[SebringMGB]

Something thats annoyed me for a while, why do companies advertise 170mm bikes and forks as 7 inches? seem like although metric may be the industry standard, the bikes have large markets in the states, which is standard. why not either advertise it as a 6 3/4" (which is still stretching it, or design in 10 more mm, and call it 180, 7 inch (even though its a little more, but god, we wouldnt want the customer to feel like we actually gave them something extra ) im not mad at them, nor does it bother me a whole lot. It just seems a bit cheap. It would be like someone selling a car, and saying it had 175hp, but it actually had 165. not a big deal, but why say 175?

 

[Toshi]

my bike has almost 7"* of travel

(* 0" actually. that's almost 7"!)

 

[zedro]

Originally posted by SebringMGB
Something thats annoyed me for a while, why do companies advertise 170mm bikes and forks as 7 inches?

umm, they dont, but we do and everyone adopts it. I remember how people used to complain that the SuperT wasent actually 7" and that somehow Marzocchi was scamming them, even though there is no mention of anything else but a 170mm length in all their documents.

 

[Tully]

"Travel fudging" is one of those little things that kinda bug me, but really aren't worth fussing about. Yeah, it'd be niced if they said that 170mm have 6.6" or whatever of travel, but they probably fear that they would lose customers, as 7" seems to be the magic number for DH forks, both in riding and in marketing. On the other hand, I know I couldn't tell the difference between two similar-feeling DH forks that vary in travel by 1/3". I apologize for hijacking the thread here, but what I think is more annoying than travel fudging is weight fudging, i.e. when you see an ad that claims that a Sherman Breakout Plus weighs 5.5 lbs, and a Sherman Firefly weighs 4.2 lbs. Obviously, you needn't be tricked by that if you have some common sense and basic knowledge of cycling products, but it is a pain to sort through, and it's very misleading to people who are new to the sport.

 

[The Kadvang]

Agreed. When you get one weight from the manufacturer, three different ones from online shops, and yet another from your scale, it is a little bit ridiculous. Weightweenies.com is generally accurate, but it doesn't have much DH/FR stuff.