scoleman profile

Complete bikes that I built up at the shop definitely came with the adapter.  Some shops are bad about remembering to include the odds and ends like that with their bikes though.  And if you do lose it or don't receive one, any shop has a billion of them rattling around.

The DM tool may just be an XTR thing - to be fair, the only references I found to it were in reviews of XTR when it came out.

I've personally never had an issue with the adapter.  My understanding of why they reduced the size was for clearance purposes.  It started as a road thing - I think with 9000-series DA/6800-series Ultegra - and they standardized it across the whole range a few years later.

The smaller BB cups have been a thing for years, and Shimano has always included the plastic adapter ring with a new BB - afaik, they haven't made an updated tool.

Pretty sure they're including the DM chainring tool with new cranksets as well.

Add Salsa to the list of companies with more backsweep.  They do 11° in carbon and aluminum.

I heard quite a few complaints related to the Canfield Riot/Toir in that respect.  Also Guerrilla Gravity (at least the aluminum ones; not sure about their new carbon models).

Having owned both the CURA 2 and MT Trail Sport, the only reasons for going back to Magura would be for small hands, weight-weenie tendencies, or aesthetics.

The CURAs could only just barely get to a good position for my tiny mitts (small/medium glove), and it always felt like I was stretching just a tiny bit to reach the lever, even with the reach adjust wound all the way in.

Weight-wise, the MT Trail Sports are on par with XTR Race at 1/4 the price.  If you're a weight weenie on a budget, that's hard to pass up.

Aesthetics are subjective - personally, I think both look great, so it doesn't matter to me, but you may disagree.

In performance and maintenance though, the CURAs win out for me. It sounds like the 4-piston version improves the performance aspect even more, so as long as those three points above aren't important to you, that would be the route I would recommend.

It's WAY off for me though.  Their system says 106mm, cardboard and memory foam both say my sit bones are 135mm.  And that's not a mis-measurement issue - I've ridden narrower saddles before, and anything smaller than ~150mm is a total ass-hatchet.  I do have a WTB saddle that I like, but it's one of the wide models (148mm), not the medium widths that they recommend for me.

> On the other hand, if staff is passionate about riding a product and going to be chatting to customers about it anyways (especially this time of year when it’s all about chatting) then why not commit a few dollars to stocking products that are different from what everyone else in town carries?!

I can echo this sentiment as well from a shop perspective.  In my shoprat years, I made an effort to try new and/or unusual products so that I could make good recommendations - both to the shop owner on what worked well and was worth stocking and to the customer on what he (or she) should consider buying.

It's something that a lot of shops are missing these days, in my opinion.

Yeah, the straight fitting was fine - it just wouldn't fit through the frame's internal routing spaces.  The angle coming off of the caliper wasn't the issue.

Not sure a 90* fitting would have helped.  The issue I had was that the internal routing in the chainstay takes a slight s-bend, and the front of the rigid metal section of the fitting was hitting the other end of the bend before the back end entered it, so it physically couldn't make the corner.  I needed the fitting to be about 1/4" - 1/2" shorter.  In the end, I just cut the line at the lever and did things the old-fashioned way.