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Guerrilla Gravity, badass frame manufacturer in Colorado

trib

not worthy of a Rux.
Jun 22, 2009
1,483
423
How do you guys feel about the Vital review @mtg?

It seems like they love how fun the bike is, with the stiff tune and aggressive stance, but would you say their reservations have merit?

I'm not in the market for a new bike, so don't feel you have to waste your time replying if this question has irked you/doesn't warrant reply. I am a fan of hearing from makers and getting both sides of the story though and would love to hear whether you agree with the review or not.

Congrats on the 4 stars and looking forward to seeing how GG progresses. A million thanks for not relentlessly spamming this forum and trash talking us folk when we ask dumb questions.
 

velocipedist

Lubrication Sensei
Jul 11, 2006
559
702
Rainbow City Alabama
New bike day cares not if kids gave you the flu..



Which made me happy to


The bone collector seemed an appropriate inaugural outing.


Bicycles are fun, gravity mode is rowdy™, and this is a sweet bike made by cool people. :clapping:
 

mtg

Green with Envy
Sep 21, 2009
1,862
1,604
Denver, CO
@trib We're glad Vital took the time to actually set the bike up and ride it, and the review reflects it. They are among the more ackowledgeable reviewers, and it shows. As far as criticisms, they are certainly entitled to their opinions, and I'm naturally going to be biased, but any of their criticisms seemed to be a bit of a reach from my opinion. I also feel that we don't get enough attention in those reviews for things such as usable water bottle mounts, and an on board flat tire repair kit. That's just simply more convenient/less crap to carry in a pack and the reviews seem to gloss right over it.
As far as geometry goes, our opinion is that the steep actual seat tube angle with long reach, and short chainstays is simply better than traditional slacker actual seat tube angles with shorter reach. Any time we've ridden bikes with shorter length and slacker actual seat tube angles, they simply do not climb as well, and do not have the same descending confidence. And, suspension wise, whenever we ride something that tends to use all of the travel on smaller hits, sure it feels nice when you have the rad knob on 5, but they feel like the bike is running out of gas when the speeds pick up.
All that being said, we take all of the feedback into product development, which is how we ended up with all of the badass refinements on the second generation Megatrail. Any criticisms ultimately make our bikes better, whether or not I'm stoked to hear them.
 

Sandwich

Pig my fish!
Staff member
May 23, 2002
21,088
6,024
borcester rhymes
It's a good bike. I now have a couple of boost wheelsets in 29 and b+ from another bike. Being able to swap wouldn't be so terrible. Plus, GG are hella bros.
 

mtg

Green with Envy
Sep 21, 2009
1,862
1,604
Denver, CO
@Sandwich we tried trade ins a couple years ago, but stopped doing it because we had to low ball people pretty bad to make it work. It just wasn't a good deal for you. My recommendation would be to put it for sale online and price it to move and it'll get snatched up.
 

Sandwich

Pig my fish!
Staff member
May 23, 2002
21,088
6,024
borcester rhymes
Oh I know, there's no way you could make trade-ins work. I don't really have the fundage right now for a new ride, otherwise I would certainly consider selling the old bike for the new...but really, the evil is dialed and I don't ride enough to justify the expense.

Still, a pistola in sparkle blue with white lettering would be pretty slick.
 

mtg

Green with Envy
Sep 21, 2009
1,862
1,604
Denver, CO
Oh I know, there's no way you could make trade-ins work. I don't really have the fundage right now for a new ride, otherwise I would certainly consider selling the old bike for the new...but really, the evil is dialed and I don't ride enough to justify the expense.

Still, a pistola in sparkle blue with white lettering would be pretty slick.
Pistola in F yeah blue with white decals is exactly my bike. And you're getting me off the coil shock :)
 

mtg

Green with Envy
Sep 21, 2009
1,862
1,604
Denver, CO
You GG guys gonna do a Deer Crik demo day? You should... you know. Like maybe in April-ish.
We are doing more local demo days this year, as well as more demo tours, and less of the festivals.
Go to RideGG.com -> Community -> Events and keep an eye on the schedule.

Since you're local, you can also come by the shop anytime and take out a demo and ride wherever you want.
 

jackalope

Mental acuity - 1%
Jan 9, 2004
7,616
5,939
in a single wide, cooking meth...
When your frame snaps before your fork, before your wheel bends or anything else even thinks about breaking you know there's a problem.
For real. I don't ever recall seeing a frame failure like this before. I had to re-watch it to notice the steerer tube just peels through the head tube, as originally I just thought the head tube popped off - which while still less than ideal given the fairly innocuous size of the jump, isn't completely improbable.

Maybe he can fix it with some cement tape.
 

velocipedist

Lubrication Sensei
Jul 11, 2006
559
702
Rainbow City Alabama
Awesome bike! - just curious you know what it weighs?
32.25#


will drop a little (220ish grams) when I shod it with proper pedals. Pondering a normal size wheelset for the summer .. like a transformer playing with gravity mode + wheels.
Amazing to ride coming off archaic 26in '13 bandit, this bike feels like my gen 1 zerode chugged robitussin while snapping into a slim jim. Super stiff stable platform for hauling ass. The bike you feel bad for not riding.

which reminds me too.
 

velocipedist

Lubrication Sensei
Jul 11, 2006
559
702
Rainbow City Alabama
which reminds me to ride


Where to apatosaurus, sir?




while the yellow brick road was a fine trail party indeed, the sucessful projectile sandstone resistance demonstrated with ease an e13 46 tooths plastic deformation. After some trailside straightening/"strengthening" silent shifting heaven returned.

Curious if a gx cassette is burly/less priceyesh....

ahhh soo much funz.
 
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lobsterCT

Monkey
Jun 23, 2015
278
414
I hear ya, but I suspect we'll soon be at a point where banging on boost will be about like me complaining about not having 26" options. Remember, the Lizdustry is all-powerful.

However, @lobsterCT made a neat little work around the boost issue on his wife's GG/DH -
http://ridemonkey.bikemag.com/threads/guerrilla-gravity-badass-frame-manufacturer-in-colorado.251038/page-45

Not sure about chain line issues with a 73 mm bb shell versus the 83 mm on the GG/DH, but a pretty neat solution imo.

Thanks Jackalope for your kind words. I had to use 5 big shims and 5 little shims to get the raceface chainring to sit at the 50MM position on the 83 bb saint cranks. I believe they run stock with a 57.4 MM chainline if memory serves. I also had to mount the bashguard on the port side of the ISCG mounts. There is a small (like 3 mm) gap between the chain and the swingarm when she's in the big cog in the back. Hasn't been an issue with the NW and clutch derr. I forget if the old standard is 71 or 73 for BB. Assuming 73 is the old standard you would be good to go for chainline without special consideration. If that assumption is wrong, it would still be easier to correct than on the 83 bb.

*If the rear is offset boost, rather than boost, the above solution would not be applicable.
 

Attachments

mtg

Green with Envy
Sep 21, 2009
1,862
1,604
Denver, CO
I built a new Megatrail for Mrs. MTG right before heading down to Sedona. She found another kickass color, this one is a one off custom called Purple Haze. The brake hoses were cut down after this picture was taken.

20170302_145638.jpg
 

mtg

Green with Envy
Sep 21, 2009
1,862
1,604
Denver, CO
I just looked through all of my pics since we've bought the bus, and apparently haven't taken any pics of the inside.
 

SuboptimusPrime

Turbo Monkey
Aug 18, 2005
1,659
1,636
NorCack
So the elephant in the room: @mtg, to what extent has the 'Monkey with it's deep collective wisdom and wealth of validated cycling related engineering, technical and marketing experience contributed to the early success of GG?
 

jonKranked

Detective Dookie
Nov 10, 2005
86,048
24,575
media blackout
dear GG / @mtg

super stoked to see how successful you guys are. keep it up. you guys are definitely on the top of my list next time i'm in the market for a bike (which will admittedly be a while, seeing as how i'm having my second kid this summer).