A few years ago 140mm bikes were the hot new thing. People gravitated towards these new bikes because on paper they were perfect, approaching downhill-worthy travel within the realm of cross country-capable weight. Seems perfect...on paper. Most of these bikes were existing 100-120mm platforms tweaked to get a bit more travel, think BlurXC v. BlurLT. Sounds great, right? In theory, yes. but in reality what you end up with is a top-heavy XC bike that neither descends nor climbs particularly well. Great for 'joe mountainbiker' who's been riding forever but seldom rides outside his comfort zone. For those times when he makes a bad line choice, the extra 20mm of travel might save the day but the rest of the time he's stuck with a noodly bike with too-tall a bottom bracket and sketchy XC geometry.
What if you're not 'joe mountainbiker' and you're more of a 'joe vet class ex DH pinner'? You just go for one of the MANY 160mm bikes, you know, the Nomads, Enduros and the like. Shifted even more towards DH performance but still 'capable' (such a broad-spectrum word, capable) of climbing. These bikes tend to have slightly better geometry and somewhat stiffer/burlier construction yet they still leave a lot to be desired for 'JVCEDHP' types.
My point is everybody seems to get hung up on certain figures, like travel numbers for example. 140mm was hot, anything with 140mm must be a great bike. Then everyone had to have 160mm. Well as it stands I think a lot of us are still not satisfied with the current crop of do-it-all bikes and yearn for something more...but not something with more travel. Instead of fixating on travel, I wish manufacturers would focus more on other, more pertinent things like geometry, construction, suspension design. All of which are MUCH more important. The bike I want to see on the market right now is more of a 160-20mm, as opposed to a 120+20mm. Heck maybe even a 180-40mm. I want a bike with somewhere around 5" of quality suspension, a fairly slack head angle (66-67*), a NICE LOW bottom bracket and decently sturdy build. Remember people, the more travel a bike has, the higher the BB HAS to be. Most of us would probably be better served in the handling dept by lower bottom brackets than more travel. I'm picking 5" as the magic number, although I remember a quote from Kirt Voreis back in one of Matt Collins' videos where he said something along the lines of there's not much you can't do on a good 4&4" bike. At the time Kirt was slaying various terrain on an Intense Tazer slalom bike. Considering not everyone has Kirt Voreis-like abilities, I'm saying 5-5.5" is probably about right for the average technically capable rider.
I've been looking for a frame that fits this bill for sometime now without much luck. In the past I've been known to run a 1" longer fork on a bike (to slacken the head angle) with pretty good results, so this is something I'm willing to consider doing again if need be. But there are some promising new bikes on the horizon such as the forthcoming Evil Sect that could be just about perfect as-is. Problem is I need a bike to ride between now and next season when that bike (and hopefully many others) become available. Anybody else in the same boat as me that's found the holy grail? I've searched and come up dry so any feedback is appreciated.
here are some of the bikes I've considered but am not 100% sold on.
Giant TranceX w/150mm fork (to slacken)
Corsair Marque (140-150mm fork)
BLT2 w/160mm fork (not too stoked on VPP2 tho)
Specialized SX w/140mm fork
2010 Stumpy w/150mm fork
discuss...
What if you're not 'joe mountainbiker' and you're more of a 'joe vet class ex DH pinner'? You just go for one of the MANY 160mm bikes, you know, the Nomads, Enduros and the like. Shifted even more towards DH performance but still 'capable' (such a broad-spectrum word, capable) of climbing. These bikes tend to have slightly better geometry and somewhat stiffer/burlier construction yet they still leave a lot to be desired for 'JVCEDHP' types.
My point is everybody seems to get hung up on certain figures, like travel numbers for example. 140mm was hot, anything with 140mm must be a great bike. Then everyone had to have 160mm. Well as it stands I think a lot of us are still not satisfied with the current crop of do-it-all bikes and yearn for something more...but not something with more travel. Instead of fixating on travel, I wish manufacturers would focus more on other, more pertinent things like geometry, construction, suspension design. All of which are MUCH more important. The bike I want to see on the market right now is more of a 160-20mm, as opposed to a 120+20mm. Heck maybe even a 180-40mm. I want a bike with somewhere around 5" of quality suspension, a fairly slack head angle (66-67*), a NICE LOW bottom bracket and decently sturdy build. Remember people, the more travel a bike has, the higher the BB HAS to be. Most of us would probably be better served in the handling dept by lower bottom brackets than more travel. I'm picking 5" as the magic number, although I remember a quote from Kirt Voreis back in one of Matt Collins' videos where he said something along the lines of there's not much you can't do on a good 4&4" bike. At the time Kirt was slaying various terrain on an Intense Tazer slalom bike. Considering not everyone has Kirt Voreis-like abilities, I'm saying 5-5.5" is probably about right for the average technically capable rider.
I've been looking for a frame that fits this bill for sometime now without much luck. In the past I've been known to run a 1" longer fork on a bike (to slacken the head angle) with pretty good results, so this is something I'm willing to consider doing again if need be. But there are some promising new bikes on the horizon such as the forthcoming Evil Sect that could be just about perfect as-is. Problem is I need a bike to ride between now and next season when that bike (and hopefully many others) become available. Anybody else in the same boat as me that's found the holy grail? I've searched and come up dry so any feedback is appreciated.
here are some of the bikes I've considered but am not 100% sold on.
Giant TranceX w/150mm fork (to slacken)
Corsair Marque (140-150mm fork)
BLT2 w/160mm fork (not too stoked on VPP2 tho)
Specialized SX w/140mm fork
2010 Stumpy w/150mm fork
discuss...