[Cloxxki]

Where MTBR fans are into steel, singlespeeds, rigid forks, and that sort of thing, Ridemonkey posters are probaly just a bit different kind of crowd.

What kind of 29"er would Ridemonkey posters rush to the LBS to order?

-Simple but beefy (alu?) hardtail that is not light, but can handle a bit more fun than your basic dull XC hardtail
-A 5" shock hardtail to rip the downhills but also enjoy the flats
-Pure DH with 6x6" to start with
-Commute-specific 29"er that will also handle tame trails on the detour home

Or is it really that carbon Orbea you're lusting for?

I'd also be interested to hear opinions from riders currently not into XC too much. What would convince you to get a 29" bike for XC, or what type of 29" would you consider for more adventurous riding?

Thanks for your ideas!

Happy trails,

J

 

[MMcG]

I wouldn't mind trying something like an Inbred 456, but built for 29" wheels.

Sort of an All Mountain Hardtail that could utilize an adjustable travel front fork (so you could run it at 3,4, or 5 inches of travel)I think that would be a kickass ride for the trails we have around here.

I'm thinkinking this could be accomplished with some tweaking of a frame like an Evil DOC or an Evil Sovereign (PowersUSA almost got a 29er wheel to fit during his experiement with a Sovereign).

I also think Wolfhound is building frames like this - but they are super expensive and not for the masses so to speak.

So yeah a nice steel do it all hardtail would really be a winner for me.

For XC - I guess I'd want a Scandium hardtail with light components on it and I guess Reba Race with poploc.

For Endurance type events - perhaps a light full suspension bike to complement a hardtail so that you could pick one or the other depending on terrain and how your body was feeling. I guess that new Fisher bike would do the job if it wasn't so f'ugly (at least the production version looks ugly) - weird how the prototypes look nicer than what they show on the web site.

If I get back on my feet financially, I could see how my karate monkey could serve as a sort of do it all type 29er for me - commutning to work on it and then hitting the trails just down the road from my office on it and then riding back home.

But right now I'm poorer than dirt, so the Monkey will have to serve as my sole 29er for now and more than likely the next few years.

 

[BikeGeek]

Steel singlespeed with a rigid fork.

 

[ito]

Steel singlespeed with a rigid fork.

The Ito

 

[peter6061]

Steel singlespeed with a rigid fork.

Yup...

 

[Radarr]

I'd get one that had 36" wheels. And an Al frame that was built for 36" wheels.

 

[moff_quigley]

5X5 full susser with Fox shocks at both ends...hey it could happen.

 

[Bicyclist]

I would love to see a push towards all-mountain 5-6" full suspensions but I'm about to buy a rigid steel SS (Redline).

Realistically I wouldn't buy an AM 29er for a while until it was good and they had stronger wheels.

 

[Radarr]

I'd get one that had 36" wheels. And an Al frame that was built for 36" wheels.

Hahaha, I got sniped!

I actually like 29ers, I just can't afford one. Thus, I don't like them.

 

[Cloxxki]

36" is SO going to happen, and do SO well on trails where people would not expect it! And I want my piece of it. But if you think 29" already has some resistance to overcome...

Long travel hardtail :
If someone would make a strong hardtail frame with lowish BB and 72/73 angles at 80mm travel, it would have good BB height and 70/71 angles at 120mm. Just right.
A weld-on wrap-around gusset for the top/downtube intersection on any current 4130 hardtail should do the trick?

 

[NoLongerGumby]

I want an AM bike I can rip drops on over 7" repeatedly and it holds up. I think an enduro or nomad style bike would be sweet.
I would be fine with the high 30's for weight.
It will happen one day...

 

[Mike B.]

5x5 DW Link with a Fox 36 style fork. 110x20mm front and 150 rear with 2 rings and a bash guard (DRS). If the frame weight is kept in check, I would see mid to low 30s being quite possible and a heck of lot of fun.

 

[Cloxxki]

Funny, many seem to like 5x5" with a Fox fork, and Devin Lenz is riding just that! Thanks to a self-build eccentric front hub so the Fox fits...

 

[Mike B.]

Funny, many seem to like 5x5" with a Fox fork, and Devin Lenz is riding just that! Thanks to a self-build eccentric front hub so the Fox fits...

I will NEVER buy a Lenz! I rode two different 26" models at Interbike 2? years ago now that were being used to demo Avid Juicy brakes (ie. were not under the watchful eyes of Lenz). I don't ride the normal test loop at Bootleg since I know my way around and with about an hour on each one, I can say we did not get along. I didn't care for the suspension design or the amount of noise resonating through the frames, squeaky pivots and all. One of my pet peeves as well, cable routing was not to my liking. Nothing against Devin or the people that like the bikes, but I'm sure we've all been there when the bike just did not 'fit'.

 

[MMcG]

5X5 full susser with Fox shocks at both ends...hey it could happen.

I randomly clicked to this thread and saw this post and realized - we are not too far off from having this happen.

Perhaps in a year or two for a 5" travel Fox 29er fork? Whattya think?

 

[MMcG]

5x5 DW Link with a Fox 36 style fork. 110x20mm front and 150 rear with 2 rings and a bash guard (DRS). If the frame weight is kept in check, I would see mid to low 30s being quite possible and a heck of lot of fun.

How about something like this from Pivot Bikes in the Future?? Could happen.

 

[SuspectDevice]

For me personally, the only "29er" I could ever see building for myself would be a non-suspension corrected marathon XC bike built around Edge Composites 29er tubular rims and Dugast 45c Rhino XL's...

Until this stupid war is over and the price of Ti goes down I'm probably going to have to settle for Columbus/Easton aluminum and a straight gauge downtube...

Wheel weight and fit issues have kept me off 29er's... Throwing time and money at the problem will probably yield a solution, but unfortunately I think a lot of customers would demand a suspension fork, even though I see very limited merits in their use for big wheels.

If terrain is rough enough to warrant suspension, I'd rather be on 26" or 650b wheels, as if I want front suspension, I'll want rear suspension as well, and there is no good way to build 700c offroad FS bikes that do things I find important, like fit 2 waterbottles...

 

[SuspectDevice]

Oh yeah, and I'd also like a good 45-50mm filetread with sideknobs tubular that doesn't have Tufo's crappy rubber or weigh 500+grams.

Would be an awesome tire for a lot of New England's muddy spring XC races, and the vast majority of fast hardpack races I do in the Southeast...

 

[Guitar Ted]

Hmm.....Lunchbox! It isn't a DW link design, but I'm not sold on that platform for long travel bikes. It has a White Brothers 5" travel fork, (if ya want one) and it is as smooth as butter. Oh yeah.....weighed 32lbs as I rode it.

The new Niner coming out with 6 inches rear travel has that design that MMcG claims is a Balfa sorta thing. Should be a great riding rig. But again, lots o pivotage!

All ya need is that long travel Fox Shox, huh? I'm betting Rock Shox beats 'em to the punch though.

 

[MMcG]

Hmm.....Lunchbox! It isn't a DW link design, but I'm not sold on that platform for long travel bikes. It has a White Brothers 5" travel fork, (if ya want one) and it is as smooth as butter. Oh yeah.....weighed 32lbs as I rode it.

Why wouldn't a dw-link or Maestro or whatever you want to label it not be a good platform for long travel? What would be better?

As for someone beating Fox to the punch - a 29er Pike has been in high demand for years now - so it sure would be cool for RS to respond with one.

 

[Mike B.]

How about something like this from Pivot Bikes in the Future?? Could happen.

I was talking with the Pivot guys at Interbike and commented that the bikes looked great, love the DW Link, etc but the wheel size was all wrong for me. They told me to wait til spring for whatever that's worth. My guess would be the Mach 4 with 29s.

 

[Mike B.]

Wheel weight and fit issues have kept me off 29er's... Throwing time and money at the problem will probably yield a solution, but unfortunately I think a lot of customers would demand a suspension fork, even though I see very limited merits in their use for big wheels.

What would you consider a reasonable wheel weight?

Oh yeah, and I'd also like a good 45-50mm filetread with sideknobs tubular that doesn't have Tufo's crappy rubber or weigh 500+grams.

Would be an awesome tire for a lot of New England's muddy spring XC races, and the vast majority of fast hardpack races I do in the Southeast...

How about a tubeless ready tire, 50mm wide, semi-slick with a regular side knob and dual compound rubber? Not quite a file tread but plenty fast and hooks up nicely at low pressures in the conditions you describe. 500 grams is very doable.

 

[Mike B.]

Hmm.....Lunchbox! It isn't a DW link design, but I'm not sold on that platform for long travel bikes. It has a White Brothers 5" travel fork, (if ya want one) and it is as smooth as butter. Oh yeah.....weighed 32lbs as I rode it.

GT if this is in response the MMcG's quote of my 5x5 request you probably missed my earlier post about my dislike for the Lenz bikes. I've talked to Devin and he's always been great, I like the handcrafted nature of the bikes, but they aren't for me.

Have you spent much time on a DW link bike? My 7point was the best riding "big bike" I've ever had and I've had a few. From the downhill side, DW bikes have dominated for the last couple of years at the hands of some very gifted riders (Hill & Jonnier) and while it's about the rider not the bike I have to think the long travel DW has not been a hindrance.

 

[Toddre]

For me, a reasonably light, reasonably priced, reasonably durable steel, GEARED ONLY hardtail..no ebb's, sliding stuff or anything like that...
It will be here soon

 

[MMcG]

I was talking with the Pivot guys at Interbike and commented that the bikes looked great, love the DW Link, etc but the wheel size was all wrong for me. They told me to wait til spring for whatever that's worth. My guess would be the Mach 4 with 29s.

Mach 4 29er with as short as possible chainstays would be money!

 

[Toddre]

I'm so tired of FS bikes these days, too many pivots, dials, set ups, levers,etc.
I like the fact i can get on a hardtail and ride, the new crop of FS are just too complicated to set up and if you're off by a few psi for instance, the bike can totally ride like crap

 

[MMcG]

For me, a reasonably light, reasonably priced, reasonably durable steel, GEARED ONLY hardtail..no ebb's, sliding stuff or anything like that...
It will be here soon

What color will they be??

 

[Toddre]

What color will they be??

They? LOL Boy you have alot of faith in me...lol

 

[SuspectDevice]

What would you consider a reasonable wheel weight?



How about a tubeless ready tire, 50mm wide, semi-slick with a regular side knob and dual compound rubber? Not quite a file tread but plenty fast and hooks up nicely at low pressures in the conditions you describe. 500 grams is very doable.

For me, and I know this is silly, but 1300 grams or less is a requirement for a race wheelset, not matter what size tire it fits.
'08 is going to be the season when 26" wheelsets in the sub-1000gram range are going to become available, so adding a few hundred grams for the extra diameter is pretty reasonable, in my opinion.

I personally want a file tread because it get's better climbing traction than a works better in more types of mud than a semi-knob tire, at least in my experience. As I'm sure you're aware, there is a very delicate balance between pressure/contact patch/compound and tread design, and I've always found a clearer "curve" to work with with a full file tread. I horde the old Michelin Sprints, for instance... Wider spaced low knob tires, like the one I'm assuming you are referencing, work really, really well in loam for me, and at the low pressures tubeless or tubular tires allow work really well in other conditons as well. But this thread is about what we want not what is out there, right?

 

[ferday]

Wheel weight and fit issues have kept me off 29er's... Throwing time and money at the problem will probably yield a solution, but unfortunately I think a lot of customers would demand a suspension fork, even though I see very limited merits in their use for big wheels.

my salsa delgado race are less than 450g (440 and 447). stans ztr355 are around 390g (per weight weenies). that's light dude...and coupled with the fact you could run some CX tires (panaracer fire CX for example) you could get a seriously light wheelset without much hassle or money.

my personal choice for a 29er is the one i just got, a RIP9. for the big wheels, i don't desire much longer travel....i think the 26ers are superior in slow-speed freeride type applications where the big travel is important.

 

[SuspectDevice]

my salsa delgado race are less than 450g (440 and 447). stans ztr355 are around 390g (per weight weenies). that's light dude...and coupled with the fact you could run some CX tires (panaracer fire CX for example) you could get a seriously light wheelset without much hassle or money.

my personal choice for a 29er is the one i just got, a RIP9. for the big wheels, i don't desire much longer travel....i think the 26ers are superior in slow-speed freeride type applications where the big travel is important.

There is still the fit issue though. This thread actually got me excited about building a "29er" for the first time ever, so I sat down and started looking at the numbers for a frame that would work well for me for general xc riding and racing. I'm 5'10" with a 32" inseam. I have pretty long arms and a herniated disc in my back that likes to be in a certain angle for optimal power output. I need a certain amount of drop to get myself in a comfortable position with good weight distribution between the wheels, etc, etc....

And what it comes down to, for me, a person with close to the average build, Is that I need a bike with a 4.2" headtube, and a -17 degree stem to get my weight distribution correct, and that's with a short as possible rigid fork. The more I look at the drawings, the more I want to build it though.... The tiny headtube kind of scares me, but I suppose that's what gussets are for...

 

[jncarpenter]

There is still the fit issue though. This thread actually got me excited about building a "29er" for the first time ever, so I sat down and started looking at the numbers for a frame that would work well for me for general xc riding and racing. I'm 5'10" with a 32" inseam. I have pretty long arms and a herniated disc in my back that likes to be in a certain angle for optimal power output. I need a certain amount of drop to get myself in a comfortable position with good weight distribution between the wheels, etc, etc....

And what it comes down to, for me, a person with close to the average build, Is that I need a bike with a 4.2" headtube, and a -17 degree stem to get my weight distribution correct, and that's with a short as possible rigid fork. The more I look at the drawings, the more I want to build it though.... The tiny headtube kind of scares me, but I suppose that's what gussets are for...

So what was your must have BB height? Since the rest of your speculation in this post is based upon it. Just curious...

 

[SuspectDevice]

I wanted to keep the bb height lower than 11.25" and have a top tube angle no greater than 17 degrees. I ended up pulling the bb up to 11.33 to get the front deraileur to work better (running a brazeon IRD road compact with a 29/38 setup). Any higher on the BB and I would have pisspoor standover clearance, not to mention I was aiming for 74mm of drop...

74 works real well for me with 34c's, so I'm not going to have any issue with 47's or 50's.

With a 432 axle to crown fork with 48mm of offset that puts my center of mass pretty much perfectly distributed between the wheels. Any higher on the BB is going to move the weight bias toward the front of the bike, and is going to unweight the rear tire more than I'd like for out of the saddle climbing. I guess those who like to over-classify bikes would call it more of a "monster cross" bike, but I call it a fast bike for XC racing....

 

[ÆX]

All ya need is that long travel Fox Shox, huh? I'm betting Rock Shox beats 'em to the punch though.

and i beat them both! ahhhhahahahahaaaaa.

why dream about this stuff kids when you can have it NOW!

http://forums.mtbr.com/showthread.php?t=358037&page=3&highlight=alex

 

[jncarpenter]

I wanted to keep the bb height lower than 11.25" and have a top tube angle no greater than 17 degrees. I ended up pulling the bb up to 11.33 to get the front deraileur to work better (running a brazeon IRD road compact with a 29/38 setup). Any higher on the BB and I would have pisspoor standover clearance, not to mention I was aiming for 74mm of drop...

74 works real well for me with 34c's, so I'm not going to have any issue with 47's or 50's.

With a 432 axle to crown fork with 48mm of offset that puts my center of mass pretty much perfectly distributed between the wheels. Any higher on the BB is going to move the weight bias toward the front of the bike, and is going to unweight the rear tire more than I'd like for out of the saddle climbing. I guess those who like to over-classify bikes would call it more of a "monster cross" bike, but I call it a fast bike for XC racing....

Sounds like an interesting bike. Any reason why you insist on keeping the TT from dropping too much? It would seem you could easily gain a bit of stand over if needed by a bit more of an angle.

My bb height isn't far off what you want, and my custom fork is only a bit longer than you propose....I'm 6 foot even & find the fit to be as close to perfect as I can detect. Keep us updated.

 

[SuspectDevice]

Heres a fuzzy, hard to read metric 2d rendering

I can't get more of an angle on the top tube without a 3rd miter cut, essentially joining the top tube to the downtube, and then only mitering the downtube onto the headtube. That's an ugly, weak structure that I want to avoid. The front 4-5" of the toptube is pretty much set in space, changes in top-tube angle don't have much affect on standover because the headtube is so short. Believe it or not, I could have more standover by going to a longer headtube. It would give me more room for a sharper TT angle without intercepting the downtube... But then the bars are too high! As you can see I already have a minimal third cut to make on the toptube. Holding down the tube and slicing it with an end-mill to get more of an angle is not anywhere near my list of priorities.

I could never in a million years ride your bike JN, I can not deal with offset seat tubes at all. I like my setback and seatheight to be absolute numbers, and the amount of calculus necessary to get an EXACT seat angle at my seat height would make me kill myself, not to mention the frame wouldn't fit someone else with a different seat height than me! For people who are not so fastidious about fit, I think they have their merits.
You have to realize I'm the kind of person that used to glue tread onto my road shoes to use for XC racing... IE a hopeless geek. I made that rendering while on the phone, in the van, on my palm pilot on the way home from dinner... heaven help me.

 

[SuspectDevice]

I might have missed some stuff, that was off the top of my head, and converting from english-metric on the other phone, but yeah...

 

[jncarpenter]

Well, keep in mind...mine is a dedicated ss as well. That does change things for me, geometry-wise.

Also, if you haven't spent alot of time on a 29er yet, I think you'll find that you can run the bars a bit higher without compromising your ability to keep the front down when necessary & benefit some from the resulting body position on the descents.

 

[SuspectDevice]

Well, keep in mind...mine is a dedicated ss as well. That does change things for me, geometry-wise.

Also, if you haven't spent alot of time on a 29er yet, I think you'll find that you can run the bars a bit higher without compromising your ability to keep the front down when necessary & benefit some from the resulting body position on the descents.

For me,
It's a matter of keeping the same position across all of my bikes. That's a pretty standard problem, and maybe one of the reasons you've been seeing so few pros race on the 700c wheels...
When you spend so much time on a road bike, and have a primary 26" wheeled race bike, there isn't room to "re-think" geometry, you need to have the same cockpit feel and positions across all of your bikes, or performance really suffers. If i were to say that I was only going to ride mountainbikes, not race and just ride one mountainbike, sure it might be possible to live with some compromises.

 

[ferday]

For me,
It's a matter of keeping the same position across all of my bikes. That's a pretty standard problem, and maybe one of the reasons you've been seeing so few pros race on the 700c wheels...
When you spend so much time on a road bike, and have a primary 26" wheeled race bike, there isn't room to "re-think" geometry, you need to have the same cockpit feel and positions across all of your bikes, or performance really suffers. If i were to say that I was only going to ride mountainbikes, not race and just ride one mountainbike, sure it might be possible to live with some compromises.

i have to disagree with this. i ride and race, both road and mountain...and i'm glad none of my bikes have the same position. horses for courses eh....i'd hate to do an endurance race in roadie position....