FREE U.S. SHIPPING ON EVERYTHING! HELP / FAQ'S

Modern Bike Sizing, The MTB Upgrade Dilemma, Inverted Forks & Loads Of Listener Questions... Episode 94 [Podcast]

MTBpodcast · Modern Bike Sizing, The MTB Upgrade Dilemma, Inverted Forks & Loads Of Listener Questions... Ep. 94

Saddle up for a fresh episode of the MTB Podcast! This time around, the guys go over some details of their upcoming Chasing Epic trip to Sun Valley as well as some updates to their quivers before jumping into some seriously epic listener questions ranging from modern bike sizing, how to sensibly upgrade your MTB, and carbon handlebar differences to our favorite garden hose settings. Tune in!

MTB Podcast YouTube Channel

Worldwide Cyclery YouTube Channel

Worldwide Cyclery Instagram

MTB Podcast Instagram

MTB Podcast Website

Revel Bikes: https://www.revelbikes.com/

Why Cycles: https://www.whycycles.com/

Submit any and all questions to podcast@worldwidecyclery.com

If you are one strange human that would like to read a transcript of the podcast above, continue reading below!

ladies and gentlemen welcome to episode 94 of the mtb podcast presented and

hosted by worldwide cyclery this is jeff this is jared and i'm liam you almost sneezed you all right it was actually

cough oh okay but i am okay we're good all right good news in this episode we're going to cover a few fun things

and then of course the listener questions ranging from the best and worst places to spend money on your

mountain bike how to buy the right size mountain bike angle sets upside down shocks favorite garden hose settings

carbon bar stiffness and much more wow did i just like garden hose settings you

did yeah no it's a secret we're gonna reveal that later that's a secret all right well

dj green goblin who doesn't have green hair anymore play a sound effect

[Music]

well jeff yes [Laughter]

tell me what you got planned i wanted to hear about your plans well we all have planned so a few things we just wanted to mention

because we're just excited next month liam and i are going to andorra which is a landlocked country in between spain

and france we're going there to visit forestall which is an enduran

e mountain bike company that just makes really really high-end premium e-mountain bikes it's a brand that we're

taking on pretty excited about that so we're actually going out there gonna check out the facility where they make the bikes paint the bikes assemble the

bikes all that stuff made in andorra isn't that wild it's pretty cool you don't hear that very much yeah the factory looks insane

it does stoke to go there it's unbelievable yeah forestall i feel like is really under the radar and if you

follow their instagram it's basically just forest al is that how you spell it yeah yeah uh check it out because it's

incredible the bikes that they're building and the custom paint and in the factory where they're making all it just looks awesome this is in andorra yeah

we're going there it's going to be cool we're going to film some things stay tuned to the worldwide cyclery instagram and then youtube for some highlights of

that yeah i can't wait that's going to be a cool trip and then all three of us are going on so we've been talking about

these for a long time chasing epic which is a mountain bike adventures company we're going to be doing sun valley

actually just the week after we get back from andorra sun valley idaho and then later in the year durango

both are good both of those trips are already sold out typically we when we announce a

collaboration chasing epic trip we email it out and it sells out in about two hours so

stay tuned to the email list if you ever want to go on one of those that's a tight window it's a tight window yeah

well they're only about what a dozen spots 15 yeah 12 to 15. yeah yeah they're really cool last year we did

colorado crested butte nope is that all we did and then we did mow it out the year before that jared and i did that

you did one with the east coast boys with matt and david oh yeah that's right brevard uh yeah in asheville

yeah that was good we got perfect weather which was really nice um yeah those chasing epic trips are

really fun so i can't wait i've never ridden in sun valley i kind of had been requesting a little place that had a

little bit more flowy trails like some good berm slapping and jumping and steve the guy who runs chasing epic suggested

sun valley so i don't know i'm looking forward to that i think after we rode just mountains of

rocks and rocks and rocks and moab i was like yeah i'd kind of rather just ride some berms or something steve

so that's where sun valley came from i don't really know he's like what do you mean you don't like it yeah so those those trips i think in most

chasing epic trips are about what four days long it's like four days of riding or three yeah four days of running like

that and they're kind of all-inclusive you just get yourself there you ride bikes so chasing out puts them on all year all year long um which yeah so if

you're interested in going on one of those check it out at chasing epic mountain chasing epic mtb.com um pretty

cool i like the i love the idea of all-inclusive trips yeah it's like an all-inclusive mountain bike trip cruise

but like for mountain bikes yeah yeah pretty sweet i mean yeah just bring your bike or even if you don't have a bike

he's got a sick demo fleet yeah yeah he does yeah he has it completely figured out and dialed in which is fun which

yeah i mean when we go on these we've gone on in the past we just show up with our bikes and ride and hang out with people and have a good time and it's

cool you got local guides that know all the trails and you don't have to worry about figuring out where to go you just

they just take you on all the fun trails it's a great time so i can't wait that's gonna be sweet um

last but not least at least been on last it's been a last season we're gonna do a quick update on our current bike stable

wow uh i don't know i just thought about this this morning and i was like we should go over bike stable because everyone's changed bikes well not a lot

but mostly you jared so go ahead yeah i guess so as always i sold the yeti sp100 that was my girlfriend's

two-hour man dj green goblin over here oh and he's stoked it's a sick bike he's

loving it how often does your girlfriend write it she wrote it a couple times actually the highlight was riding it in lake tahoe so

i'm sick that we got to do that together um but yeah i mean either way the ice 700 is gone

um i've got my open gravel bike open cycle open up or whatever it's called

um my ranger my rebel ranger my yeti sp 165 currently

set up as a downhill bike oh you just put the fox 40 on it have you seen it jeff uh it's just a picture yeah it

looks really sweet it's amazing so you have 27 5-inch wheels front-end rear on it yeah and then a 200-mm travel fork on

the front yeah that's her head and you just wrote it once right on suicide so far yeah i just read it on the suicide

and suicide trip california the ultimate

big bear really like ultimate a-line dirt merchant there's like park bike like party laps for days like what

cassette and drive train you have on it it has eagle but i'm gonna put a downhill i have a downhill cassette and liam pretty much convinced me to turn an

axis derailer into like what brandon seminole did like the seven speed axes so i'm gonna try that out i have an

extra derailleur at home with a short cage that i'm gonna try and put on there and like figure it all out getting ready

for summer bike park bike yeah major bike park vibes um but that is it i've got a gravel bike cross country bike and

a downhill bike slash and driveway are you getting anything uh don't you have another bike with a

basket on it that doesn't count man it's your whole bike stable and then a bar bike with a pizza basket

and the milk crate on the back okay yeah that's my fault and then my girlfriend's bike that doesn't count

um it's not my girlfriend but it's not a yeti s100 if it's absolutely controversial have you ridden the uh

your dad's new bike no just uh just on the street yeah i was here when he was picking it up the

transition what did he get repeater the repeater yeah yeah that's cool it's sick he loves it yeah you can just go ride

all over the place because like where he lives everything is insanely steep like you would not want to peddle it on a

regular bike to get up to those trails so um he's just like so stoked he can just ride all over now yeah that's cool nice

liam you guys ready for this um don't take all day please yeah it's

grown a bit i'll breeze through it so i have my y r plus y cycles r plus it's my gravel

bike got a couple different wheel sets for that then i have a y cycles el jefe

hardtail then i have my revel ranger then i have

technically i don't have it yet but i have all the parts and it's about to ship out as my

revel rail29 frame and that will be built up and then

i kind of kind of have a forestall e-bike i've been riding it a lot like it's mine

um so yeah five not including the bike that you're about and i i guess i do have a dirt jumper if

that counts six yeah well what about a bar bike i do have a bar bike seven okay

but that one's that one's been up in the garage and hasn't been touched since i moved to newbury park so

yeah it's kind of a mesh to get to the bars from where we live yeah true yep yeah that's my stable been

really having a lot of fun obviously on the rebel ranger but also on that e-bike

it is it's hard not to just have fun ripping like four laps of your local downhill trail

and not even getting your heart rate over 150. yeah just because the uphills smooth sailing yeah ripping yeah that

was pretty cool yeah wow i don't know wow wow i don't have any bike yet maybe one day maybe maybe after

your trip to andorra yeah that's true you might sell me on them out there yeah um

i currently have my revel ranger which i've had for a really long time over a year

a year and a half that's a long time really long time i really like the green one with the with the gold uh eagle

drive train that it cut the large car got will liam cut the large cog off of um that thing's rad i can't get over

that bike but because i've had it for so long just want a new one just want a different color so i'm building a whole

new one and teknar is going to paint it have we told him that oh we haven't even told technology hopefully he says

yes yeah maybe this is how he stands out teknar uh you can check out his instagram he does custom paint on

mountain bikes of all kinds and they look incredible and we just had a friend of ours who is starting an e-bike brand

called crestline they custom painted technarcus and painted one for him and it looked so

sick and i was like dude i have to do that so i was like i'm gonna build another revel ranger just get all new parts refresh the whole bike

and uh custom paint it i'm excited it's going to be so so hopefully techno is listening but you

you also have a lot more bikes to cover if not all your whole stable yeah yeah yeah okay okay so then i have

then i have a rebel rascal uh you know 29er with 130 in the back 150 in the front i really like that bike

um that liam's about to put some new brakes on some code rscs looking forward to a little break upgrade on that bike for my longer

travel pursuits and then i have my uh what i call gravel bike which is sort

of a rigid mountain bike salsa cutthroat um they call that a drop bar mountain bike but i put flat bars on of course

700 by 45c tires on it i really like that bike i could just do so much on it it's really fun and then i have another

gravel bike a salsa storm chaser that one i just leave it in the pennsylvania store i'm gonna ride that

when i travel to pennsylvania um oh and then i have another gravel bike pure cycles i forgot the name of it

pure cycles didn't make it anymore it was when they were making gravel bikes big gravel guy what's the one in there

well see i know i first was like i'll get this one gravel bike this like cheaper pure cycles one it was really fun and then i was like i'm gonna

upgrade and upgrade and then i was like i like it so much i'm gonna leave one in pennsylvania i have one for the california store when i'm here and then

have one in the nevada store so they kind of spread apart now so i'm trying to remember all my bikes here

and then i have uh well hopper i have a dirt jumper banshee

i love that bike yeah i really like that bike i walk by it every time i go to the bathroom but i did ride that at raise mountain bike park last november so

yep that thing's cool and uh i have um

a salsa cassidy but it's not built true does that count if it's not built

more kind of the frame is fair so yeah i mean and i kind of counted mine on belt bikes so yeah yeah i should have been

counting years i lost count and then i have another pure cycles bike that was like a track bike

one of my close friends founded pure cycles he know he sold the company's no longer with the company but that's why i

ended up with these various peer cycles over the years they're making cool bikes totally different not a mountain bike company anyway shape or form but i have

a pure cycles track bike which is single speed that's kind of my bar bike that i don't really use that often

and like the purple one yeah it's like a tr it's like a translucent greenish it's

chameleon color something like that

yeah there is a word for it they make escalades out of that color it looks crazy it's like green i love how

you like move your head and it's blue and then it's purple and yeah it's it's a cool color i'm gonna

find the word for that um and then i think that's i think that's it well then i have a motorcycle i have two

motorcycles to count those row unfilled himalayan and then i have a ktm 250 sxf when'd you get the ktm i've had it

forever since like two thousand that your parents have twelve yeah i leave it at my parents house because it's cool dirt bikes when i go there on occasion

um i think that's it i think i covered it yeah i've covered all my current bikes the word we're looking for was

iridescent iridescent good there you go thanks you're welcome

yeah i'm excited for summertime to ride some bike parks and build up that salsa long travel thing and put it down on fork on it like you did with your bike

um we were all amping about that are you going to build a downhill bike lamb yeah i am okay

we all have hopes and dreams here that's right man i'm really i am at the point where

between my roommate and i we are out of garage space completely so i gotta start making some harsh cuts

i mean no one's right really yeah no one's making me but like yeah just to you know be reasonable i don't need that

bikes you can only ride one at a time believe it or not there's something to be said for being reasonable yeah it's nice to have a lot

of bikes though i enjoy it yeah would live any other way speaking of bikes first listener

question oh sizing up or down when you are in between frame sizes

so it is a great question yeah we've talked about this i think in the past but never hurts to just keep talking

about this and we've actually made a lot of youtube videos sort of on bike sizing it is a people ask it a lot it's a

confusing question especially when you're in between you're like oh what do you what do you do so i don't know my take has always been you know just

understanding how bikes behave differently when they're different sizes right so if you're right in between a medium and large the medium is going to

maybe feel a little bit more nimble and playful on you it's going to have a shorter wheelbase and buzzwords yeah ooh

but yeah those are big buzzwords you're right they totally are and then the large is going to be a little bit more stable stable confident confidence

inspiring because the wheelbase is longer yeah so it might be a little harder for you to

lift the front wheel off the ground but then you can factor in stem length too because the crazy thing is most sizes

one size of the next size is a top tube difference of 20 millimeters yeah 20 25 a couple of

stem sizes not much yeah so it kind of depends on what you're looking for so i don't know i i

kind of just always advise people to go with what what suits their writing style if they're more

you know low and planted and stable then you know size up and your bike will handle great if you want to

be popping wheelies and manuals and hopping and being agile then maybe go to the size down so yeah i don't know

that's kind of my my take on it and obviously in a perfect world you could just ride both yeah but if you're in between i mean

um coming from my experience my sb 165 i got a medium and i'd typically get large

but yeah pretty much exactly like you said it's like a kind of this bike in particular i wanted to go for something like a little more playful and just like

jumpy and not super long and like massive so i totally feel

exactly that way i can rip it around a lot more yeah it's a similar argument to wheel size twos right oh yeah totally you want to ride a 29-inch wheel they're

just have different it's not one better or worse than the other just different characteristics and pros and cons to it so yeah yeah so i guess it just depends

on the bike and what you're going for what your preferences are yeah so just think about that ask yourself that

question what do you think willie um yeah i think it's all comes down to preference um

i'm often in between a medium and a large and depending on the thing is it's not like a t-shirt right it's even more

like elusive than medium to one brand to medium to the other brands also different

so yeah yeah that's a very valid point to me yeah it's not like a t-shirt you're not always a medium or always a

large so i kind of float between the two and depends on the bike my revel ranger is a large

the e-bike i just got is a medium um yeah they both happen to have roughly the same reach numbers though yeah just

because they're different brands yeah yeah so um yeah it just depends what you're going for like my 150 i sized

down and ran a medium because even though it's a long travel bike a lot of the trails are riding had tight

switchbacks and i just felt a little easier to whip them around that so that's right

depends on what you're going for speaking of what you're going for next question is what's your favorite garden

hose setting go ahead jared oh wow i'm just thinking about all the different like

situations and the settings i would use them in yeah um i have two favorites

jet of course i mean if jet's not in your top three then don't even talk to me um and then i'm gonna go with angle or

flat for the other one because like when you're washing a car that's my favorite like if you're rinsing it um because i

think it uses the least amount of water number one like if you're trying to get all the soap off the car and number two

i mean it's just efficient yeah really analytical uh yeah i mean this

goes through my head every time i bust out a garden hose so jeff

i'm gonna go with mist oh you don't you misty dog i don't know whenever i

think of a garden hose i think of being a kid and i used to build these forts in my you know my parents house i guess

that's where you live when you're a kid and i'd really sports outside and on hot summer days and then i would sort of

sneak the garden hose in through the back and turn it on mist and then set up like a mist going on inside

you know it's nice like when you're in a long line this market or this was last week i know right okay

tell us we should do this more often yes you should i don't know man miss the missed garden host setting is nostalgic

for me yeah i mean it's completely useless in most other situations yeah you're talking about washing cars or bikes but

yeah um it's playful nostalgic it's playful it's a playful setting [Laughter]

jeff showing off his playful side i'm gonna go with i think shower

yeah that's a good one yeah give me a nice shower yeah that's a thorough it's very uh versatile yeah setting i can

watch long if you've got enough pressure it's great yeah i can wash bikes with it i can water my plants with it i could

shower someone else i can shower myself off yeah take a little drink you know oh yeah

that's nice yeah why wow i'm just ready to go hose something off yeah

probably more useful knowledge for our listeners is which is better one up carbon bars or trail one carbon bars

perhaps perhaps so i actually like this question so a lot of uh i wish i guess i shouldn't say

a lot of but this guy asked and it's been mentioned before in just conversation because we

made a video about one-up carbon bars quite some time ago over a year ago over a year and a half ago definitely one up

made these really cool carbon bars with an actually legitimately novel design in

the shape of the bar so it's a 35 millimeter bar and it's got the ability to sort of have

this uh vertical compliance and lateral stiffness so they engineered the carbon

in a way that allows it to sort of flex up and down but not flex side to side it's like best of both worlds you kind

of want a little compliance up and down and you want but you don't want the bars to be flexi when you turn them so it's

actually a really cool idea and and they made that we made a youtube video about it

and we made a so we did a back-to-back comparison so i rode the same bike the same trail everything was exactly the

same we just changed out the handlebars i think i did four different bars i did the rental bars race bars and truvative

descendant bars and the one-ups yeah of course and i was i was shocked at how different every bar

felt i kind of went into that video thinking oh man this is gonna be hard to do i thought we were gonna swap out the

bars and i wasn't even going to notice and not only did i notice a difference between the one up bars but every other

bar like i could tell the difference between a rental bar and a race-based bar and i was like wow this is actually pretty significantly different the way

this works and so i think the reason this got brought up is a lot of people now know that worldwide

cyclery is a an equity holder investor and part of trail one components and

we make carbon bars over there that don't have the same design as one up and obviously i've been a big proponent of saying these one up bars

are awesome so i think people are kind of curious about that because they know that we have sort of influence on the design of

trail one stuff um so my take on it what i love about the one up bars is

that compliance factor i think it's awesome super it just dampens the trail it's amazing especially on a on a

downhill bike or at a bike park when you're hitting a bunch of braking bumps um or like i mentioned earlier my quote

unquote gravel bike which is a rigid mountain bike i have one up bars on that because of of all places where i want the most compliance it's when i have no

suspension um so i really like that what i didn't necessarily like about the one up bars

was i still felt that when you kind of pull up and down on the bar when you're pedaling so when you're

climbing out of the saddle or just kind of sprinting on the bike you can feel that that that compliance that's nice to

sort of dampen the vibration and bumps is actually now hurting you it just feels like the bars are flexier when

you're pedaling um and pulling on them so i don't know it was it was to me it was like in it's just like anything in

the malmoy world like in certain scenarios this is better in other scenarios this is better so i actually

after that test i realized like probably a lot of scenarios i would like to one-up stuff and other scenarios i actually really

liked the truvative descendant bars in that test because those were kind of still had some good

some damping qualities and stiffness in them and then but they weren't like the the race face and especially the rental

bars the rental bars felt like a steel pipe i mean they were so stiff so stiff and so i kind of left that

thinking like wow in a number of scenarios i really like the one ups and pretty much everything else i'd actually like the truvada descendant in terms of

compliance and stiffness and so that's kind of what i was like hey if we're doing trail one bars i think we should go this route because i just kind of

like this for most situations um so i don't know it just all depends i wouldn't say one is better than the

other they're just slightly different that was a really long-winded answer but i've been thinking about handlebar stiffness a lot

in my life in the last couple years so i don't know anything to add gentlemen i know i think you covered it oh you got

it yeah [Laughter] nailed it watch our video if you have

more questions yeah actually that video is is pretty interesting because i i go over that and

then we also put a lot of the graphics that um one up supplied us with showing sort of their their design and how it's

different i mean things have changed since then there's been more you know introduction of uh you know the brand of

trail one to begin with but just all the other carbon bars and i mean one up definitely was first to market with a

novel ball design and this concept really since then i think more people have been trying to make their carbon bars drone one included kind of a nice

balance not too flexy not too stiff to just have like a good balance of that compliance stuff so but anyways that is

a cool video and i had a lot of fun filming that and i definitely that was one of those videos i went into and i thought this is going to be impossible

because i'm not going to notice difference and i was like oh this is actually pretty good notice a difference so it was a fun video to film

before we get into the next question here is an ad from one of our key sponsors hello there this is stu i'm

from a new startup funded in silicon valley at a 2 billion evaluation called s to the t to the u to the y stewie

what we do is we use artificial intelligence and machine learning from the ibm watson neural cortex to figure

out and help you make the best ingredients for your stews that you're going to put in your instapot as instapots raised in popularity over the

last black friday and sales holiday season we decided that we needed to make artificial intelligence to help you with

your ingredients in your stews so check us out at s to the t to the u to the y

stewie.com we are back with the question of the question of how can a shock with the

same eye-to-eye produce different amounts of travel this is a great question but i think

what the even better question is how can a shock with the same stroke have different amounts of travel yeah well

there's a lot that goes into this yeah i don't know if it's that complicated the answer is just math well there's math

but for the record there are shocks that have the same eye to eye and have different strokes yeah like 230 by 60 or

230 by 65 yeah exactly so it's just leverage ratio yeah a lot of us came

about also when metric shocks just came out because they had much more small

incremental uh stroke differences so what's called a

long stroke a bike like the sp-130 is a perfect example the stock eye to eye is 210

the stock stroke is 52.5 millimeters you can turn it into the 130 lunch ride by

making that stroke from 52.5 millimeters to 55 millimeters with the same eye die

with the same idea geometry of the bike stays exactly the same you simply just have more stroke length correct so the

rear basically the rear end your suspension can move an extra two and a

half millimeters out of shock which by the leverage ratio on an sp-130 translates to seven more mil travel at

the back wheel yeah so that leverage ratio the length of that stroke is translating to how much travel that actual rear axle goes

through and that's just different for different frames designs is yeti the only brand that does that like so they call it a

lunch ride when it's just essentially a bike with a beefier build kit and a shock that has a longer stroke i don't

know if any other brand does that a lot of brands do it but they almost call them like different models like i want to say like uh specialized epic and epic

evo right same eye different stroke and one's 100 mil travel 110 mil travel

um i don't know i'm sure there's a handful of other bikes that do that i've even seen some bikes like different sizes

have different shock strokes and travel it's like if on like an extra small or something like that it's like a reduced stroke but well

now you've got you're adding another layer of complexity here yeah but to answer the question directly it's

it's just all the leverage ratio so it's just based on that frame design which can create a different travel amount for

the rear wheel versus the stroke of the shock when we are talking about over stroking or over shocking uh that is when you you

know essentially what liam just described with that sp30 sp-130 if you put a shock that has a longer stroke you

can get more rear travel however caution caution we don't just think you can do

that on your bike because you might not be able to i remember messing with this a lot when i was a kid and um trying to

figure out how i could put you know a shock with a longer stroke on my bike to get more rear travel out of it and i did

that once on a da vinci troy this was a maybe in 2010

and the the brace so here's why you shouldn't do this the brakes on the

the seat stays so the the bars that come down sort of on the top of the rear triangle and then there's a brace that

connects the two for stiffness that slammed into the back of my seat yeah

because again the bike was not designed to do that so typically the people who are designing these there's all these tolerances and clearances and they

design them with a certain eye-to-eye and stroke for a particular reason and if you just try and neglect that and put

a longer stroke on there you might have your frame crashing into itself or the tire crashing into the

frame so just be careful doing that or just don't ever do that and be really cautious and do a lot of research first

but anyways yeah that's i don't know it that is interesting stuff to think about because you you do especially when you're upgrading your shock you're like

oh do i should i get the exact same eye to iron stroke as my bike came with the answer 98 of the time is yes two percent

of the time is there's a possibility you can overstroke it um so i don't know i guess that's even more

in depth than what this question was but there you go but you gave them a good answer and that's what matters gave him

what the people wanted jeff what the people wanted and now we're gonna talk about what i want our favorite post-ride

beer drink food combo oh i'm excited just thinking about it okay

well for starters this is from qc smoked up qc smoke i don't really i don't know this guy

personally but he just messages us on instagram he's a really cool guy we've kind of all become friends with him because it's just funny and his

instagram is just food porn yeah just like good meats and stuff barbecue i don't know that's what he's got

to love he's a way over here jared must love this guy jared loves it i think we have open invitation like both ways to hang out

ride bikes and like smoke meat so well i guess i'll go first because i'm talking so i'm gonna go with a

um burrito with like a modelo or cerveza of some type or

i'm gonna go with a burger from the stand and like a pale ale oh just hits the spot i don't even have

to go ride a bike i'll go get one right now how does that

defeat defeats purpose yeah but um all right

jeff can you follow that one up uh i i'm just a huge southern food fan i love fried chicken i

love brisket so something that i my sort of guilty pleasure after a huge exercise

day lazy dog restaurant i think those are only in the southwest right i don't know how many of those there are

but that place they've got a quesadilla that's my appetizer it's like this fried

quesadilla it's super good or maybe it's not fried but it's like really crispy it's like really crispy

and then i get a it's called their southern fried chicken salad so it's fried chicken with like a cajun hot

sauce and uh oh and the cornbread croutons it's so good so that's sort of my guilty

pleasure after a big exercise day is i get the quesadilla and i get the salad and it's it's like 3000 calories i think

best of both worlds ride but i have to do a big day to

justify eating all that food with a gin and tonic i don't i don't really drink that often

unless i'm you know a beer after a ride just doesn't hit the spot for you i don't know man

i don't i don't really drink beer or like a okay lacroix uh yeah i like i like sparkling spin

drift mm-hmm all right do you give just a sponge water in your riding bottles

no because you can't no i am addicted to sparkling water you act like that's a crazy question all you

drink is sparkling water that is true that is true but no because you can't really it kind

of fills you up and you have to burp it's not good to have while you're exercising or trying to hydro it's more

of a tantalizing beverage to have while you're working away at the computer as a desk jockey like i am that's true what

about you liam um i'm just gonna go with the classic uh bottled coke or what some

call the mexican coke has cane sugar in it yeah those are good other sugar that you don't know where it's from and a

burrito yeah i think that's just my go-to nailed it um yeah stan movie back up a good poke bowl

is also a good backup but yeah burrito and a bottled coke sounds so good you guys are giving me

some good ideas i'm getting hungry me too

okay angle set versus adding fork travel are you skipping oh i skipped a question

sorry you're excited for that best place to save verse spend on your mtb that's a great question that is a good

question because i mean obviously if you look at your mountain bike you think to yourself and you and you stroke your goatee and you think as you twist your

goatee you think should i upgrade this or should i upgrade that

i'm gonna say wheels and suspension are like two huge things that you wanna have

quality i guess i mean i'm getting myself into a hole yeah because i'm gonna say

everything okay for starters we actually made a whole youtube video on this yeah how to upgrade your bike what to upgrade next

all that um that was a really in-depth youtube video and i i prefaced that whole video with the concept of it

really does depend on your starting point where's your current bike yeah you know so if your current bike

already has x then you need y if it already has y then you need x so um you know it's extremely situational but

of course you know suspension makes a huge difference tires make a huge difference contact points really change the feel of a bike

so i don't know there's there's definitely areas i guess it would be you know there's always these really important

things that matter but would be more interesting to know is what you shouldn't spend money on first

and i'm going to go with cranks i mean yeah cranks probably followed up by

drive chain because a lot of drive chains work really well now yeah even base models on our sram stuff micro

shift stuff like it just shifts great yeah so you're not really getting many performance gains upgrading things like

cranks chain rings and even drivetrain i'd also say now probably within the last two or three

years or down to those uh kind of entry level bikes two wheels are also getting much better and wider that's true

tubeless ready so that's probably another place where most likely you could you know jump around upgrading your wheels for a while

yeah honestly even like brakes i feel like some lower end or entry-level brakes like um as long as you have them dialed

in and like yeah they might relax your adjustment but they're still powerful yeah still have powerful um solar power

yeah like those slx for piston brakes like yeah they feel really nice to be honest i mean those feel better than xtr

to me but which is crazy like and they're less than half the price probably i mean

um but yeah i mean honestly i think yeah suspension is just one thing that it's like an entry-level suspension is not

going to compete with a like top line yeah that that is true and i i think there is you know a lot of stuff there's

diminishing returns right so once you get to say uh fox performance elite yeah like that

the difference between that and factory negligible yeah like not even a big deal but the difference between

you know uh the stock sr sun tour and fox performance elite is huge pretty

monumental yeah yeah so it's kind of seeing where you can notice those things i mean obviously tires make such a huge

difference in terms of gripping the ground so if you have really good tires your entire ride experience is going to be better and or different in a positive

way true contact points i mean good pair of grips yeah makes a huge difference to me good pair of brakes

um yeah i mean those those do matter saddle yeah i don't know also what's annoying you yeah yeah we thought a lot about

this when we made that video yeah yeah we should just we should have just rolled it we should just rolled it

she just replied to this question with a link to that video it is hard it is it is situational but i

think what matters is kind of what we mentioned which is kind of what not to do right like maybe don't worry about

things that aren't annoying you and don't worry about stuff that really has diminishing returns like a lot of stuff like drive trains like we mentioned

cranks chain rings those have totally diminishing returns like you spend more money they get a little lighter maybe a

couple little features but they still work pretty much the same or just don't throw money at stuff that still works well right like if you're breaking like

replace stuff that's breaking or it's going what you're happy with exactly yeah or to wearing out you know that kind of stuff fix your annoyances first

yeah perfect cool speaking of annoyances it sounds like whoever asked this question is annoyed

with the steepness of their head tube angle because they asked angle set versus adding fork travel

excellent transition there i really like that yeah i loved that one yeah um yeah this is a good one i think this

is a great question for liam to answer um well

the ability to run angle sets kind of went away for a couple years yeah so yeah it did that being said it's kind of

coming back uh with headsets kind of getting like oversized again so

you know uh let's take for instance um you know some of the bikes we sell a yeti a revel a mondraker

and i don't think any of those currently can run an angle set so you'd have to add for travel to those

um i mean i can't help but just chime in here and be like angle sets i think are so annoying because they all creak

well i would also say i've never seen angle sight doesn't create yeah the new ones are getting better because

they're just they're better machined cups now they're not like a true oscillating bearing

definitely not yeah the old angle sets did creak they did they were not fun to use they had an oscillating bearing like

in an alloy cup and like if you know anything like a round metal piece and a round metal

piece is going to creak so now they're like machined cups with just drop in bearings

that don't move around so they're getting better but um i'd should probably just say adding fork

travel is the easiest to do you don't have to bash out cups you don't have to do anything it's you know taking a fork apart for its

service anyways is probably a good thing to do if you haven't done it in the last six months or a year and just

probably accomplishing what you want to right so if you want a steeper or sorry not super if you want a slacker bike

you're probably just saying you want your bike to be more worthy of more better performing on downhills therefore

you should probably want more fork travel as well yep um but you shouldn't really go over more than 20 millimeters

than what the bike is spec with yeah i'd say that too like pros and cons of adding an angle set versus adding fork

travel like you're raising your bottom bracket with a with adding travel right a little

bit and like versus kind of maintaining similar bottom bracket height with a yeah that's a good point yeah

yeah um i mean if you raised your fork say 20 mil

your bottom bracket's probably only going to raise maybe 10 at the most and then once you drop into sag you're

probably around a three to five mil difference yeah um so yeah you could argue that maybe if

you do already have a high bottom bracket on your bike you don't want to add fork travel angle sets cons they creak

a little bit harder to install and your bike not feel that might not be compatible right

interesting lots of unpack there a lot to unpack there all right

next thing there yeah let's unpack this next one true or false jeff was once a catalog

model not much i don't i don't actually know what a catalog model is does that just mean a model

that's in catalogs nailed it is that it yeah how do you know like you literally just said it someone google

that i mean but that's i mean i guess maybe it's just is it that simple i think it's pretty self-explanatory

catalog models are people who post for photographers while wearing or displaying a product to help sell it so

kind of yeah you're just likely you are one right now you're kind of an extra next to a product

i've uh i've only ever been a catalog model for kettle stuff

um because why would we pay for real models we just have all of our own staff to be

the models that's true maybe we're just broke and we're not like hey man let's

get the models from these guys and this guy over here will put the clothes on and take a picture of him much cheaper

talent it just seems so weird to pay for models yeah you know i mean what if they're just like really really ridiculously

good-looking [Laughter] we usually cut it off of the neck

your face isn't in it yeah i mean you got all the models you need right here yeah i don't know that's a false

uh yeah no i i mean was once i guess was once i guess recently in the past i was one

for kettle so there you go maybe that is true maybe he is speaking of kettle perfectly goes into

our next ad hello friends jeff again i just wanted

to quickly say if you're enjoying this podcast or any of the worldwide cyclery mountain bike content we would genuinely appreciate if you

would check out kettle mountain kettle is the apparel brand we own and have been working tirelessly on tirelessly

that's a hard word to say tirelessly on for the last few years we've got some amazing gear for on the bike and off the

bike with the design philosophy to have everything be as versatile as possible if you use the discount code mtb podcast

you can score 40 off your entire order on the kettle mountain website the mtb podcast

discount code will be active on the kettle mountain website through june 30th check it out at ketlmtn.com

or just go to the google machine and type in ketl and we are back with the question of

what's a good substitute for bananas i'm allergic but want the potassium

liam you said you had a good answer yeah i'm a big banana person so

i like always thought bananas that were like super high and potassium and i got proved wrong there's a lot of other

fruits and foods higher in potassium than bananas avocado being one of them wow much

higher and i think spinach as well coconut water coconut water i think is also one but i think coconut water

i like coconut water good for you man there you go hater peter peter on coconut water but yeah um eat up some

avocados and put some spinach in your eggs in the morning before you go but how do you so here's a question though you can

pretty much put a banana in the back of your pocket for a mountain bike rider in your bid pocket whatever even electrical

tape it to your bike like some people do yes how do you do that with an avocado oh you could probably just pick one

while riding if you're in the right location that's true open it up it's ridiculous notion [Music]

it's true bananas are great like food to eat while riding yeah

you have to prepare your avocado before like you have to cut it up and squeeze it into like a goo packet

you could just bust it out like a goo i would not slurp it down i think that's like the only way you

could eat a avocado while riding funny enough there's a i recently discovered

uh a nutrition brand i think it's called spring split

oh so it's cool yeah no but yeah no no this this is coming this is called spring nutrition i'm

typing antibiotic spring nutrition um spring energy okay and it's it's a goo

it's gel gel goo i don't know whatever whatever you call it uh but the ingredients are way more natural so

they're just essentially whole foods but they're not but yeah the ingredients are crazy so if

you're interested in more natural styles of on-the-go goo packet

nutrition check them out spring energy uh not sponsored whatsoever i haven't even used him thoroughly so i can't give

you a problem can't give you a perfect review i've used them a few times and they're totally fine it like makes them sick

yeah totally unvetted but they have just they just have weight yeah so it says all real food all

healthy energy all gut friendly so it's just a better to me it was the first goo type gel packety thing that was i just

had really good natural understandable ingredients and i was like wow this is awesome i discovered them at road runner

sports oh shoe store the local shoes store so i don't know maybe that's helpful for this uh gentleman who's

allowed to bananas also uh i just looked up sweet potato is very high in

potassium and they like scratch labs will put sweet potato

in like savory rice cake bites and they pre-make obviously so you have to pre-make put some work into it but

um yeah that's kind of what all like the pro athletes run it's like kind of that kind

of pre-made food so nice hardcore sounds great speaking of hardcore what's the biggest rock slab

you've ever ridden yes did you do that on purpose with that

oh my god that's amazing jeff what is the biggest rock slab you we're all gonna have the same answer we've all been to moab it's like slick slick rock

trail yeah and just moab the whole place is a giant slab of red rock i don't know but if that's not

big enough sedona is right yeah what about sedona we've all ridden hangover trail in sedona yeah put that in the youtube if you don't

know what it is hangover in sedona but aside from the obvious options i'm gonna say

detroit rock city at whistler that's a big rock slab

it's like that one it's just like you come up on it and then it's oh right on the lift yeah then near the bottom oh yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah it's like that

one it's v yeah well that's not the name of the trail though it's just the name of the rock oh that is of the trailer

yeah detroit rock city somewhere does it think detroit rock city and that flows in like bottom of slayer or something like that that's a phenomenal movie by

the way detroit rock city is it it's about the high school kids who go to a kiss concert oh they understand i used to own it on vhs they named

yeah i think they named it after the trail makes sense hilarious i think that was in theaters

back in the 2000s i don't know that's a good one i also wrote some big rock slabs actually in uh

asheville north carolina oh wow and dupont and that whole area i can't remember what the name i think it was

dupont or maybe it was uh pisgah i don't remember one of those areas over there there was actually some pretty big rock slabs slabs maybe not as

big as mohab but yeah they were cool nice you can read the next one yeah i'll read

the next one yeah what's up with those hell's gate grips been wanting to try some but haven't pulled the trigger yet what's up

the uh the hell's gate grips are the trail one grips and uh just go to the website man and learn all about them

there's a three minute video on them oh so healthy it's actually pretty cool so hell's gate um because trail one is uh

so bkxc road at this amazing place uh hellsgate national park in kenya and so

everything with trail one a dollar per product purchased goes back to the trail network it's either named after and

named after or goes into the trail one treasury hell's gate so if you buy hell's gate grips a dollar goes directly

to hell's gate national park in kenya to support their mountain bike trails and the grips actually i think

probably the vast majority of the design of those was just liam and i we just pretty much took all the grips that we

loved the most and just mortgage boarded them so the word schmorger's worked them all together

the features we liked and the dimensions and kind of told the engineer what to make yeah yeah

that was i don't know that's it man nailed it nailed it and by the way jared since i know you're

more of a thin grip guy yeah uh we are currently working on a new grip oh in

the trail one world yeah eta 2027 supply chain

hopefully soon so i'm gonna have to stick with my current grips for a little while a little bit but dude

you're gonna love this new group i'm sorry this is essentially we're taking some of the great feedback that we've got and the really cool things we've got

from hell's gate um and put it into a much more thin package which the hell's gate grip i wouldn't call it's not a

thick grip we it was funny enough in the youtube video recently we called it a mid thick grip and you're like you're like oh yeah slim thick and

you're kind of like me yeah it's like the dad it's not a thick grip but it's a dad group grip but yeah even

even when we first started riding him i was like ah they're a little thicker than i normally like but as soon as i kind of just gave it a few rods i was

like i actually really prefer this because it's super comfortable in my hands yeah and it's actually really useful on those chasing epic trips where

you ride your bike for 20 miles a day for four days in a row and you're like well i'm actually really glad that i have nice comfy grips so

i don't know there you go there you go man there you go hey when should you replace your cassette that's a lame

question when it's worn out wise guy

what are some symptoms of a worn out cassette how about that so usually it starts with your chain you want to replace your chain

at the wear indicator mark and if you do that you can get more length more more life much more life out of your

cassette and chain ring um probably your teeth on your cassette will kind of

start looking like shark finned as you call it where one side is kind of uh has a kind of

classic swoop and the other side is really kind of looking like a the wave uh a wave about to crash

that's starting to get kind of worn out you're chain stretching it's eating up part of your teeth on your cassette

um and you're just gonna start losing shifting performance and then once it gets really bad

actually under load your chain will actually skip over the teeth and that's what's called chain slip so

um it's there's not really an exact science to it but a couple chain checking tools if you flip them on the

back side you can actually like slot it into the i guess what that the bottom

of the links bottom of the the cassette tooth and if you see like in between the two

colors between the two teeth um [Music] if you see like a lot of light through

there then it's probably close to being replaced so yeah usually if you replace your chain i

don't know sometimes it's you can kind of equate it to miles but it then depends on how much you ride

certain gears and then if you're riding in mud versus dust versus jeff versus jared will also have

different where you guys are 50 pounds apart um yeah i mean let's just say this though yeah i don't

think i've actually had to replace my cassette on any of my sram eagle xx1

drivetrains um or sram eagle drive chains i should say uh because i replace my chain so often

so yeah if you're more diligent about replacing your chain your cassette will have way

more life like years more life yeah and they're expensive as heck so yeah so

make the investment and replace your chain more often pro tip you can do something such as

have a high end cassette and a lower end chain so then we replace your chain more often it sounds expensive

i would argue against that though why because the jump from a gx chain to exo or xx1

chain actually has not only performance benefit and shifting but the coating and the heat treatment and the

pin the hollow pin and the strength of it actually makes it last much longer than a gx chain

some hard stuff to quantify i think there is different like knurling on the i don't know more high-end chains right

like yeah to help your hand the hollow pin is not only hollow but the way it's also flared creates strength i was just

trying to be helpful but i'll be honest i haven't i haven't run anything lower than the premium chain in over 15 years

what do i know if you really want to go cheap i'd go higher end chain

steel front chain ring because that won't work yeah and then whatever

he can afford yeah yeah nice yeah pretty cool there you go that's when you should replace your cassette um

dh bike as a road bike or a road bike at the bike park love this question

i might quit bikes you want to use the wrong tool for the

job or the wrong tool for the job i'm going to dh bike on the road because i'm going to have so much fun doing it i'm going to jump off of curbs and find

little jumps on the side of the road i don't know i think the opposite yeah i

also hate being an efficient man yeah it's such a bummer to be slower than your friends i guess yeah if you're

doing like a road bike ride i would just take a road bike take it up the lift and just ride it

until the tires are flat then ride it until the rims are folded and that's one run and then i would just hang out at

the bottom drink gin and tonics you might not make it at the bottom you might just start

heckling people halfway down yeah yeah which will be fun i like hiking too so that's fine maybe we should do this let's go take road bikes to the bike

park people have done it yeah and i've seen the videos like was it uh fabian burrell yeah

bro the other french guy yeah i think sam pilgrim did it too but those

guys are nuts all right this i've been wondering for years how come upside down forks aren't common on

mountain bikes as they are on motos by upside down they mean the standard yeah inverted i guess compared to

mountain bike the stanchions are closer to the axle compared to the crown of the fork look like they do on a dirt bike

yeah yeah well so they do have the manitou dorado which is kind of the last long-standing

inverted fork that there's a couple of new ones uh rockshox tried it with the rs1 lasted

maybe three years yeah um then some of those german companies are doing intend yeah he's

doing a pretty sick one do you remember maverick i think the name of it was that was a really old one yeah respect on gary fisher's stock

long time ago wow um i i don't know i i am i don't think any of us are as

hardcore engineers enough to really truly answer that but i think from what i understand

is that it's it's hard to get it's a better design which is why dirt

bikes have it but it's it's a better design in terms of performance but it's a worse design in terms of getting it

as stiff and as light as it would need to be competitive to the existing designs

so that's where it's hard it's like if you make it as stiff then it's going to be way too heavy and if you make it as

you know if you make it as light then it's going to be way too flexy so i think that's that's that's the engineering challenge behind it whereas

you on a motorcycle or dirt bike you don't really have that weight sort of issue yeah so it's it's just less of a

consideration same with dyno bikes you don't really have as much of a weight concern which is why it makes more sense the longer travel the bike

dvo maker i was gonna say big one for a little could have sworn i saw it i don't know i thought he liked he was a

prototype maybe or something like that i saw fox did a prototype one back in the day yeah fox had a prototype one never

never saw the light of day um yeah i don't know i mean it's i guess

the answer is it's an engineering challenge that's really hard and a lot of the engineering challenges with mountain bikes are

all related to you know balancing performance stiffness

weight and durability and i think in this situation weight and stiffness are a really big hindrance

when it comes to these inverted forks and mountain bikes whereas you just totally take the weight off the

table when you put it on a motorized vehicle speaking of which i wonder if inverted forks will make a comeback with

e-bikes with e-bikes there you go gearbox e-bike wow

starting to sound look like a dirt bike

yeah oh man it it could i don't know somebody somebody take note of this

so that way in seven years when we just have a ton of e-bikes with inverted forks i look

smart push industries also leaked a prototype inverted fork linkage system

whoa contraption like a year ago yeah yeah it hasn't seen light of day just yet at least but

aftermarket yeah speaking of weird fork designs trust trust performance do you

remember those guys oh yeah um that is i believe our most viewed youtube video ever over a million views yep because we

had that thing and tested it and it was awesome and it was interesting and uh unfortunately the company folded yeah

um but go to youtube check it out just type in trust message or trust fork something

like that yeah um it's interesting stuff in terms of forks and all this sort of stuff so yeah oh what's going to be more

popular linkage forks with e-bikes or inverted forks with e-bikes inverted inverted moto guys or e-bikers it does

look cooler too yeah it does yeah the linkage fork had to really like that just the look of it just wasn't it no

yeah it wasn't appealing um well anyways speaking of looks you guys look great and it looks like

this one is about to be wrapped up and it looks like this one's going to be wrapped up thank you all very much for

listening if you've made it this far we genuinely love you and uh we hope that you appreciated our

one funny ad and one real ad because we appreciate you really appreciate both real stewie stu is real

yeah yeah comment down below if you think stewie was me liam or jared

[Laughter] peace peace

May 18, 2022

MTB Podcast › Video ›

Modern Bike Sizing, The MTB Upgrade Dilemma, Inverted Forks & Loads Of Listener Questions... Episode 94 [Podcast]

If you are one strange human that would like to read a transcript of the podcast above, continue reading below!

May 18, 2022

Top Products For You...

Recent Blogs

--- Shop Info ---

--- Stay In Touch ---

Newsletter Signup -