[GPERKINS]

I just checked out Foeses website and was blown away once I saw there downhill bike. 10 frekin Inches, who needs that much travel. And the price is 3,599, Crazy!. And there designs are not the best. But there quality is amazing and you never see any one on Foes. So what's going on with foes?

Website

http://www.foesracing.com/lineup.cfm?view=dhsmono

 

[mandown]

 

[NY_Star]

I have one of the older DHS monos (06) And it is not the lightest bike ever at 44lbs but i have no Ti or Carbon on it. (exp. cassette). And it is the best bike i have ever owned. It is not really a east coast kind of bike. The head tube on mine is at 65 with a Travis 180 and the crown dropped about an in. The quality of the bike is great but the shock not so much. It is a cheap design. I know of at least 5 other foes that i have seen at plattekill.

 

[Brian HCM#1]

I still ride a 1999 Foes Wesel 2 for my trail bike.

 

[Eastern States Cup]

Here's mine just back from a fresh rebuild from Foes.
2002 retro rocket machine

 

[Horror Business]

Here's mine just back from a fresh rebuild from Foes.
2002 retro rocket machine

That's a nice machine.

 

[DH Diva]

I love their bikes (so much so I've owned 8 total). Super well built and the ride is superb. Plush going down, and efficient going up, and lateral stiffness to die for, and the boys at Foes are a dream to work with. I couldn't ask for much more in a bike company. I Foes.

 

[Bacardi]

10 frekin Inches, who needs that much travel. And the price is 3,599, Crazy!. And there designs are not the best. (blah blah)

Maybe someone who doesn't want to ride a v10 - but wants boutique USA fabricated goodness with crazy amounts of shock tuning.

Can anyone speak for the 2:1 ratio?

 

[DH Diva]

Maybe someone who doesn't want to ride a v10 - but wants boutique USA fabricated goodness with crazy amounts of shock tuning.

Can anyone speak for the 2:1 ratio?

I had the original FXR (non 2:1 ratio) and purchased the new 2:1 FXR and the 2:1 blew the old design out of the water. I also have the 2:1 XCT 4 and it is an amazing trail/XC bike. Climbs like a goat, descends like a DH bike.

 

[mrpercussive]

I think Foes has the right idea. Single Pivots are awesome designs which are just proven. If it's a well designed SP which i'm sure the DHS is, it'll straight up perform. No need for marketing hype. Let the ride do the talking...

That being said, not really a fan of the curnutt shocks...

 

[Windowlicker]

imo, they are some of the best looking bikes.
i love the foes 4x. dream bike under 5 inches

 

[boogenman]

Maybe someone who doesn't want to ride a v10 - but wants boutique USA fabricated goodness with crazy amounts of shock tuning.

Can anyone speak for the 2:1 ratio?

#1. Santa Cruz is not a boutique bike.
#2. Intense(CCDB from factory), Turner(CCDB from factory), Ventana, Yeti ect ect. Are all USA fabricated boutique bikes.

I tooled around on my buddies 2:1 DHS mono and I was not impressed with the feel of the shock. It felt like the most clapped out turd like SPV garbage I have ever sat on. He says it feels great on the trail and I believe him. Next time I might ride it on the trail.

 

[dropmachine]

#1. Santa Cruz is not a boutique bike.
#2. Intense(CCDB from factory), Turner(CCDB from factory), Ventana, Yeti ect ect. Are all USA fabricated boutique bikes.

Ok there moneybags.

ANY bike that comes as frame only, and costs more then 1000 bucks is boutique. Perhaps some more then others, but then the debate rises on whether or not that extra cost is justified anyways.

 

[stiksandstones]

#1. Santa Cruz is not a boutique bike.
#2. Intense(CCDB from factory), Turner(CCDB from factory), Ventana, Yeti ect ect. Are all USA fabricated boutique bikes.

I tooled around on my buddies 2:1 DHS mono and I was not impressed with the feel of the shock. It felt like the most clapped out turd like SPV garbage I have ever sat on. He says it feels great on the trail and I believe him. Next time I might ride it on the trail.

Yeti's are made in USA?

 

[NY_Star]

I tooled around on my buddies 2:1 DHS mono and I was not impressed with the feel of the shock. It felt like the most clapped out turd like SPV garbage I have ever sat on. He says it feels great on the trail and I believe him. Next time I might ride it on the trail.

You cant get a real feel for the shock in the parking lot. That being said the shock is the week point on the bike. Mine is going to get a shim stack and normal piston put in it in the next few weeks.

 

[dhmike]

send a pm to foesnasty he's the homie to ask is foes worth it and foes ?.

 

[Banshee Rider]

#1. Santa Cruz is not a boutique bike.
#2. Intense(CCDB from factory), Turner(CCDB from factory), Ventana, Yeti ect ect. Are all USA fabricated boutique bikes.

The V10 is welded by SAPA in the United States. The same as Turner. Do you wear your blindfold all day, or just when posting on here?

 

[GPERKINS]

Ok, this is going the wrong way. I was trying to ask why do you never hear anything about Foes?. They make sick bikes, it is just it dosent seem like they have found there edge. I mean, the DHS could be refinded a lot more and the travel reduced quite a bit so it dosent feel like your riding a dirt bike.

 

[Jm_]

I just checked out Foeses website and was blown away once I saw there downhill bike. 10 frekin Inches, who needs that much travel. And the price is 3,599, Crazy!. And there designs are not the best. But there quality is amazing and you never see any one on Foes. So what's going on with foes?

Website

http://www.foesracing.com/lineup.cfm?view=dhsmono

My foes was designed shi**y, but perhaps they've made some improvements. The bolt that went through the scissor linkage and the shock would bend...often. It was friggin long as heck (but not very thick), so it's no mystery that the bike could exert a ton of leverage on that bolt. This is one of those design issues that I absolutely can not stand. It's like the early IH bikes that had the top linkage that was designed similer, as well as my azonic, big long top bolt through the linkage and shock eyelet. I haven't had a bike with that kind of arrangement that I didn't bend the bolt on, but the foes was the quickest and most catastrophic of them all.

The huge falling rate of the bike was pretty dumb as well.

And then there was the curnut. Biggest waste of $550 that I ever blew on anything mtb related. It was crap compared to any good shim-stack shock. It's one thing when you plop down $600 on a shock and it outperforms most everything and works amazing (like my avalanche), but it's another when the performance can be easily surpased by a stock DHX. I sent it in twice for "rebound clunk" and got it rebuild the 2nd time, but it still worked just as poorly as the first time, and was just not worth it. Some people report that "well it's not great on the little stuff but it's great with the "big hits", and I can't really understand what that means. What, is there one "big hit" on the trail? I found that going through rock gardens at high speed felt like trying to do the same on a hardtail, not because it wasn't using the travel, but because teh shock was trying to abruptly change direction, and the impact force was transmitted to me like crazy. (In reality it was better than a hardtail, but nowhere near a decent FS bike) I think a lot of people rationalized it due to how much money they spent.

This bike was fairly low leverage, (something like 2.3:1) but not 2:1. 2:1 sounds really cool on paper, but realize that all of the bearing friction, shock shaft bearing/seal friction and such will be magnified with 2:1, which means the "stickyness" of the curnutt shock may be even worse. Leverage alone doesn't really mean much, as the shock has to simply be designed correctly, the lower the leverage, the minimal the damping needs to be, but you can have an ultra-plush and sensitive bike that is 3:1, it's going to put higher stresses on the seals and internals, so it needs to be designed accordingly, but you can have it be just as sensitive and plush by having a bigger diameter damping piston and fluid displacement/volume. Obviously you run into limits though in terms of materials and size to fit the shock when you just keep increasing the leverage ratio, you also have the spring problems too. If you go to a 2:1 leverage ratio, you're going to need spring weights in smaller consecutive sizes, like 15-25lb incriments, and if you have 3:1 you can do bigger incriments like 50-100lb.

They are very stiff bikes laterally, but so are Ventanas and others, and the others work far better. Brent foes would have done himself a huge favor by not trying to get the crap CV/T technology to "work", because it never worked as well as what everyone else was doing. It's not so much that the curnut sucks, it's that year after year they stick to it and lots of other manufacturers change their designs/parts when something doesn't work.

 

[GPERKINS]

I look at it like this. When Yeti came out with the 303. It was heavy and could defintley be re-fined a lot. And that is exactley what Yeti Did with the 2008 303. It just seems to me that Foes would do the same thing with there bikes.

They have the R&D to make it happen, just like Yeti.

 

[Jm_]

It just seems to me that Foes would do the same thing with there bikes.

Not when you invest heavily in something like CV/T technology, and didn't brent get to use the patent for the curnut shocks (shared it with progressive?), so there's probably something behind the scenes in terms of investment or money. When you make a deal, it's a huge incentive to keep making that kind of stuff, because otherwise you blew a bunch of money on something that wasn't really all that hot, and you want to get your return.

Same thing with the curnut owners, lots (not all) have rationalized their purchase if you read their description of the performance. They've rationalized the lack of sensitivity/proper damping in the high-speed realm. I'm not making this up, it's really the way that these shocks work, just look at Tomac-Racer's post on the page before, before I even thought of posting in this thread. For current owners: Avalanche told me they could work on these shocks, so it might be worth giving them a call.

Foes DOES change their designs, that much is obvious, and they do update them, but it's the shocks that have been the problem for a long time, and like I said, when you invest in it or get sold on an idea early on, it's hard to reverse course.

 

[Jeremy R]

Ok, this is going the wrong way. I was trying to ask why do you never hear anything about Foes?

I totally get what you are asking, because I was thinking the same thing recently.
You are basically asking how in the hell are they still in business.
Its not about whether they are good or bad, or how sweet they look.
Its the fact that they are more rare than a straight male figure skater.
I am not talking about just downhill bikes here, but across the whole lineup.
I see a few of their Dh frames here and there, but most of them are old models, which speaks well for their durability.
But just riding trails, I always see Turner, Intense, Santa Cruz, Morewood Titus etc....... basically their competition.
They don't seem to be big in any particular market like trail, xc, freeride, or DH. It just seems that you don't see much from them or hear much about them.

 

[Jm_]

I tooled around on my buddies 2:1 DHS mono and I was not impressed with the feel of the shock. It felt like the most clapped out turd like SPV garbage I have ever sat on. He says it feels great on the trail and I believe him. Next time I might ride it on the trail.

You should, ride it through some rock-gardens and technical stuff at speed, then make your deterimination. Mine felt like that and worked like that on the trail too.


But it "pedaled great"!

 

[NY_Star]

For current owners: Avalanche told me they could work on these shocks, so it might be worth giving them a call.

Don't send these shocks to craig i bet he has never taken one apart. Not that i don't think that craig is great just to convert the shock to a piston and shim stack it is not economical. Your money is better spent buying a new avalanche shock that was designed right from the beginning.

 

[EM-EFER]

The Curnutt is good at high speed.

Its a POS at small bump sensitivity @ low to medium speed.

 

[dropmachine]

So was the old Fox Alps 5. Funny how stiction and the "curnutt platform" seem so damn similar.

 

[Jm_]

to convert the shock to a piston and shim stack it is not economical.

True, but it should be a good shock "chassi", but I was going to say something to that effect, you'd end up spending like $900-1000, but if you already got it...

 

[Jm_]

The Curnutt is good at high speed.

Its a POS at small bump sensitivity @ low to medium speed.

What does that mean? Small bumps are a lot of times (not always) high shaft-speed events, almost regardless of your forward velocity, but high shaft-speed performance is what sucked the most IMO, when you hit choppy terrain/rocks or rock-gardens.

 

[NY_Star]

True, but it should be a good shock "chassi", but I was going to say something to that effect, you'd end up spending like $900-1000, but if you already got it...

That is what i'm going to do to my shock. I work at a suspension shop so why not. I will take pictures of it in the process. The seal head is not bad in them but there is a lot of friction in there.

 

[Covenasty]

I have had 6 Foes, I still have 4... The Foes, well Curnutt's get a bad rap cause you really can't tell anything by riding it in the parking lot. It took me a handful of runs to get the curnutt right, but once you have it dialed in, there's no better rear shock. The faster you go the better the shock feels. I'm not saying that the Foes is the best bike out there, there are a ton of sweet bikes.... I'm just saying don't knock the foes intil you ride one... and not for one DH ride or trail ride... If you take the time to set it up you will be very pleased with the results.... Foes are big money cause they are worth it and they stand behind there product

 

[bizutch]

The reason you don't see a Foes around is because it's cheaper to buy Donald Trump's daughter an engagement ring! Dude is smoking some insane weed to justify the price of that DH bike. I remember when we got a grassroots deal way back in the day. I was stoked when the guy called me and said "We want your team on Foes. I'll get the pricing out..but don't show it to anyone, it's so low." Price sheet came..I showed it to Jeremy R and we both died laughing.

You can buy a complete bike for the price of their frame & shock...and a hub? Brent Foes could give a twat about DH. Dude is busy making one off custom bits for minis and raking the dough in. It's laughable to think the guy even has even tested the thing to see if it works? Isn't his company pretty much full on moto driven now? (just checked the site & don't see any moto stuff anymore...)

 

[Kntr]

I hated the Curnutts on both my Foes Flys. I had to put a Avy put on them and then they were sweet. Both Flys I bought with the Ti Curnutt and it was the worst money I have ever spent. When I broke my 02.5 Fly, they told me it had been heat treated incorrectly and I could upgrade to the 06 for $1800. A new frame was $2200 MSRP. Wow, thanks for the great deal. After talking with Foes I ended up paying about $1600. From what I hear the customer service is much better now. I sold my 06 because the waranty left such a bitter taste in my mouth. My warranty card said crash replacement was 50% of MSRP. I paid way more than 50%. Brent told me that crash replacement warranty had changed.... I said, so what, this is the warranty I got when I bought the Fly. They wouldnt honor it even though the bike had been heat treated incorrectly and they even admitted it. The frame had a lot of small cracks at the welds.


I do know of three bike shops that wont carry Foes anymore due to how they were treated with warranty work.

I dont know how they are now but they had terrible CS in the past.

Loved the bike hated the company.

 

[BmxConvert]

I hated the Curnutts on both my Foes Flys. I had to put a Avy put on them and then they were sweet. Both Flys I bought with the Ti Curnutt and it was the worst money I have ever spent. When I broke my 02.5 Fly, they told me it had been heat treated incorrectly and I could upgrade to the 06 for $1800. A new frame was $2200 MSRP. Wow, thanks for the great deal. After talking with Foes I ended up paying about $1600. From what I hear the customer service is much better now. I sold my 06 because the waranty left such a bitter taste in my mouth. My warranty card said crash replacement was 50% of MSRP. I paid way more than 50%. Brent told me that crash replacement warranty had changed.... I said, so what, this is the warranty I got when I bought the Fly. They wouldnt honor it even though the bike had been heat treated incorrectly and they even admitted it. The frame had a lot of small cracks at the welds.


I do know of three bike shops that wont carry Foes anymore due to how they were treated with warranty work.

I dont know how they are now but they had terrible CS in the past.

Loved the bike hated the company.

I've got a Fly that I've been fairly happy with. Nothing really to complain about except that they should have put an 83mm shell on it and given us some ISCG tabs instead of the 73 with no tabs and pivot hardware interfering with any chainguide other than a Foes.

I like the Curnutt in most situations, but I've got 2 brand new 10.5x3.5 Revox shocks with a handful of different Ti springs sitting here and it's got me thinking about trying a new rear shock. Did you have Avy build you a special shock for that. As far as I know they aren't offering an 11x3 rear shock?

-Kevin

 

[Damo]

Bike rules, Curnutt does not.

Seen the Curnutt blow 5 times - and I mean BLOW - before my mate switched to a Curnutt air shock. He has had it (air shock) for a week now and it seems to be going fine...

It would be nice to be able to mount another brand shock onto the 2:1.

 

[Kanye West]

What's funny is that it's very easy to confuse low-speed harshness and spiking with horrible horrible amounts of seal and o-ring drag in that shock (which it is plenty guilty of). For whatever reason, they are completely aware of it and refuse to change it. Every Curnutt shock I've felt and felt like complete butt, except for one which had the main seal replaced with a looser fitting and properly lubricated one, which was hands down one of the most amazing shocks I've felt. This was on a way older DHS Tube frame.

Now the Romic's on the Foes Mono frames....THOSE felt tits...

 

[nmpearson]

i've talked to foes a few times in the past week. my shop apparently carries them and we're gonna participate in a demo program. i'm really stoked. we're gonna have their 5 in. bike....it should be fun to tool around with

 

[boogenman]

it is very amusing reading responses to these posts. Most of you are very selective while you read/skim over posts. I DID say that the foes I parking lot tested felt like crap, but I also said that I wanted to try it out on the trail since the owner said it feels great on trail and like poop in the lot.

Just because a bike has the made in USA label does not mean it is a boutique bike, I really do not even care for the name boutique bike. Santa Cruz just does not cut the cake for me as a company that is anything better than a big name mass produced bike. A few years back they were a lot better than they are now. The quality of the frames has gone down a ton and the customer service is 100% gone. Would i ride a Santa Cruz, sure I would. Would I be proud of my bike, not at all.

Stikman- 303 is made in USA still.

 

[mandown]

The faster you go the better the shock feels.

...and just how fast do you really get going?

 

[Kntr]

I ran a Romic on my Fly for awhile and it was AWESOME, till it started leaking.

Avy still makes a shock for the Fly.

When I bought my 06 Fly, I ordered it with a Ti-Curnutt, because I was told they changed the valving. They might have but it felt the same as my 02.5 Fly. I rode it for about a month and it was terrible. The Curnutt and their lack of CS is the reason no one buys their bikes anymore.

Im done with them. I will NEVER own another Foes and I absolutely loved the bike.

Love the bike , hate the company.

When I got my 06 Fly I emailed MITCH about the seatpost. I asked him what the minimum amount of seatpost did they reccommend in the seat tube. Some seatpost companys reccommend 80mm, but some bike companys reccommend more. I didnt want to void my warranty. I sent him 3-4 emails asking him what they reccommended. Here is the email he sent me after my 4th email.
_____________________________________________________
Mitch,
Are you just ignoring me or what? How much
seatpost has to be in the frame? Some seatpost
companys say 80mm, while some frame manufacturers say 120mm.

________________________________________________________
I am not ignoring you... however, can you please refer questions about
seatposts and the like to the manufacturer of the part that you feel will
break. Every seat post has a maximum line on it - don't go past that.
Additionally, I really don't have time to answer questions like these until
the end of the week when I have time... which, right now, I don't have any!

Mitch

_________________________________________________________

Well, come to find out... Thompson reccomends 80mm and Foes reccommends
120mm after calling and talking to Brent. Thanks Mitch for all your help.

__________________________________________________________

 

[Sandwich]

Foes bikes are pretty to look at.