bogey profile

For me at 6’5” tall, Santa Cruz has nailed their sizing. I’m on their XXLs and love the sizing. I’m truly in the XXL for clothing which just makes sense. The reach, stack and STA of my Hightower 2 is spot on for my height. They seems to have found an great balance so that the front end stays planted on all but the very steepest climbs, the STA is slack enough that I can put power down well, and the reach/stack combo gives me a balanced riding position. 

I’m eager to try Specialized’s S6 sizing which is their XXL whether they want to admit it or not. It looks to be a touch bigger than SC’s XXL so I’m curious to see if I’ve finally reached my limit and have bikes that are truly big enough.

I’m up there in height @ 195cm and find that super steep STAs are a hindrance to making power. Good thing that most bikes that are listed at 76-78 degrees seem to fall to 73-75 at my seat height because of the slack actual STAs. 74-75 is my sweet spot for powering steep climbs while keeping the front end tracking. Steeper than that and I feel like I’m tiptoeing up climbs. For more rolling terrain, like Galbraith, a steep seat angle fells absolutely terrible because fork is weighted too heavily. 

Years of road and TT riding have taught me that I cannot generate power with such a steep STA. On a TT bike, the steep STA is only usable because you’re finding a balance between power and aerodynamics. 

I almost feel that the industry knows this so they publish steep STAs in geo charts only to have them fall in a more balanced range when the saddle is at climbing height.

A buddy of mine had a red Tercel that I dubbed the Terrari. That nickname stuck with the car until it finally blew into pieces after being hammered on for 15 years.

This is the 35mm stanchioned Sid so it should be plenty stiff at 120mm travel. It’s more of a Pike-light than a Sid IMO.

It’s the Bell Super Air (and Super Air R) that has the MIPS Spherical.  I bought the R version (removable chinbar) late last year and love it with and without the chinbar attached. It has very good coverage with excellent ventilation and fits my noggin perfectly.

A great way to core the end is to loosen the clamp and tap the end of the bar with a rubber mallet. It leaves a nice clean hole. If you have an old bar lying around you can use it as the core tool.

A few light blasts from an air compressor gets them on the bar in seconds.

Agreeeeee! I know the minimalist saddles look cool and all, but bring back some side cushion to all saddles! It helps on the mtb by providing more comfort for moving around on the bike and it helps on the road by reducing friction between shorts and the sharp side edge on so many saddles.

But Boost is already everywhere so we’re stuck with it. SC even held back on Boost for quite a while.

I've found that SC is great at bringing a range of sizes on their demo tours. Last year I was easily able to demo an XL Nomad and XXL Hightower LT at two different demo days. I brought some tools to adjust the cockpit to my liking and a shockpump to adjust the suspension. 

I couldn't tweak other items like rotor size (SC put 180mm rotors on an XXL HTLT!) or shock tokens but overall I was able to get a great feel for the bikes.

Posted by: ReductiMat

As a hack who likes to ride a lot downhill, anything metal-on-metal was greased save for the little bits that made me wonder if it would kill me.  Those bits were loc-tite'd.

No metal bits were ever left to grind on each other, ever.

This is the way.

Or warm it up with a heat gun and it comes off almost residue free.

Posted by: T-mack

Posted by: FLATCH

Craftsman, not a robot.

Pretty sure robots don't weld any frames.

Many factories have robotic welding even in the bicycle industry. This is somewhat old tech now. Google will lead you to the answer.

After the update, my 520 tracked the whole ride and seemed to save as usual but actually did not save the ride.

I'm not a fan of the feel of the sprague hubs. The vague feel when putting out high watts on steep hills just didn't sit well with me.

I'm really looking forward to trying out the new XTR hubs though. I’m hoping they get things moving and roll the Scylence tech over to their road hubs too.

So far so good for me on my SixC and Next R cranks although I don’t ride nearly as much as some people here. 

I AM lusting after the eeWings cranks though!

Being even heavier than Craw, I can feel flex in everything also. I'm 240lbs and on XL or XXL frames and have had trouble with component and frame stiffness for years (never a problem with strength though). I love some of the newer, stiffer carbon frames, burlier XC forks, 35mm bars, beefier cranks, etc. Along with the trend to longer frames, the increased stiffness of frames has me completely happy with the fit and ride quality of my bikes. Finally!

I've used all varieties of XTR cranks for years and I've noticed that the latest M9000 lacked stiffness in torsion and bending. When putting the power down I can feel the crankarms twist which causes an odd droop in the pedal which I can feel through my shoes (stiff carbon soled shoes). Even worse is that I can get the crankarm to clank into the drive side chainstay of my XXL Tallboy 3. At first I thought this was a combination of flex in the crankarm and flex in the frame but this went away entirely when I switched to Next R cranks. The Next R cranks sit closer to the chainstay by 2mm so that's not the reason for the problem. After putting a bunch of time on each setup I'm sure difference is due to the combination of stiffer crankarms and spindle of the Next R cranks.

Recently picked up some Fox Attack Pro Water and they’re great so far. Proper bike shorts fit and very waterproof but haven’t had them long enough to test durability.

Gore waterproof shorts have the worst fit I’ve seen in any shorts, ever. No tailoring to them at all.

One thing to note is that you really need to have those spokes replaced or better yet, have the wheel rebuilt. If you decided to rebuild it, why not get a new hub instead of just replacing the freehub?

Posted by: Ddean

Its exactly similar - does more power to the ground result in more wear? Up the power a lot and do the test. That's exactly how you test these things. Accelerated environment.

This is typically not how accelerated testing works. You can’t just keep cranking up the intensity of a test and expect to get good results. 

In this case, just cranking up the power output to the rear wheel will not get valuable results because there is a non-linear relationship between power to the rear wheel and trail wear. All data is garbage once you start tearing up the trail by spinning the wheel.