previous setup ('19 Sentinel), I have no idea why it rattled.  My guess is the whole system was flexing or moving slightly.

My bikes are generally pretty quiet, and I'm aware of certain noises they do make, so when I change something and there's more noise, it drives me nuts.

I've tried Fidlock systems (the 2019 bolt-on version, and the newer bolt-on version with the flip cap) on two different bikes because I really like the clean aesthetic when you're not using a bottle.  Unfortunately, the bottles rattle like a shopping cart going downhill - deal breaker for me.

Yup, my kneepad tears are all from pedals catching while hike-a-biking.  I'm convinced it's a conspiracy by kneepad makers to make you buy replacements by making the backside out of something normally found in ladies' underwear drawer.