Jotegir profile

Sorry if I wasn't clear enough, I agree with you they should have a different remote. I meant they chose to cheap out there because they could actually justify it given the use case for the majority of people riding the bike, so while it's a sin, I'm not going to condemn them to eternal damnation on this one.

+1 on the XR4, I have an XR4 out back on my 'cross country' wheel setup and it's great in the interior of BC.

I love the updated 29x2.6 Roscoe, and I think it's a great bike for a wide variety of riders... until I remember that this is what the next Stache could have been with slightly more tire clearance.

Look what they took from us and despair.

"The plastic dropper post remote is absolutely going to snap if I breath on it wrong and what a PIA that's going to be in the forest."

Shockingly enough, Trek has been sticking that thing on their mid to entry level 'serious' bikes for a few years now and we saw very few break. I think Trek realized the level of riding the majority of riders would do on this thing combined with the under-bar nature of the lever and cheaped out where they could.

Hey now you're talking! Then we could really get those wheel sizes down!

The *only* aluminum rim I've tried that holds up (and honestly would believe is as good in this department as carbon) is Spank Vibrocore if you can handle the increased weight. They're just brilliant. Game changer on the DH rig - for context, I spent a few years tightening spokes MID DAY at the bike park on all manner of alloy rims until the Vibrocores came 'round.

I think one of the biggest wins about WAO is the warranty program, which in my experience can be summarized as "Dont be an ass and you can probably get another rim.... and if you did do something monumentally stupid, don't tell us"

"Couldn‘t you just go one gear harder and be as quick?"

Yeah I'm with this guy, get that fitness up! Just pedal harder!

Love the hubs, not the biggest fan of some of their cheesy alloy rims.

They named plenty of fat bikes after me. Off the top of my head: ice cream truck, bigfoot, fat boy, big iron

It's been a minute since I've seen a 3 pawled bike, at least at the Trek "8" level and up. 7s and 5s might still come without the upgrade kit but a year or two ago trek got far more generous with installing those kits at the factory

You can only list so many things when your time is limited by exclusively reading NSMB on the toilet. 

Besides, it doesn't even have an angleset.

Its always bugged me that the prices of a nice, basic kids bike with altus, rim brakes, and a rigid fork are usually within striking distance of a basic adult bike with a suspension fork, a slightly more complex drivetrain, proper cranks, and hydraulic (or better yet, mechanical in this price bracket) disc brakes. Sure, around here we'd take the rigid fork over the crappy "suspension" fork any day of the week, and the failure rate out of those brakes is also not zero, but come on, all that adds costs that aren't there on the kids bike - it feels like it should add up to more than a 70-100 CAD price bump. 

Economies of scale are a harsh mistress.

Posted by: Blofeld

Shimano Wandering/Wondering

In anticipation of this article I had been asking ChatGPT questions about the WBP.

Now see what it has to say about the Whistler Bike Park.

FWIW, I don't care about shimano wandering bite point. It doesn't bother me enough to care. On 2 pairs of saints and a set of XT 4 piston. So... we're out there! I get why it bugs other people a ton though. I am quite heavy and very much NOT a finesse rider, and the suspension designs of the bikes I like to ride really reward the BRAKE OR DONT approach to riding. If I was dealing with wet slabs like you guys? I might have other ideas, but the steep and deep dust of the interior summer? On, middle,  or off is fine for me, thanks.

Posted by: Cydwhit

A week late, but as a lover of absurd bumper stickers ("Choose Sin" "Frack the Tetons" "Rue Paul is an Oil Tycoon" "My Other Ride is My Sexy Wife" etc) our household has to have an ongoing conversation that boils down to "how will you explain this sticker to the Sprockids and their parents?" which results in a box full of great stickers that I'll never get to stick anywhere.

"'Frack the Tetons"?? You can't really believe that, can you??"

"Gotta Frack somethin'"

One of my favourite bumper stickers of all time relates to a local Kamloops issue, where you had two sets of bumper stickers that say either "Say No To Ajax" or similar or "I support Ajax", regarding a proposed mine to be built within city limits. A friend of mine did a small run of "What is Ajax" stickers in the exact font of the "I support Ajax" ones. It was great - I had a few people who did not read it close enough say "Hey I'm really surprised, YOU support AJAX? It's right on some primo trials you ride all the time!" and I'd have to instruct them to look a little closer.

--------------

Oh, and velocipedestrian, your Marin is f-ing disgusting. Love it!

I'll admit to stripping out one of the first MS lockrings I worked on. Fortunately it was mine and was due to some late night wrenching and not a customer's ride at the shop - after hundreds, if not thousands of combined XD and HG installs. 

The sad thing was there were no replacements available until YEARS later (seriously, I think they're still backordered). Fortunately, I turned to my unfortunatley growing source of weird odds and ends for cheap - aliexpress. sorted in a couple weeks for about 6 CAD including shipping.

See, now I'm thankful for that Tacoma driver's dumb bumper sticker because it gave us such a charming 'slice of life' post.

Posted by: joseph-crabtree

Last year I had a'22 SC Blur and the down tube/BB junction is really bulky looking. So many people asked me if it was an E-bike that I had to get rid of it.

MEATengines forever!

They probably just asked because you were absolutely crushing the ups and they wanted to preserve their egos.

Based on FB comments on Charlie Kelly's FB it expired sometime last night when was asleep.

If we could all be so lucky

Posted by: AndrewMajor

Very interesting. Clearly they have no concerns honouring the warranty despite you running inserts? The garbage though…

My experience breaking carbon rims is they always fail on nothing - but I know I broke them previously. Not that I’m a wheel breaker - I probably represent the average use case for most rims just with a fair number of miles. No bike park, which really does put the descending miles on.

For me once inserts are involved (especially at the weight of CushCore) I don’t see any advantage to carbon. They’re still stiffer, sure, but carbon rim companies are putting a lot of effort into engineering compliance, so does that matter?

Anywho, don’t need a photo - I was just curious as I know how much effort they put into beefing up the latest generation rims.

No, not at all. I still stand by the statement that Trek warranty is the best in the biz*. They actually offer a two year "no questions asked" carbon wheel explosion policy, so I am not sure they ever did an actual warranty evaluation for any of my wheels. I saw them OK an original owner who melted a carbon hoop on the exhaust of a car. They didn't even ask questions that time (although I am sure they wanted to).

*all non-DTC warranty depends on your LBS

The last time I had a rim failure, I submitted my claim and then phoned the warranty guys because I wanted to chat about inserts. I basically said "this keeps happening to me, but only with inserts. What do you recommend"? They're usually quite forthcoming with information but the fellow I had on the phone was rather cagey about whether I was to run inserts or not. He did set me up with the top of the line wheels though, so that was nice. As I said before, I think it would be bad business to say it's not recommended.

I've been running inserts with carbon because the carbon came first. Trek makes the staff deal wheel price so attractive that it's impossible to look elsewhere. Their entry level staff deal price is within striking distance of a staff deal price of a high end set of alloy wheels. I got tired of truing wheels all the time and carbon rims (and vibrocore with nipple washers! shout out!) really cut the wheel maintenance in a dramatic way. Pre carbon/vibrocore, I'd have to spend a decent amount of time on the truing stand after every full park day. Even if its only for a few minutes each time, it gets tiring.

I think I am going to build a set of alloy wheels using some of the many hubs bontrager has so generously donated to me for insert duty. I don't want to put more hoops in the ocean, and at this point I feel like I am making a significant personal contribution. Lol.

Posted by: Blofeld

That is a brutal run on wheels! The WR1 rim with the Vittoria insert makes the least sense to me out of all of them. Would the reduction in air volume offer less protection in some way? And yes, I would love to see some photos.

The Bontragers I heard about that were replaced on warranty were 2021 Line Pro and Line Elites in the ~30mm width. I don’t think they were used with an insert. This is hearsay, but I’ll be watching for a recall notice now.

I don't anticipate a recall notice coming out, unless you have better knowledge that I do at this point. I have broken more bontrager carbon wheels than anyone else who has come through the door in the shop. By maybe double? I think I might have tied what we did as busy dealer in total this season. Keep in mind that Trek is moving absolute boatloads of carbon Line wheels as they've come on pretty much every 9.8 or 9.9 bike across the board for a number of years now in addition to whatever they do in aftermarket. That's thousands of these things coming into BC each year, and we only did a handful outside of what I personally did after dozens and dozens of 9.8 level bikes going out over the years since they started offering them OEM. As I said, without inserts - they seem to be very good.

With respect to WR1, that was some time ago now - I don't even think they were offering a handlebar at the time. You can't buy that rim anymore and I think they've since changed their tune (in addition to their layup process and designs, at least once) on inserts somewhat - at least publicly. I wouldn't worry about it too much, it was just what we were told when we dropped the wheel off back then - they still honoured the warranty too as it seemed to be more of a 'recommendation'.

And because you requested, here's the photo. Now that I see it, the number of wheels is 7. I had forgotten there was one wheel I've already taken the hub from (plus one non-bonty that got sent back) so it didn't make the photo.

https://i.imgur.com/KHyktNm.jpg

Posted by: AndrewMajor

Were the Bontrager carbon rims you were breaking older models, or are we talking about the latest generation rims? In addition to my solid experience (not running inserts) I've heard nothing but good things about the latest generation Line Carbon rims.

Inserts like CushCore or Tannus or the Vittoria you mention shouldn't be an issue for any carbon rims. They're damping impacts and the force is spread over a wide area of the spoke bed and then also the sidewalls of the rim/tire as the insert is squished. I've talked to a few carbon rim manufacturers and this has been the consensus.

A notably different product/exception is ProCore, or ProCore-like, insert setups, where you are moving all the bottom-out force from the tire/sidewalls of the rim to a concentrated section of the spoke bed. ProCore.

Current gen Bonty stuff. Replacement rim after repalcement rim. They love me. Want me to take a picture of my dead bontrager wheel pile? It's pretty big. At least they're giving me a solid supply of reasonable quality hubs for years to come (they send whole wheels if you explode rims within the first two years of ownership).

I've read that about the foam based inserts, yet still have issues nearly exclusively with carbon rims and these inserts. Running solid air pressure too. I did two at whislter bike park on closing weekend 2021, tannus front and rear, on a 2021/22 Norco Range - these were both hairline cracks and not catastrophic explosions. I rode the day out on em'.

I did two this fall, one at Whistler and one at Sun Peaks on my Instict, one on Tannus and one with Cushcore. Both rear. At Whistler I did a warm up lap on Crank it Up with the girlfriend and then wanted to do a HOT lap of In Deep, one of my favourite trails in the world I hadn't had a chance to ride in like 18 months at that point. The rim broke in a semi-explodey manner through a fast straight tech section after the triple hump. Hole in the top sheet and on both sides of the rim sidewall. Wasn't in multiple pieces but it couldn't hold air anymore. I was pissed too - ruined my one Whistler day I got that year, and it was a *brand new* tire on a *brand new* rim and it died on the first real lap... after already losing two rims that year (and two more at the end of the season before). And I was already annoyed by the boatloads of people just.. standing in groups across the trail. It was weird.

The other one was at Sun Peaks, near the bottom of Sweet One. Same sort of thing, fast trail rim strike. This time the rim made it into the spokes, had to walk it out - took a lot of paint out with it too, sadly. It was also on the first day I set it up. I can't recall the third one at the moment, but it was on an E13 rim (it's not in the heap, they asked for it back). But also with an insert!

I have felt all the rear ones happen. It happens on a rock-strike-rim-bottom-out event through a fast but not particularly steep tech section, but never on the really bad bottom outs. Like just the little rim kiss sort of ones caused the pretty major mishaps. They didn't feel like the ones that would leave a big dent in an alloy rim plus insert combo... I know what that feels like too, haha.

My line pro 40s are from 2018 and are flawless still, even with the Tannus insert (not from 2018). There's just so much fricking carbon and structural rigidity from the 40mm internal width, I've barely had to get a spoke wrench out to true them! Also generally very happy with the rims sans inserts. There's a reason I kept picking them up.

So needless to say it was a rough season and a half for carbon rims. This is after a couple years of being nice to wheels, except the occasional alloy fatigue related issue.

The NSMB review itself mentions the solid durability! If it's not based on rim shape/etc, I'd have to think the foam filling adds durability in the sense that there's no hollow space for aluminum material to go when you impact the rim badly. Whether or not they're more durable than Spank's other offerings (which I recall being quite durable as well, but it's been a few years since I've ran them) is still another question, but they're certainly the strongest and most reliable rim I've ran in years, alongside the colossal Bontrager Line Pro 40's.

Most of the carbon rims have been bontragers, yes, but two destroyed by inserts weren't. I've done in 5 carbon wheels with inserts in them and one carbon wheel without -although the one without is just a very mild delamination and rode fine for several weeks until the replacement arrived. Of those without inserts, two were hairline cracks and three were catastrophic rimplosions. Using both Cushcore and Tannus tubeless. Without inserts, the Bontrager carbon rims seem to be very durable. I ran a set of Kovees (the XC rim) for years of hard abuse doing not-xc-things and the only issue sans-insert was the mild delamination. As soon as I started running inserts regularly on the trail bikes the wheels started to go bye-bye with incedible frequency. I will note though, I am very hard on wheels - my previous alloy rear wheel on the DH bike had fatigue cracks along many of the spoke nipple holes.

Carbon rims and inserts don't really mix well. You won't hear too many wheel companies state this publically though, they want people to think they can run them with inserts without issue because that's good for sales. It's been explained to me that in a carbon rim, they're precisely controlling material strength and depth, and they're designed around the impact of a tire on the very strong part of the rim, not a foam insert moving the impact forces from the strong rim wall to the soft rim center. If you look at the catastrophic failures of my carbon rims, from my layperson perspective it appears consistent with this explanation. Per We are One's Dustin Adams (someone who I trust to know about carbon rims):

"With the pressure from the insert, the rim doesn’t bend and move as well as it should. We’ve seen [inserts] have negative impacts on the longevity of a rim, where the rim is taking more hits, and if we focused on a little more PSI we would have less."

A friend of mine cracked a We are One rim with the Vittoria pool noodle-like insert and was told at the factory that they weren't really meant for inserts - this is not consistent with other statements WAO has put out more recently, other than the above quote, however.