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Mysterious Shimano Patents, E Bike Haters & Lovers, Rear Shock Upgrades...MTB Podcast Episode 82 [Podcast]

MTBpodcast · Mysterious Shimano Patents, E-Bike Haters & Lovers, & Rear Shock Upgrades...MTB Podcast Episode 82

Overview

Today on the MTB Podcast, Jeff and Liam are in to talk about a few interesting developments from Shimano. Specifically, their new Link Glide drivetrain and wireless electronic shifting patent they recently filed for. The guys also discuss Forestal bike's official launch, which includes three e-bikes, and that we will be the exclusive dealer for them. We then go over a few of our recent YouTube videos such as how to upgrade your rear shock, RockShox Domain fork launch, and our BERD spokes review. Finally, they finish off with a few listener questions. Enjoy!

Mysterious Shimano Patents, E-Bike Haters & Lovers, & Rear Shock Upgrades...MTB Podcast Episode 82 2

00:00 Intro

1:12 Shimano Link Drive Drivetrains

05:04 Shimano Wireless Electronic Shifting, Dropper Post, & Suspension

10:32 Forestal Bikes

15:59 Current State of E-Bikes

24:55 Recent Worldwide Cyclery Video Recap

42:32 Customer Questions

MTB Podcast YouTube Channel

Worldwide Cyclery YouTube Channel

Worldwide Cyclery Instagram

MTB Podcast Instagram

MTB Podcast Website

Forestal Bikes: https://forestal.com/en/home
Rear Shock Upgrade: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HaqkgrfpUSM&ab_channel=WorldwideCyclery
RockShox Domain: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TazRV9qT8UM&t=12s&ab_channel=WorldwideCyclery
New Fox 2022 MTB Suspension: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=02qSdaykFfk&t=11s&ab_channel=WorldwideCyclery
Berd Wheels & PolyLight Spokes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q_oMh3ehRUE&ab_channel=WorldwideCyclery
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!

[Music] ladies and gentlemen welcome to episode 82 of the mtb podcast

presented and hosted by worldwide cyclery this is jeff and i'm liam and this episode's topics

we are going to cover interesting things from shimano including their new link glide drivetrains and their recent

patent related to wireless electronics shifting slash dropper posts suspension we're going to look into

forestall bikes and what they recently launched as well as the general common

state of e-bikes in north america from our perspective and the give you guys the 101 on some of

our recent youtube videos which include rear shock upgrades the new fork from rock shock

and new product from fox oh and bird spokes bird spokes as well as finish off with

some listener questions that you guys submitted to us yep so uh let's dive

into it but first a sound effect from our very own dj pineapple

Shimano Link Drive Drivetrains

new things from shimano starting off with their link glide drive trains

yes what do you think uh there's a new 1x10 dior drivetrain and a new

xt drivetrain uh with some bold claims to be 300 more durable than

previous versions yeah i don't i'm confused because i never really thought that there was a

durability problem to begin with but some people have that issue and then there's also e-bikes which they

didn't say at all it doesn't seem like that these are quote unquote made for e-bikes but it kind of seems like it would make

sense for an e-bike since that's where drivetrain durability is more of an issue yeah it's definitely

leaning towards that especially because uh it seems like weight is not really in

the equation here yeah this stuff's heavy it's yeah it's either a 10 speed dior or an 11 speed xt

and derailleur cassette shifter and it is not light it's heavy yeah so

um it seems like it's it's a great oh it does say you know some e-bike stuff down there um but yeah

it seems like you know it could work really well for e-bikes especially because you know e-bikers

tend to just hop on and go um especially some of the newer ones to the mountain bike scene yeah yeah i mean

that's people might get offended at that comment are you saying all e-bikers are novices

i'm saying the newer ones just hop on and go right they just rip their bike you know i completely agree i'm just playing devil's advocate

yeah that's true i mean the you know depending on where you're at in terms of your skill set in the mountain bike scene

knowing how to shift properly and not shift under load that's definitely that your

your mentality changes on that a lot the more you ride bikes and the longer you've been around and the more chains you've accidentally broken

because you shifted incorrectly yeah that and just your maintenance on bikes in general tends to improve as you ride longer and

longer yep um you know it's it's a learning curve so um yeah these i mean

if they're going to be stronger and last longer i'm sure there's a market for that um especially with everything kind of

getting so light and so you know i want to want to say fragile but it's it's

kind of brought to the limit like 1 by 12 is is very close to the limit of what a chained drive train can be at so

yeah i think there was that famous quote i believe from keith bontrager that was uh

cheap light strong pick 2 which is actually really really smart

and when it comes to mountain bike components it's very very true and yeah it's cool to

just see more options i mean this this to me seems like it's geared towards e-bikes although it's not like

explicitly called an e-bike something like sure i mean you could use it on a on a normal bike but it's cool i mean if you

if you're a rider whether you're on an e-bike or not if you are having issues with you know breaking chains or knocking

teeth off your cassette for various reasons uh this could be a good product for you um yeah i did see actually a comment the

other day about that like hey i break teeth off of my cassette all the time and i was like oh that's odd but i don't

know but okay i guess it happens i'm not a clydesdale so i wouldn't know i mean uh i've seen it happen

um but it's more more just a rare scenario um but yeah new drive chain from shimano

yeah more durable when it will be available nobody knows uh so don't hold your breath

uh that's that's just the bike industry in 2021 it's uh yeah things are things are lost

in translation when it comes to supply chains and all of that so we'll see it'll come out at some point

the next cool thing from shimano is their recently granted patent related to

Shimano Wireless Electronic Shifting, Dropper Post, & Suspension

wireless electronic shifting dropper post suspension this is really hard to digest you can

like the original patent documents can be found out there a number of mountain bike media outlets reported on this with some of the images found in

that and it's kind of complicated to me it seemed like it was more related to

potentially your dropper like this was my some of my assumptions and takeaways from this confusing patent thing

like your dropper post height being related to how your suspension is behaving for example if your dropper post is up

your suspension is firm and if it's down your suspension is open if that if that's how it works and that does work

like that's a cool idea i never thought of that yeah yeah definitely it's hard to like

know if that's what they're going after because it's a very vague patent and harder to kind of dissect that um

but yeah that's kind of what it seems to do and it has to involve the job post suspension and an electronic drivetrain and it's all

wireless so all of that is new from shimano so either way whether it does work like that or

they're just getting wireless components lockouts dropper post and drivetrain it's all new

yeah yeah true and i mean i think you know these things are so hard to look at because there's so much going on

at these big brands like shimano and fox and sram there's like all this product development constantly happening

they're constantly filing patents for new things they might make might not make or maybe just want to protect

from not having their competitor make so it's it's just a big ball of wax behind the scenes i think a bicycle retailer

once reported that uh there was something like you know several million dollars that

each fox and sram spent on patent lawsuits just fighting each other over patent

like every year like it just seems crazy like why can't they just get along i mean i have no idea but

i guess their competitors are making components so it is hard to take any true takeaways from this and what's

going to happen but you know sram has an amazing well multiple amazing wireless electronic drive trains right

now and a wireless electronic dropper post and shimano doesn't quite have an answer when it comes to this electronic stuff

especially not wireless that's competitive um in my opinion so who knows i mean i would bet

they're probably itching at the at the door to be like let's make something good and compete there yeah definitely they've been behind the

game for a while they're the first to the electric drivetrain market in mountain bikes and road

but it's always been cabled with wires so it's not been wireless um they don't have a wireless version of

anything yet so shimano you know if they can get there you know they can you know catch up to sram but

either way we will see i would like to see an electronic suspension lockout yeah i think well

kind of like fox live valve right but but completely manual yeah that makes sense completely under my

own want to lock it out i really think that this possible idea of being related to

your dropper post is pretty smart because like when think about it i when i first thought of that i was like when

do you ever have your dropper post up that you would want your suspension fully open um i want to say fully open there but

tech climbs you don't want it locked out fully yeah yeah yeah in my head like the perfect setup would

be if you dropper poses up you're in like sort of a climb mode you know where you're just in a firm mode exactly and your dropper post is

down and it's open yeah that'd be pretty nice yeah it's kind of similar ish to the way uh scott's uh

twin lock suspension works yeah that's true you're locked out in the middle and you're basically limited to like

about half travel or so um my last xc race pike had that and that middle mode is actually really nice

for just pedaling over really rough braking bumps or tech climbing yep have a full lockout for you know

road climbs and then full open for descent so yeah something like that on the electronic wireless

would be really cool yeah it could be i mean we we will see time will tell we're definitely splitting hairs and making negligible

performance gains and mountain bikes that already work really really well uh so yeah

we will see what what all of these brands that are kind of responsible for product innovation come up with over the

next decade to make bikes any better when they already work so darn well but

there we go and now a word from our sponsors are you

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squirtdingleberryblaster.com bye my name is billy and now back to the

show forestal bikes what about them liam

Forestal Bikes

they're new they just officially launched with three models and all three models are e-bikes

yeah so it's an e-bike brand exclusively as of now correct yep yeah high-end stuff

the brand is from andorra which is a landlocked country in between spain and france that has tons of mountains

a mountain bike world cup stop it's also the home of common soul bikes as far as i know and yeah forestall man

these this is some pretty fancy stuff uh slight caveat to this story we've

been talking to forestall to potentially be dealers for them so we might be slightly biased to saying that they're nice but

they do look nice but also we've never written them so yeah jury's still out quite a little bit there yeah they do look nice

they kind of slot all their models slot a bit between like the specialized levo sl and the

full powered e-bikes that kind of most everyone else has yeah which means they're they don't have like a huge motor but they

don't have a tiny motor right yeah so from what it i was looking at

their claimed wattage is very similar to a levo sl but their torque is almost doubled

meaning that on a steep climb you'll be more torque and have more uh initial like

power like a full powered but you won't quite be like ripping along you know 30 miles an hour

or whatever so from that's what i understand from it all right and they they're going to be doing their own

motor and their own battery all proprietary stuff they design correct yeah it's their own design so um

we don't exactly know yet on that but uh it's their own design and it's also how

they could get their bikes at a lightweight for this power to torque ratio um and everything with that

so yeah it's it's cool to see you know i was kind of not uh quick to jump on the e-bike train

mostly because i thought the first couple generations of e-bikes were really crude

yeah and just not yeah they don't quite develop to what they could have been i don't think anyone up until the last

couple years even the last like year cycle really looked to the e-bike and went we should put a motor on this bike and

make it look good and make it ride good and have it be like a really good package as a whole

it kind of like slapped a motor on it and we're like yeah this thing helps you get to top of the hill yeah so

yeah i know exactly what you mean like they definitely didn't look appealing or just pretty by any means

they yeah they looked kind of more homemade and clunky and i don't know they just weren't evolved and like even in the last couple years i

mean it's happening really fast more and more brands that mickey bikes are just making them look better work better fine-tuning everything about

them and yeah the whole segment of e-bikes is is definitely evolving quickly and becoming

way more popular i'm seeing them so much more often out on the trails now it's wild

definitely so yeah forestal bikes they have uh three models um try not to

totally butcher these names they have the scion cyon which is a 150 150 ml bike

so it's kind of the trail bike they have the sirion i believe it's called which is

they're kind of what they first initially launched with they had the first edition

but now they've launched their full range of models with build kits and colors and everything of that bike which is 170 170 ml travel

and then they also have the hydra which i believe is a modified uh sirion that is 180 front with a dual

crown and 170 rear and they have uh two bill kits of that as well yeah

yeah interesting stuff i mean those those are all pretty long travel but i guess if you have a motor why not

just have some extra travel i mean there's so many schools of thought on this one yeah so yeah i'm sure they're coming out

you know it sounds like doing me a full e-bike brand so i'm sure they're going to come out some even smaller travel bikes um

i think in europe the market is way more developed than it is in the us so they probably have a better pulse on

that but yeah for the u.s it's kind of makes a lot of sense especially like anything on the west coast that

i'm aware of is like long climbs long distance yep what's the point of you know short

travel when you're gonna be going downhill for a while you want help to getting up that big climb and you want to go down just as

good as you could on any other bike yep yeah that definitely makes sense yeah i mean in speaking of what their bikes are sort of made for

and capable of um the the famed long time downhill racer cedric gracia

he's how long has he been on forest all now he's been like working with them on their development and he was a long time santa cruz rider then

he went to forestall before they were even like released it was like this hidden secret of bike he was writing

his instagram's cool he shreds those things all the time if you're curious about that there's also some pretty cool youtube videos by forestall with cedric

that just like show them riding these bikes and i don't know interesting stuff to just see sort of what the quality of these

bikes what they can do i mean e-bikes are really coming a long way people are riding them like total maniacs like

they've been riding normal bikes for the longest time so yeah it's it's interesting stuff i mean i definitely want to roll this into just

Current State of E-Bikes

the you know general commentary on the the state of ebikes in north america from

our perspective so i mean our perspective as like long-time mountain bikers that

live in the high-end segment of the world e-bikes have slow it very much to me

reminds me of 29-inch wheels you know and when 29-inch wheels were coming out there was just

this you know school of thought of like oh those are lame man those are stupid we don't need those 26 for life and

as everyone knows now that most people don't say that anymore and that's people ride 29ers and 2075 is a

thing but but i don't know it just takes time though it did take a while to figure out

the 29 geo yeah yeah and it took a while to get that that mid travel big travel

downhill bike even to ride how you kind of expect it to and i think that's the same thing with

e-bikes yeah yeah the original ones were just not comparable to like the quality of

regular non-e-bikes at the time but now they're becoming comparable when it comes to geo and ability and

function and form and all of that sort of stuff which is yeah and i think that is what's making them more accepted but

it's it's been funny you know we have a lot of incoming friends and customers that

seemingly would have never had an e-bike you know maybe five years ago and now almost all of them have e-bikes

yeah my riding group is so penetrated with the e-bike market

that uh i can barely get them to ride normal bikes with me at this point so um

they also have done the the iteration jumps from the kind of crude first bikes and the

levos um and then a lot of them hopped on that mondraker when they became available

because that was kind of one of the first ones that had good integration and yeah and looked good and rode well with

a unique suspension design and now they all almost all of them are on a

santa cruz bullet so if for those of you that don't know i believe that's a 171 70 ml bike maybe

170 160 180 170 it's a long travel bike spec is a mullet

and all of them are now finally going completely faster downhill on that

bullet than they were on their downhill bikes or their enduro bikes and they're saying it's the best

downhill riding e-bike they've ever had so yeah yeah that makes sense i mean it's

it's still funny to me the just watching people's mentality on e-bikes in general

change as e-bikes get better and as usually what does it is they try a good one

yeah you know it's like they're like i don't really care for you bikes i'm not interested and then all of a sudden they rode their buddies

levo and they're like i kind of actually i think would buy anybody you know so yeah it's that that to me is

is a little bit comical but i don't know for me it's you know it's an e-bike it's if people are getting out there and having fun and

enjoying themselves and being responsible respectful nice mountain bikers or cyclists or whatever

uh great like yeah ride bikes but it's ironic because there is still a bunch of

there's just hate man there's just arguments even this uh article that pink bike posted about

forrest all i mean pink bike to me is always a funny place to go read comments i think everyone would agree with that

and this article about forrest all you know there's so many various comments there's people

literally just viciously arguing with each other about why just about e-bikes like why

they're stupid or why they're good or why you might need one when you inevitably become older like there's just

all this banter and talking and it's just i don't know it's it's still kind of

funny and weird and and then there's like a lot of trail systems that still have no e-bikes allowed and so like that's a little bit of an issue but it's

also controversial so i was just in sedona which is pretty

strongly no e-bikes um enforced by you know the rangers and such as well as

local mountain bikers aren't into it but from what i understood it's the reason because

back in the 90s or so when mountain biking was getting really popular there um all the hikers had a fit and wanted

to ban mountain biking well they came to an agreement and said okay no motorized vehicles and mountain bikers like sure that doesn't exist

we're going to agree to that and then all of a sudden now yeah it was like dirt bikes and motorcycles like sharing the trails with

bicycles with hikers with equestrians and yep yeah so now it was just a mountain bike that was fully self-powered

now there's these e-bikes and they fall into this motorized category which is still also a gray area yeah because it's

like does it have auto throttle but it's just assisted and yeah yeah so that's that's all got to get figured out on trail

networks but so sedona is still categorized there's no e-bikes and outlets signage is everywhere at every marked trailhead

no e-bikes so depending on where you're at to it could be controversial whether you

can ride an e-bike on your local trail network yeah and such yeah i mean it i don't know all

that stuff's funny because i've i've been out i mean even just recently i was riding

and climbing up uh a pretty challenging uphill and an e-bike just like blitz past me

uphill um someone who was visibly not as good of shape as i am

not to brag but i don't know so i you know and for a second i was like a little angry but then i was like

whatever like it doesn't and i can also and it's also kind of like it spooks you right like if you're climbing you don't expect someone on a bike to blitz

past you from behind like period yeah um and and that actually is the same way

because i do a lot of hiking too and trail running and like if i'm hiking or trail running and a mountain

biker just like sneaks up behind me real fast on a downhill or whatever like it can spook you and that like instantly kind of

creates this like like you kind of pissed off real quick you know yeah and people get mad about that and

i don't know so i i feel i feel every i like try to empathize with all the various sides on the whole topic but

i don't know it's just interesting i mean it seems like in europe from what we hear we obviously haven't spent very much time in europe recently because

no one's been doing much international travel these days for obvious reasons but uh it seems like it's way more

evolved in europe they're more common they're more accepted from everything we hear they're just you know i don't know it's just it's just

further along the path more people are using them for not just mountain biking but especially just commuting and general

bikes and stuff yeah which is more popular in general in europe than it is in the us exactly so europe europe's got more

figured out and back to the trail thing i think also a concern

which i don't think it's a huge concern but maybe something to think about too is

uh could cause more trail collisions yeah that's true someone going uphill faster than you

would expect them to you going downhill on the same trail kind of hard to control so speaking of

that i just remembered one of the last times you and i rode which was a little while ago remember that that older guy on the

specialized on the e-bikes just was like blitzing uphill with his head down like

right around i mean we almost we almost decked each other because he was just and he wasn't i mean he was going way

faster than he would ever normally be able to go up the hill but he was also just blatantly not looking forward he was looking down um but

yeah it was funny yeah we didn't need each other but yeah i mean it was almost a collision and that was very much e-bike related yeah

so there's that to it as well but it'll it'll all get figured out europe has it figured out so

americans will come around yeah yeah yes at some point so i don't know but if any

of you want to you know feel the spice on the e-bike debate uh or have an opinion either way it's

it's also just entertaining to go i don't understand why people get so heated about things that are not that meaningful in the grand scheme

of life but that's just my personal philosophy but going to somewhere like pink bike and reading people banter back and forth

about e by kate is this can be comical but also just like hard to understand and wrap your head

around to me an e-bike is a great tool it's not going to replace my normal bike but it's cool to explore it's cool to get

more laps in at certain places yeah could get and also another cool thing is like i could go on a regular bike and my

dad could go on an e-bike yeah i mean we have staff that ride with their yeah with their fathers

in that same situation that are really happy about that exactly so people probably it gets more people on bikes in the end

of the day that's all better for the mountain bike community no matter who it is but on a bike's better yeah

but is it if they're fighting with each other it'll pass over yeah anyways so hopefully that was uh

brought some insight on on what's going on with with e-bikes to everyone listening and yeah why don't

we just jump right into talking about uh quick 101 if if you're more into podcasts than you are youtube

videos we produce a ton of youtube videos and we'll give you the quick synopsis 101 on some of our recent ones that we

Recent Worldwide Cyclery Video Recap

did since the last podcast that we recorded one of which was rear shock upgrades so it was

basically an entire guide of how to upgrade your rear shock where we talked about all the various

things you need to know like eye to eye and stroke and mounting hardware and weird fitment issues which

is a very much a real thing we even dove a little bit into some complexities around

suspension curves right being linear versus progressive and a coil versus air now sometimes it doesn't work

you run into many problems with that these days i think it's slightly getting less complicated but it also depends on

your bike yeah it definitely is still there it's not quite as uh apparent also with coils getting

better and better tunes as well as bikes kind of like being designed with a coil in mind almost

yeah that's true a lot of brands have started making their longer travel bikes and noted like hey this is

you know designed to work well with a coil or air shock which i don't think they had that on their mind a few years ago but once coil

shocks started gaining more traction they started thinking about oh this is a good pun coil shots with more traction um springing into

traction yeah so you know we covered everything on kind of what to look for how to measure

your bike and what you might want to upgrade as well as also a little bit of insight on like over

stroking and when you should or shouldn't do it yeah and then yeah coil-vis air

whether that's a linear suspension design or non-linear yep yeah i mean i think we went into

that video with the goal of trying to cover as much as possible without

making uh you know five part documentary on the whole topic because the the the end end all be all take away

when it comes to upgrading your rear shock is that it's unfortunately kind of complex it's just not simple

there's a lot of things to consider there's a lot of like weird compatibility and sizing things and then there's yeah like various other things of why

you'd want to upgrade what it's going to do does it matter there's a lot but we tried to cover all of it in that video

and i think the moral of the story is if you if you are desiring or craving a rear shock rear shock upgrade it can be an awesome

change to your bike like it can really breathe life into your bike in a very different way than you'd imagine but tread lightly do your research watch

our video watch other videos talk to people um just just educate yourself before you spend you

know what 300 to 1300 on a rear shock

yeah it's an expensive purchase so it's one to really dig into the other one we did was a uh just a

little product announcement about rockshox new fork the domain which you spent some plenty of

time riding that thing right so what is it yeah the domain is uh

the more entry-level version of the rockshox zeb which came out last year so it kinda is on a similar chassis um a

little bit less refined but still 38 mil uppers and it's just meant for that you know

160 171 80 ml fork um i think the domain will be specked on a lot of oe bikes more than

it is aftermarket fork but it is a cool option it's a long travel heavy-duty

enduro fork i've been kind of calling it a super enduro fork yeah you know yeah exactly so it's like

160 to 180 single crown fork with 38 mil stanchions i don't know something about that me to

me is like that's super or ultra or extra like yeah it is yeah it's a lot it's it's meant for uh some

heavy duty riding um yeah it has a motion control damper

uh air spring it's a i forgot what a retail for 4.99 or 5

15. something around there something around there 550 or 4.99 so for the price it is a pretty darn good

fork yeah you get a lot of performance packed into that it is also uh upgradable damper wise so you could

stick the same damper in a domain down the road uh that comes in a charger or that comes

in a zeb yeah so it'd be the charger 2.1 damper that comes in the zeb so uh could get a

nice fork and then down the road upgrade it to where it's almost inset yeah yeah that's cool so i mean some of the trade-offs

are obviously going to be weight right i mean anything in the mountain bike world when you go sort of down in price point you go up in weight

and down in features sometimes those features may or may not be useful to you sometimes

they are but yeah when you compare domain to zeb obviously domain is heavier and it lacks a little bit of features there

but it's also about half the price and if you're looking for that long travel 38 mil stanchion

beefy super enduro fork that has amazing performance and no flex um yeah the domain is

kind of dialed for that speaking of forks fox 2022 2022

yeah i don't i'm so confused on all the different brands and how they release product like a year in advance when it's

it's just it's just confusing i think fox announced this stuff in spring of 21 that's 2022 model

year yeah yeah that's what they did so that's where we're at besides the model year they dropped uh a

new fork so the new fox 34 is new in both the is it new or just

like heavily revised because it's still a 34 same model name yes but it's pretty like it's quite a bit

different it's quite a bit different it's pretty ground up redesigned i would say i'd say this is a new fox 34

only because they changed the lowers changed the uppers on a step cast it's much more

narrower stance they got the weight down a lot on the 34 step cast where it's actually

lighter than a rock shocks sid which was previously the lightest coming

in yeah 120 dedicated shots fired uh down country xc

plus whatever you'd want to call it category fork more than xc not quite metal trail bike

fork as well as they redid the normal 34 which is um again lighter stiffer as they claim

yeah better damper and this was all kind of predictable right because if you look at the 40 the

38 the 36 they all had that new front arch that like rounded arch and that like new lower leg design in

general and a few in like the crowns like it was all kind of predictable that like ah okay all these are doing that like obviously the 34 is

coming next and now it is here so if that's the fork you've been after um the latest and greatest one just came

out and it probably won't change for at least a few years now yeah those are sweet i mean

i'm definitely curious i've been riding the rock shock stuff on my revel ranger um

that basically the sid setup with the sid fork and shock and i love it i mean it's 115 mil travel bike

in the back 120 in the front i haven't ridden that like travel range of bike with fox suspension in a while

because i kind of felt like rock shock was just a little head of the game there but now i think fox is right there and maybe better maybe not i

don't know yeah i've been on bar sid stuff for a little over a year now since before it came out and then

previous though i was on sp 100 with fox front and rear that it worked really well um you know i

didn't have any complaints about it at that point so yeah if they made it lighter and it

works just as well or better you know yeah for context yeti sp 100 120 in the

front yeah it was 120 on the front 100 in the rear yeah so fox also with the new forks of the

2022 line has two new rear shocks the

float x which is kind of bringing back a shock that disappeared a couple years ago

yeah that's true and that's replacing uh the dpx2 which is their trail bike shock kind of

middle of line shock so the dpx2 is no longer dpx2 is no longer for my22

gotcha and then dude the new floatex looks rad like just the placement of the rebound and

compression knobs and like it just looks really good yeah it does look really good at making stuff look fancy and high-tech and quality

yeah it looks really sharp and also the uh video with our buddy elliott jackson ripping the new 34

and floatex shock was really awesome so you should go watch that because elliott is uh pretty stylish and fun to

watch a rider to watch yeah and then also another kind of shock that they brought

back in the lineup was the dhx so a full-blown coil full-blown

coil i couldn't say that and uh it's pretty much a less adjustable

version of the dhx2 which is their top of the line coil yeah so a little bit more affordable

coil shock yeah that yeah still has got all the fancy things from fox on

it yep which is also kind of geared at that heavy trail and duro market not quite the d8 shock it's uh

kind of more for that you know someone who wants a coil but doesn't necessarily want all this bulk and adjustment of the dhx2

yep that makes sense so yeah some new some new products you know slowly but surely coming in

this year which is cool um i guess the only other youtube video that that's uh been pretty cool that we made we spent a

lot of work on uh was bird spokes b-e-r-d uh we've talked about them on the podcast before because

we've been like testing them and playing with them and it's just a really interesting unusual product it's a spoke

that floats on water it's it's just not a steel spoke it's not aluminum spoke it's do you remember the name of it i'm going

to butcher it it's a polyurethane spoke pretty much uh made out of a

high tech they got an acronym they got enough time i couldn't even see that it's a uh bird spokes are made from an

advanced polymer called ultra high molecular weight polyethylene or for short uhmwpe

like that's an easy rolls right off the tongue yeah so we in the video we kind of went in depth on

everything about those spokes i mean they're unbelievably lighter than your traditional spoke unbelievably like what three times like

three hundred percent lighter per wheel or something like shaves she's roughly like a quarter pound per wheel yes right

it depends on what spoke it's specked with but anywhere from 100 to 200 grams per wheel yeah so yeah that's a lot of pounds almost up

to half a pound off a traditional spoke um and yeah i think they're really awesome

for the same kind of market we're just talking about the step cast and you know smaller travel bikes

like light trail bike or just trail bike and then definitely for xc bikes i mean absolutely if you if you're looking for

the lightest best performing wheel setup uh absolutely looking to bird there is a couple caveats of course you

know you gotta you gotta pay for this that's they're not they're not cheaper than steel spokes that's for sure we talked

about that and in the video and then some of the technology behind the things and then we tested them we all three of

us myself liam and jared all wrote those things and were quite impressed bird sells the spokes individually they

sell complete wheels with their own rims um yeah they're they're wild it's just a

weird thing to look at i mean one of the caveats too is the lacing process have you built have you built them yet

i'm currently in the process of building some for a buddy of mine yeah and it stands on a j-bend hub that

you're building those with yeah so you have to use like this little tool to like kind of gouge out the the flange of the actual

hub yeah so essentially you have to basically open up the the curve of where the spokes

gonna come out of of the hub shell so using uh basically a i mean a cutting

bit on all the spokes both both sides so it's 32 hole 64

times per hub on foot cutting bit then you use a grinding bit then you use a polishing bit so then

once you're done with the hub then you start lacing them and that also involves some other

uh basically building tools that you have to pull the spokes through it's quite a little process to do it

then you have to put the little bar in that holds the spokespeople has their own little youtube video showing yeah

and not that many people would ever really want to do that but it's also kind of cool to watch it be assembled yeah i

kind of just wanted to build them as well just to see what i'm up to and yeah if by chance we want to do it out

worldwide yeah i think once you get it down it's definitely still going to be about two times to

twice as long as a normal wheel building process i can i'm pretty fast at this point i can build lace true intentional wheel

about 40-45 minutes i think this is well gonna take me an hour and a half

once i get it down yeah yeah that's yeah yeah that's just it's intensive but you can save 100 to 200 grams per

wheel and if that's important to you then what's an extra two or three hours of your time to save a lot of weight

yeah and rotating weight yeah exactly i mean that was the other thing that i noticed right away was i mean it's it's rotational weight so that means when

you're actually pedaling and spinning up that's the most important weight to sort of shave off your bike that gives you

this notable acceleration and feeling difference and that's not just the it's weights just not the only claim bird makes the

other part is is all about you know damping and and just that like more it's just a different feel right

it's like instead of the vibration and everything running through a steel spoke it just doesn't do that it's kind of

like the difference between carbon and aluminum bars a little bit or carbon and aluminum frames like there's just different vibration

feeling to the whole thing that to me was a little harder to like wrap my head around on it was one of

those things that i'm like i think i i definitely think i feel it but i don't it's just hard

to like real like things like that are a little bit more i think i felt it but was that just my head thinking that i

mean i think i felt that i think i think those wheels performed and felt amazing but it's that that one's a little more like to me it

was also just like well i can immediately tell how much lighter they are like you pedaled two pedal strokes you're like whoa

that's noticeable the damping part i think is noticeable but yeah it's also hard

with we're testing with two four tires on a bike with suspension on something

that's not necessarily consistently rough terrain yeah like a rigid xc bike or

a gravel bike yeah that would be really cool to test these back to back because that's when you can really

you run a gravel bike on some rough terrain and it rattles your brain that's where any any advantage you can get when it comes to

damping vibration especially a consistent washboarded out fire yep with a gravel bike or even a

hard tail you know it's hard to pedal over that stuff in general so you get some vibration dampening you

get some comfort i think that's where you could feel it for me the weight is just insane on the bird spokes

and i'm a total fan yeah yeah me too i mean and this is funny because we'd how did

how does this all transpire we saw bird like just on instagram or something on our instagram post because we are doing

some weight winning stuff to your bike yeah that's right and then we're like whoa look at the i think you sent it to me on instagram you're like oh look at

these things and i was like whoa we should we should reach out to them and see if we can test them and then like they sent us a set of wheels we started testing

them and i was like dude we should sell these these are good these are really good and it was like we should make a video about these these

are interesting and and yeah now that's how that all transpired which which is pretty cool um yeah i mean i think the other thing

too like yes they are more expensive but you can buy complete wheel sets that come with a good carbon rim

and that's that's basically like comparably priced to any other carbon wheel it just happens to have these like

astronomically lighter spokes on there so yeah definitely important stuff carbon wheels are good value as well as you

don't have to uh lace them

yourself yeah yeah yeah just buy the complete wheels they're competitively priced and they come with industry nine hydra hubs so

if you're looking into them they make for mountain bikes to make xc22 and xc25

and a tr-27 so those are all those numbers are related to the internal rim width

so we tested tested the tr-27s which is a really great trail uh wheel and diameter

yeah it's the same thing i'm running on my bike now just the industry nine trail 270s right yeah yeah it's the same

internal width yeah yeah that makes sense for like two four and below tires yeah so that and uh i'd be pretty

curious to throw on some xc25s just to really get that weight down and roll it

on two three tire on my my xc bike and just see how fast those things are so

if you're listening bird yeah can we have some more wheels please

and now a word from our sponsors do you poop a lot do you ride bikes a

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then jrat's reusable toilet paper is for you our state of the art steel wool infused

toilet paper will leave you feeling clean and refreshed stock up now at jrat's reusable toilet paper

org and now back to the show

Customer Questions

listener questions we've got five of them and we're gonna blitz the room

uh number one actually so we posted on our worldwide secular instagram account little story

asking you guys for questions you can also send them into podcast worldwidecycler.com or whatever but anyways

a lot of people asked some variation of is 27.5 dying what do you think willie uh

was it alive oh that was a joke um i don't think it's dying i think it's

found its spot in the market as well as 29er has yeah um i think

it's definitely found a spot in that kind of jumping jibbing having fun section of bikes and i think

it just has a different feel it's a different type of yeah and i think 29ers been proven to kind of

be at least up front mullet set up whatever but is to be a faster yeah bike with more traction so i guess

the question though is like 27.5 will die if people just continuously don't purchase

that like oh the bikes that are 27.5 or the tires that are like if everyone just somehow goes through 29 like then brands

will just stop making it i mean same thing with 26 like maxis doesn't make a lot of their popular good mountain bike tires yeah

26 inches anymore because like they're just not 26 complex and part of that was from brands just not making 26 bikes anymore yeah so yeah

like all the tires connects to each other bike brand stops making it because people aren't buying

it then another one does it then the tire brands start making the tires the rims stop being produced so if this is any indication i think there

are both fox 38s and rockshox zeb forks in stock on our website that are for

27.5 and 29ers are three to 10 months out lead time yeah so

maybe that's an indication of where 27.5 is at as well yeah i don't it is tough to say i mean

right now i don't think it's dying anytime soon but i i could see it being like the headphone jack on cell phones

like slowly but surely somebody's just like you know what we don't need the headphone jack and then apple's like

boom no headphone jack and then it's like oh dude like what if what if let's theorize what if next year

trekhand specialized two of the biggest brands just don't make any 275 bucks at all like they're just like nope what

would happen yeah a lot of other brands would follow suit i know check it out be like dude if they didn't do it we're

not doing it i almost want to look and see if specialized even has any 27.5

pipes right the longest time they didn't yeah but but then they did but now the newest models i think might all be two

nine yeah um yeah it'd be interesting

it will okay next question internal cable noise is it normal um

um is it normal well here's here's my thought on that there's some frames don't have

tubes yeah so if it's not tubing tube yeah so uh some frames have tubes little they're

like gas lines basically that connect the two holes into the frame and then boom it gets rid

of the internal cable noise entirely sometimes uh some you're right there is on the odd case that even those tubes

still can make noise correct but if your frame doesn't have those tubes oh you're getting a lot of noise no matter what end of story

there's ways you can go around it though i personally cannot stand any of that and before a lot of the

bikes i rode had those tubes in there i was getting all that noise and liam well knows because he's the one who

works on my bikes most time i was we were like stuffing foam like you'd pull the bottom bracket out and like

jam foam up into the down tube and then do the same thing through the through the top of the down tube at

through the head tube and yeah i mean that noise is normal but you can stop it with foam yeah it's a

hassle and yeah there's also uh some foam tubes i think you can probably get them in like home depot on the electrical section

that you could actually basically route your cables through and stuff that into your tubes as well if you if you have basically what's up

an open internal cable routing frame yep there are some tube and two bikes that make some noise

uh you could try wrapping a little bit pull the cable out wrap a little bit of electrical tape around that stuff it back in so it kind

of holds its spot in that tube as well as uh sometimes a little rubber grommet at the top will just help it

from rattling around yeah from like sliding up and down and making that noise yeah so yeah it is it's kind of normal but

yeah it's less common now that more bikes are running those little tubes inside of the actual frame tubes

but it is fixable with those little tactics uh next question should heavy riders ride longer travel

bikes broad answer no i don't think they should ride

longer travel bikes um i think if you are a heavier rider

you might not want to ride a lightweight xc bike because it's just going to not be designed for you i think there's some

bikes that are shorter travel yet designed for abuse and riding really

hard which will also translate to a heavier rider having a good ride on a shorter travel bike

something like the evil following yeah yeah that makes sense i don't know

i'm trying to it's a touchy question i mean pardon part of me is like i don't really

care how big you are buy a bike that makes the most sense for what you ride

the most often but you're right there's like different bikes for different things and yeah i mean the if you're trying to be a

weight weaning ride an xc bike and you're a you know 220 pound plus rider you'll probably notice more

flex yeah and just lack of durability yeah yeah yeah which then might lead you to be like

well i'd have more fun and a better ride and better durability on a more stout bike that's kind of just

like even made for gnarlier riding um yeah i don't know but yeah no i mean

it's not like it's not like oh if you're heavy rider longer travel bike but yeah get what suits your preferences

i mean if you're a larger rider and you're concerned about i don't know just like general durability or flex or

whatever then yeah get a more more bike of a kind um that doesn't mean that like

yeah i don't know you can't ride a short travel bike yeah exactly like using the right tool for the job yeah

exactly so and for your preference and for your preference yeah definitely okay when will companies

restock so if yeah i mean everyone kind of knows this this whole shenanigans that's going on now you know

last year in 2020 when the pandemic hit basically all of the factories that make anything bike related shut down for

about three months and then they all came back to some crazy demand because the whole world decided they wanted to ride bikes of all

kinds and buy bikes of all kinds and all the parts of all kinds and um every factory it's it's hard goods so

every brand is well aware there is really really high consumer demand for everything they make in the bicycle

industry at large and of course when there's heightened demand they want to make product and have product to sell so

they can you know put food on the table not as easy as it might seem because there's only so many factories that

make everything and again it's hard goods you can't just make it out of thin air you need machines and raw materials

and things need to be shipped around and there's a lot of shenanigans going on i think i think maybe a question would

be like when will stock levels of various things normalize and just kind of be like they were in 2019 and before

that's plausible in the summer time of 2022 but probably

maybe fall of 2022 and on the pessimistic side maybe 2023 to be honest from like what i understand in

the industry right now yeah it's it's not necessarily looking great

currently um it's just they just can't keep up the factories

with how much demand there is so there's just so many demands on such sort of i don't know you could say

a few such a limited number of actual physical factors making these products and then

there's all these other logistical challenges involved like the raw materials and the supply chain and yeah it is a bummer i mean

even for us at worldwide as a as a retailer we have so much less available inventory this

year at the same time as we did last year and you can imagine that directly translates to our sales and it's just

tough to like a secure product to sell and have product to sell and like nobody wants to be out of stock yeah so everyone including retailers and

brands are just like scrambling to get more products i could tell you every brand i talk to

is actively working on getting more products as soon as they can yeah stemming from ceos who

don't do this or owners who don't normally go in the supply chain era or arena

are currently trying to tackle this problem so yep it's at the top of their list yeah

absolutely it sure is it'll be solved one day one day not very soon though but one day uh best mountain

bike seat we actually made an entire youtube video on mountain bike saddles and i'm pretty

proud of it i think that was a pretty thorough video we covered a lot of the common saddles from like the most popular brands

like ergon and wtb and we copied we covered some like other like

less common brands for saddles and then we also we also broke it down into like

how much does it matter depending on how much you ride right i mean if you're a if you only ride you know one hour

stints or less a couple times a week you're probably not super concerned with the saddle unless you have a lot of

sensitive areas if you ride like 10 plus hours a week it's a big deal like you used to write a lot of road and

xc and like saddles mattered a lot to you and yeah definitely um yeah back when i was you know riding a

lot uh you know an average week was 12 13 14 hours saddle i i went through a couple saddles

before i found what i liked and everyone's different i personally liked no

relief or no cut out on my saddle it actually gave me more pressure points than it didn't and i that's me personally other people cannot

ride a saddle without a relief or cutout yeah that that's that's the funny thing about like best mountain bike seat it's like

well there's not a best mountain bike anything especially seats that's like the last thing that would be a better

personal preference and even yes everyone had the same shaped butt ox and areas things down there yeah

this is the best seat i think it depends on how much you ride the style of riding you do

xc you're in the saddle way more you're seated longer [Music]

mount enduro riding you know you're not usually in the saddle that much and if you are

it's just to get to the top to right downhill yep so i think that matters i think how often you ride matters

um and also whether you're a chamois or chamois writer yeah also matters as well

so personal preference check out our youtube video yeah we actually so so we we started that video with like we

try to do all these videos try and keep it high level and easy to digest and understand and demystify the topic as simply and

concisely as we can and then as we get further into the video we get more intricate go down the rabbit hole

even more and we actually brought in into that video jonathan lee who's the former uh one of the co-hosts of this mtv

podcast he used to run this thing he's an amazing resource when it comes to uh bike

knowledge and and we use them all the time because of everyone you know we know that are friends of ours like the dude just puts

in the most amount of miles and he rides a lot of road too which is kind of uncommon like usually people are just mountbikers or

road riders and jonathan does a lot of both so we had him give a whole spiel and

explanation on like if you actually ride like 10 plus 20 plus hours a week like how you should analyze like what saddle you

need what's really important how you can test them and so yeah if you really are riding a lot or you have

you know sensitivity and you're having trouble finding one that's comfortable he really breaks it down in that sense

um because it's not as common for mountain bikers road it's like super common you're sitting in that thing for hours yeah it is no matter

what you're doing it's hard on road but yeah mountain biking is less common for people to really be nitpicky on seats yeah i think when i worked at a

road shop uh our saddle demo program was probably one of the most common things i did yeah

yeah was just coming in and swapping out swapping out saddles swapping out saddles trying to find the right one

um and so i've never had a saddle dental program in 10 years of worldwide cyclery as a mountain bike shop yeah it's just

yeah it just depends on your needs so yeah well there you go there's your answer and that concludes episode 82 of the

mountain bike podcast thank you very much for listening uh please rate and review us wherever you

get your podcasts i learned how to say that from listening to the wall street journal podcast each morning and i don't know any last words liam uh

keep riding bikes keep having fun keep having fun we love you bye

peace play sound effect dj pineapple

May 14, 2021

MTB Podcast › Video ›

Mysterious Shimano Patents, E Bike Haters & Lovers, Rear Shock Upgrades...MTB Podcast Episode 82 [Podcast]

Overview

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

May 14, 2021

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